Ryan Giggs named by MP over injunction

A complete recasting of social media and internet regulation was signalled by the government as an MP used parliamentary privilege to name Ryan Giggs as the footballer identified on Twitter as having brought an injunction to prevent publication of allegations he had an affair with a former reality TV star.

David Cameron, facing an increasingly aggressive tabloid campaign to stop the high court granting injunctions protecting the privacy of celebrities, announced a joint parliamentary committee to examine the complex related issues of privacy, injunctions, the regulation of the internet and the role of the press complaints commission. He said the current position was not sustainable.

During Commons questions on the government's move, the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming named the Manchester United player , wrongfooting the Speaker, John Bercow, and instantly opening the floodgates to reporting by the mainstream media.

Hemming said he had a right to do so because the footballer had already been named by 75,000 people on Twitter, but many MPs and peers accused him of being a self publicist who had abused parliamentary privilege.

Just as the footballer's name began to circulate widely across the media after Hemming's intervention, a high court judge ruled against the Sun newspaper and insisted that the injunction preventing him being named should still be upheld, in a decision that media organisations had not expected. Mr Justice Tugendhat, delivering his ruling on Monday night, acknowledged "it is obvious that if the purpose [of the injunction] was to protect a secret then it would have now failed", but argued that its purpose was to protect the footballer from "harassment".

In March, the Ministry of Justice published proposals for a draft defamation bill intended to address all the key issues of defamation and privacy on the internet including the responsibility of internet service providers to police material published on their sites. Calling for "a time out" to re-examine the issue of privacy, Cameron said: "It's not fair on the newspapers if all the social media can report this and the newspapers can't and so the law and the practice has got to catch up with how people consume media today. I don't think there's an easy answer to this."

The formal announcement of the joint committee was hastily made by Dominic Grieve, the attorney general. The joint committee, due to be report this autumn, was a deliberate effort by a nervous government to turn the future of press freedom and privacy into a cross-party issue, so reducing pressure on Cameron personally to reach potentially controversial conclusions. Its conclusions could nonetheless have far-reaching ramifications for tabloid newspapers too if the government attempts to reframe privacy laws.

The government's efforts to contain the controversy fell apart when Hemming used Grieve's Commons statement on the joint committee to declare: "Mr Speaker, With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter it is impractical to imprison them all ..."

His defiance led to gasps and a shout of "disgrace" before a startled Speaker quickly interrupted. "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," Bercow said.

Within minutes of Hemming naming Giggs, mainstream newspapers and broadcasters used the protection of privilege to identify the footballer.

Hemming later said he was trying to stop lawyers for Giggs using the courts to oppress and imprison individuals in secret just for retelling gossip on Twitter. He said: "The first steps had been taken to identity people who had started the gossip. There are people who are jailed in secret in this country."

Hemming had already tested judicial authority last week by revealing the banker Sir Fred Goodwin had been granted a superinjunction.

Hemming's move was condemned by MPs and peers. John Whittingdale, the Conservative chairman of the culture select committee said: "If MPs think the law is wrong then we should change the law rather than flout the law."

Lady Kennedy, the Labour peer, said: "The reason most of the tabloid press want to write about footballers lives is to make a profit. Newspapers are in a parlous state at the moment ... we need a more grown up debate than this."

Last week, it emerged that the high court had granted its initial ruling on the basis of a belief that the footballer may well have been blackmailed by Imogen Thomas. She had been accused in evidence submitted by the player of asking him for £50,000 and then £100,000 for her silence – a claim she denies. However, Mr Justice Eady indicated that he was inclined to believed the player's account, concluding there was "ample reason not to trust Thomas".

Mr Justice Tugendhat's ruling was the third time in on Monday the injunction had been upheld, with verdicts from two different judges, underlining the strength of judicial feeling on the controversy. Mr Justice Eady said in a written judgment: "Should the court buckle every time one of its orders meets widespread disobedience or defiance? In a democratic society, if a law is deemed to be unenforceable or unpopular, it is for the legislature to make such changes as it decides are appropriate".

However, the Sun chose to come back to the high court after a Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Herald, printed a barely concealed photograph of the footballer on its front page and Cameron said in an interview on ITV's Daybreak programme that he was aware of the footballer's identity "like everybody else".

Representing the Sun in the second hearing, Richard Spearman QC told the court that keeping the privacy injunction in place was futile. He said that "today this has moved on very dramatically" and that the footballer had conceded "an own goal" by allowing his legal team to threaten legal action against Twitter and its users.