Libel, Lawyers, Trafigura and the Internet

This is quite interesting - in a nutshell, a large oilibusiness - Trafigura - is accused of being less than careful with what it dumps into the environment. They have money, so they have friends to help them bury the bad story. However, in most countries the state organisations have so far given them short shrift, but in the UK, where libel laws are so "injured party friendly" that the rest of the world's wealthy beat a path to the door to get cases heard here, its apparently gone so far that newspapers cannot even report these issues in Parliament.

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations

The interesting thing is that this story is being picked up and rapidly spread on the Internet, and the above gag is being linked to said oilibusiness, with the result that bloggers of every hue are getting curious and starting to dig into the back-story - and growing increasingly incredulous at what they see, in terms of:

- The non-ecological behaviour of a large corporate
- It's attempts to stop reporting on this behaviour
- The craven behaviour of the British Parliament (but then, the MP's expense revelations showed a political class largely involved with personal wealth generation, so why does this surprise anyone?)

(Update - the Liberal Democrats have had the courage to call for a debate, parliamentary spokesman David Heath tabled an urgent request to Commons Speaker John Bercow to ask Justice Secretary Jack Straw for a statement on the prevention of reporting of parliamentary proceedings. In fact, what became clear over the morning was that the other mainstream media also craved in and stayed very quiet as well.)

Anyway, Twitter is being used to get the message out (#trafigura) and I suspect that by trying to bottle up the "official" channels, the outcome will actually be far more damaging to the company. (A bit like the BBC banning the Sex Pistols guaranteed their popularity).

The real scandal however in my view is the UK libel laws, but somehow I think we will find that the 'Net is already proving those laws are an ass.

(Update 2 - the law firm, Carter-Ruck, has withdrawn the gag, which was to try and suppress reporting of a report (see wikileaks here) . Question of course is why there was any risk of one in the first place. As you can see in the comments here and elsewhere, no one is quite sure how a learned MiLord got to issue such a wide ranging gagging order, even with Britains flexible libel laws - this could be an interesting story in itself. I understand the parliamentary reporting issue will be aired on BBC Newsnight tonight.

On TimesOnline:

Professor Gary Slapper, director of the Open University law programme, said: “Parliament, already tainted by the hubbub of MPs trying to excuse their endemic financial misconduct, is now under a more sinister spectre.”

The order, he added, had “violated a most fundamental and cherished part of the British constitution; that Parliament is sovereign and cannot be controlled by private interests operating through the courts.”

Is this a roundabout way of saying the law is also for hire?

Also, seems to me some Olde Worlde companies have just learned about the New Media the hard way. Also, the Mainstream Media have looked decidedly slow on this one today)