A. v. the United Kingdom (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 41

April 2002

A. v. the United Kingdom (dec.) - 35373/97

Decision 5.3.2002 [Section II]

Article 6

Civil proceedings

Article 6-1

Access to court

Absolute privilege protecting defamatory statements made by MP in Parliament and qualified privilege in respect of press reports citing these statements: admissible

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for private life

Absolute privilege protecting defamatory statements made by MP in Parliament and qualified privilege in respect of press reports citing these statements: admissible

The applicant lived with her two children in a house owned by a local housing association. The association moved her and her children to a new house in 1994 following a report that she was suffering serious racial abuse. In July 1996 the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency where the applicant’s new house was made a speech in the House of Commons on the subject of municipal housing policy. During his speech, the MP referred specifically to the applicant several times, giving her name and address and referring to members of her family. He described her and her family as “neighbours from hell”, making derogatory remarks about the behaviour of both her and her children in and around her home. These included references to alleged verbal abuse, truancy, vandalism and drug activity. Shortly before the debate, the MP issued a press release to several local and national newspapers. The press release was to be disclosed only once the speech had commenced; the contents of the press release were substantially the same as those of his speech. The following day, two newspapers published articles with extracts of the speech, based on the press release. Both articles had photographs of the applicant and mentioned her name and address. The applicant subsequently received hate-mail with racist contents and was stopped in the street, spat at and abused by strangers as “the neighbour from hell”. She and her children had to be rehoused urgently. Through her solicitors, the applicant wrote to the MP outlining her complaints. The MP referred her letter to the Office of the Parliamentary Speaker, whose representative replied to the MP to the effect that his remarks were protected by absolute parliamentary privilege. A copy of the reply was forwarded to the applicant’s solicitors. The applicant unsuccessfully wrote to the Prime Minister as leader of the party to which the MP belonged but the Prime Minister’s office replied that there was a strict convention whereby MP’s do not intervene in the affairs of other MP’s constituencies and that this applied equally to the Prime Minister.

Admissible under Articles 6 § 1, 8, 13 and 14: The Government submitted that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies. The first domestic course of action was legal proceedings against the MP in respect of the press release which he issued in advance of his parliamentary speech. The second domestic course of action was legal proceedings against the press in respect of their reporting of the MP’s allegations. However, the applicant’s principal complaint concerned her inability to take legal action against the MP in respect of the statements he made about her in Parliament, due to the absolute nature of the privilege under domestic law. Furthermore, any legal challenge in respect of the contents of the MP’s press release, whether by way of proceedings in defamation or breach of confidence, could not in practice have affected the making of the parliamentary speech, nor the subsequent publicity which led to the consequences suffered by the applicant and her children. The contents of the press release could not have become known to the applicant until after the speech had been delivered. Moreover, the likely application of qualified privilege to the reported speech, together with the fact that the articles concerned were printed the following day, meant that the applicant could not realistically have obtained any prior injunction against publication of the allegations. Therefore, the Government had failed to show that proceedings in respect of the MP’s press release or the newspaper articles would have provided the applicant with an available and sufficient remedy in respect of her complaints.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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