Gagging Order: Footballer Named In Commons

Ryan Giggs has been named by an MP in the House of Commons as the person identified on Twitter in the context of injunctions.

Birmingham MP John Hemming used Parliamentary privilege (protection) to name the Premier League star during a debate on the use of injunctions.

Later, an attempt by The Sun newspaper to overturn an injunction protecting a married footballer's identity was rejected for the second time in a day by the High Court.

The injunction bans the naming of a Premier League footballer who is alleged to have had a "sexual relationship" with a reality TV star.

The Sun made its first attempt of the day to overturn the order following the publication of the footballer's name and photograph in a Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Herald.

It returned to the High Court after the naming of a footballer in the House of Commons.

The original judge, Mr Justice Eady, had left for the day but one of the country's leading privacy judges, Mr Justice Tugendhat, was persuaded to sit for the hearing.

Mr Tugendhat upheld the previous decision not to overturn the injunction, despite the argument by The Sun that the footballer no longer had any privacy left to protect.

The judge said: "It is obvious if the purpose of the injunction were to preserve a secret it would have failed.

"But insofar as its purpose is to prevent intrusion or harassment, it has not failed."

He added that the question asked in Parliament increased rather than decreased the strength of the footballer's argument that he and his family needed protection.

The Premier League star is alleged to have had a "sexual relationship" with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas.

Earlier, Mr Eady had said: "It has never been suggested, of course, that there is any legitimate public interest, in the traditional sense, in publishing this information.

"The court's duty remains to try and protect the claimant, and particularly his family, from intrusion and harassment so long as it can."

His position was backed by Labour leader Ed Miliband who told Sky News: "We have got a situation where we have these rulings on privacy but clearly many people are being able to break them using social networking.

"I don't think that is a good position to be in when the law is not working. Parliament does need to look at this."

PR consultant Max Clifford told Sky News: "The whole thing is developing into a Whitehall farce because everybody knows who he is.

"The lawyers have made the situation worse by going after Twitter."

The privacy order protecting the footballer's identity has been publicly flouted, especially online where thousands of people have mentioned the man's name on Twitter.

The player's lawyers are now taking action against the social media site and users who may have breached the court order.