London: Ryan Giggs was on Monday named in the House of Commons as the married Premier League footballer who has attempted to block reports of his affair with a reality TV star.
The Manchester United star was identified by John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat, using parliamentary privilege which protects MPs from prosecution for anything they say during a debate.
Giggs was named just minutes after the High Court refused to lift the injunction which blocks journalists from naming the player who allegedly had an affair with popular British reality show contestant Imogen Thomas.
Hemming also named a journalist facing a possible prison sentence for breaching a privacy injunction. “With about 75,000 people having now named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it’s obviously impracticable to imprison them all,” he said.
John Bercow, the Speaker, immediately criticised Hemming for naming the footballer. “Let me just say to the honourable gentleman, I know he’s already done it, but occasions such as this are occasions for raising the issues of principle involved, not seeking to flout for whatever purpose,” said the Speaker. “If the honourable gentleman wants to finish his question in an orderly way, he can do so.”
Dominic Grieve, who as attorney general would be responsible for any prosecution for contempt, said: “It is our duty as parliamentarians to uphold the rule of law. What is absolutely clear is that breaches of court orders should not take place.”
The moment of parliamentary drama came after lawyers for a British tabloid failed in a fresh application for the controversial legal gag to be lifted after a Scottish newspaper named the star at the weekend. His identity has been discussed by hundreds of thousands of users of the internet, and, on Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that he knew his identity “like everybody else”.
Banning newspapers from naming such stars while the information was widely available on the internet was both “unsustainable” and “unfair”, Cameron said.
But Justice Eady rejected a fresh application by the tabloid to discharge the privacy injunction relating to the player, referred to in court as CTB, on the basis that to continue it would be “futile”, given recent widespread publicity about his identity. The judge said in his ruling: “The court’s duty remains to try and protect the claimant, and particularly his family, from intrusion and harassment so long as it can.”
Justice Eady also turned down an application by the footballer, asking permission to scour the email systems of the tabloid for any sign that employees had had a hand in leaking the footballer’s name online.
Giggs was named two weeks ago by a user of the Twitter microblogging site, prompting hundreds of thousands of internet users to discuss him online.
On Sunday a Glasgow newspaper published the player’s photograph on its front page, saying defiantly that everyone now knew who he was and that an injunction passed by an English court had no force in Scotland’s legal jurisdiction.
Grieve has come under pressure to spell out what action will be taken against those who have already breached the order and named CTB.
The footballer has begun legal action against Twitter and its users, asking the California-based website to hand over information about the people who “may have breached a court order”.
