MP criticised for naming Giggs

Lib Dem John Hemming has been criticised by several MPs for his decision to use the protection of parliamentary privilege to name Ryan Giggs as the footballer said to have obtained a super injunction. Yesterday in the Commons, Hemming was told off by the Speaker for identifying Giggs as the attorney general Dominic Grieve responded to an urgent question on the use of super injunctions. Hemming said: "With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter, it is obviously impracticable to imprison them all." "What is the government’s view on the enforceability of a law that clearly does not have public consent?" he asked. The Speaker told Hemming: "Occasions such as this are for raising the issues of principle involved, not for seeking to flout orders for whatever purpose." He later added: "I strongly deprecate the abuse of parliamentary privilege to flout an order or score a particular point...it is important, however, that we recognise the need to temper our privilege with responsibility." The so-called super injunctions prevent newspapers from reporting the fact that they have been gagged as well as reporting on the substance of any allegations. The effectiveness of the gagging orders has been undermined by the internet as people have exposed individuals alleged to have taken out the inunctions on Twitter. Hemming, who has long campaigned against super injunctions and has previously identified others who have obtained the gagging orders, was also criticised by several fellow MPs. Labour's Chuka Umunna said MPs should "exercise extreme caution" when choosing to "take it on themselves to breach court orders using parliamentary privilege when they are not fully apprised of all the evidence in the way that the judges who hear the cases are". While Gisela Stewart told the Commons that Hemming's remarks, "on reflection, will probably be seen as incautious". The Lib Dem was also attacked on Twitter, the social networking site that caused much of the crisis in the effectiveness of super injunctions in the first place. Shadow energy minister Huw Irranca-Davies who said he was "sad to see parliamentary privilege being used incontinently" while Labour's Tom Harris attacked Hemming for "self-publicising". Conservative Louise Bahshaw was more restrained in her concerns and posted on the site: "I believe we should change law on super injunctions, not use parliamentary privilege to break them." And on Newsnight last night Lord Prescott told Hemming "you have nothing except ego". But Hemming was defended by Tory Peter Bone who told Radio 4's Today programme this morning that it was "in the interests of every citizen in the country that an MP can stand up and say what he thinks without fear there is some recourse in law". He warned that any attempt to restrict what MPs could say in the House would be dangerous. A joint committee made up of MPs and peers is to be established to examine that balance and would report back in the autumn.