privilege
Parliamentary privilege grants certain legal immunities for Members of both Houses to allow them to perform their duties without interference from outside of the House. Parliamentary privilege includes freedom of speech and the right of both Houses to regulate their own affairs.
The right of MPs or Lords to make certain statements within Parliament without being subject to outside influence, including law. Parliamentary privilege grants certain legal immunities for Members of both Houses to allow them to perform their duties without interference from outside of the House. Parliamentary privilege includes freedom of speech and the right of both Houses to regulate their own affairs.The privileges are only codified a work of authority in Erskine May: Parliamentary Practice
In recent years the doctrine of parliamentary privilege has made headlines in relation to several cases relating to super-injunctions such as RJW & SJW v The Guardian newspaper & Person or Persons Unknown ('Trafigura') and CTB v News Group Newspapers.
In July 2021, Social Democratic and Labour Party leader Colum Eastwood exercised parliamentary privilege to name "Soldier F", the British paratrooper who killed five unarmed civilians during the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972.
In February 2022, Layla Moran used parliamentary privilege to name 35 people who she claimed were Russian oligarchs, arguing that they should be sanctioned due to their closeness to Russia's president during the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Parliamentary privilege is a right dating back to 1689 which protects parliamentarians from being sued, for example on the grounds of defamation.
It has been used to expose corruption or criminal activity, but more recently - and controversially - to name rich and famous people protected by the courts.
For example, back in 2011, Ryan Giggs was named as the "married footballer" with an injunction, after tabloid reports that he had an affair with a reality star.
He was named by former Lib Dem MP John Hemming, who campaigned against secrecy in the family courts, but he was criticised by some colleagues for going against a court order.
The retail tycoon Philip Green was named by Lord Hain, back in 2018, again using parliamentary privilege, as the mystery businessman involved in allegations of misconduct, reported by the Daily Telegraph.
The peer later said: "What concerned me about this case was wealth, and power that comes with it, and abuse, and that was what led me to act in the way that I did."
The Liberal Democrat politician John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to reveal the litigant involved in the case CTB v News Group Newspapers.
Parliamentary privilege raises questions about the rule of law- since MPs seem to be able to use privilege as a a means of subverting the principle of equality before the law- which is of course implied in the concept of 'privilege' This has led to calls for the codification of Parliamentary Privilege since its use bring MPs in to conflict with the courts.
Parliamentary privilege should also mean that Parliament runs its own affairs however the failure of the government to implement in full the Wright Commission reforms mean that the legislative process is still controlled by the executive not the legislature.