RESEARCH - UK Privacy Law

1990

The case involved Gorden Kaye, a well known actor who suffered life threatening injuries in a car accident. Kaye attempted to obtain an order to restrain publication of photographs of the injuries he suffered in the crash. These photographs were obtained by deception when a tabloid journalist entered the hospital while he was undergoing treatment.

A friend of Mr Kaye had been granted an interlocutory injunction preventing the editor (Anthony Robertson) and the newspaper (the Sunday Sport) from using the material, which they appealed.

Lord Justice Glidewell said "It is well-known that in English law there is no right to privacy, and accordingly there is no right of action for breach of a persons privacy. The facts of the present case are a graphic illustration of the desirability of Parliament considering whether and in what circumstances statutory provision can be made to protect the privacy of individuals."

In the absence of the right to privacy, Mr Kaye's advisers based their claim on libel, malicious falsehood, trespass to the person and passing off. The Court of Appeal ruled that none of these torts was applicable except malicious falsehood, and on this basis the only remedy available was that the newspaper was prohibited from stating any inference that Mr Kaye had consented to the story.

The academic response to this ruling has been negative, e.g. "Kaye remains a compelling demonstration of the limits of both existing English law and of the limitations of an approach that relies upon inadequate existing remedies to protect privacy."

1998-2000

The Human Rights Act 1998 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which received Royal Assent on 9 November 1998, and mostly came into force on 2 October 2000. Its aim is to "give further effect" in UK law to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. The Act makes available in UK courts a remedy for breach of a Convention right, without the need to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It also totally abolished the death penalty in UK law (although this was not required by the Convention in force for the UK at that time)

2008

In 2008 the editor of the Daily Mail criticised the Human Rights Act for allowing, in effect, a right to privacy at English law despite the fact that Parliament has not passed such legislation. Paul Dacre was in fact referring to the indirect horizontal effect of the Human Rights Act on the doctrine ofbreach of confidence which has moved English law closer towards a common law right to privacy.In response the Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer stated that the Human Rights Act had been passed by Parliament, that people's private lives needed protection and that the judge in the case had interpreted relevant authorities correctly

2011

It has become apparent that many rich and powerful people are taking out injunctions or super injunctions. This has raised the argument, do the public have a right to know, or do the celebrities have a right to privacy.