House of Commons speaker John Bercow has banned Members of Parliament from using their Parliamentary privileges to reveal details of a “celebrity threesome” couple.
An injunction was taken out by the ménage à trois to keep the details of the alleged infidelity secret.
The Telegraph reports:
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The Telegraph reported today that an MP was planning to use parliamentary privilege to reveal the names of the mystery couple – whose identities have already been widely circulated on the internet and in American publications.
But a spokesman for the Speaker’s Office said this morning that Mr Bercow was taking emergency advice from officials, aimed at preventing the couple’s names from being revealed.
The spokesman said: “Members should not breach the terms of any injunction/super injunction. With respect to how this is to be enforced, Mr Speaker will be taking advice from senior procedural officials later this morning.”
A court order bans newspapers in England and Wales from publishing the names of the “well known” married celebrity who had an extra-marital ménage à trois.
A number of MPs are said to be unhappy with the impact of the injunction on free speech.
One politician said that he was considering the move because of concerns free speech was being inhibited by “judge-made law”.
John Hemming, a former Liberal Democrat MP who named Ryan Giggs in the Commons when the footballer won a previous injunction to prevent reporting of an alleged affair, said he was “disappointed” by Mr Bercow’s move.
”This is not a decision that one man can take on his own,” said Mr Hemming.
“It is a decision that Parliament as a whole must take.
“If the Speaker were moving a resolution for the Commons to vote on that would be a different matter.”
He added: “A parliamentary committee examined this in 2012 and concluded no changes to the rules were necessary.
“I’m disappointed. This is not in the Speaker’s power.
“I fear that Mr Bercow is very much a man of the Establishment.”
The Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions chaired by John Whittingdale MP, who is now Culture Secretary, looked in 2012 at whether MPs should be able to reveal injuncted material under parliamentary privilege.
It concluded: “We do not think some of the recent revelations of material subject to injunctions yet require a new parliamentary rule to prevent such disclosures.”
But it went on: “If such disclosures continue, then new rules should be considered.”
A Scottish newspaper yesterday published the couple’s names, after the pair’s identities were first revealed in an American newspaper. They were later repeated in international titles across the globe as well as being repeated thousands of times online and on social media.
Even the name of the Scottish newspaper cannot be identified in English-based publications because it risks breaching the terms of the injunction.
A widely-read British website also named the couple on Monday. The site cannot be identified.
The celebrity, identified only as ‘PJS’, claimed his right to privacy outweighed an English tabloid newspaper’s right to publish a story about his extra-marital sexual exploits.
