Newsnight tackled the issue of privacy and injunctions last night and its panellists included Hugh Grant, Helen Wood (the prostitute in the Rooney case), the journalist Fraser Nelson and the lawyer Charlotte Harris.
“I don’t have many strongly held beliefs but I do believe in human rights . . . and a very basic right is the right to privacy,” said Grant. “I do think it is a massive scandal . . . that, for a number of years now, our tabloid newspapers have been able to invade privacy without much recourse.
“Some cases [are] for good reason but many of the celebrity exposés are purely for profit, so to me there’s no distinction between mugging someone for their wallet and their watch and selling it on the street and mugging them for their privacy and selling it in a newspaper.”
Asked by Emily Maitlis how tabloid scrutiny affects his life, Grant said:
It’s a bit like living under the Stasi. You never know if there’s a long lens in the bushes at the end of my road . . . I’ve had my phone hacked — the police have told me that now. They’re always looking for anyone you might have been in contact with, any hotel you might have stayed at — they might go and talk to them, try to pay them off. I’m not a perfect person by any means but it doesn’t feel right that, just because you’ve had a bit of success, in this country one of your most basic human rights is removed.
Grant added that he was “very pleased with this whole injunction business” , as without a steady diet of celebrity kiss’n’tells, tabloids would go out of business. “There’s very little journalism done in those papers now,” he said. “It’s mainly stealing successful people’s privacy and selling it.”
The Spectator editor (and News of the World columnist) Fraser Nelson then tried to argue that the press was already effectively regulated by the PCC. “You can’t say that in a serious voice,” chipped in Grant.
Nelson said that his magazine received “lots” of letters from the regulatory body and took them seriously. Grant was unimpressed: “The PCC is the laughing stock of the world. Utterly toothless.”
He said that even in “outrageous” cases, such as when the Mirror printed his medical records, “You might get a tiny little thing saying ‘Hugh Grant’s complaint against the Mirror has been upheld’ on page 96.”
Charlotte Harris, a lawyer at Mishcon, backed Grant, saying that the PCC weren’t effective — “and weren’t interested in phone-hacking”. She said that behind almost every tabloid splash was a cash negotiation of what the story was worth.
The former escort Helen Wood then argued that injunctions were unfair because the man involved was protected while she wasn’t — which sounds like an argument for making the system fairer and making injunctions available to those without tens of thousands of pounds to spare, rather than scrapping them.
Afterwards, it was time for round two of Grant v Nelson, with the actor telling the journalist: “If someone came after your privacy . . . and said Fraser Nelson is getting up to all kinds of mischief with this girl who’s dressed as a nun and likes to spank him in a nappy . . .”
“That would never get out, that story,” interjected Nelson.
“I don’t believe that story either,” conceded Grant. “But you would take out an injunction to try to stop it.”
It’s worth watching the programme in full as the debate is a cracker, with Harris explaining the difference between injunctions and superinjunctions, and Grant admitting, “men are naughty” and complaining of the “successive pussy governments” that have refused to tackle the problem.
Before the discussion, there’s also the treat of Kelvin MacKenzie intoning this ominous warning: “I have a piece of information which will rather nicely depth-charge a cabinet minister, probably towards the end of next week when I publish it in my column.”
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