John Hemming MP abuses parliamentary privilege

So it's finally out in the open. Today in parliament, the Lib Dem MP John Hemming outed Ryan Giggs as the footballer at the centre of the Imogen Thomas affair superinjunction. You can watch him doing it, and the Speaker's robust* (and in my opinion correct) admonishment of him here:

It had become pretty much common knowledge for anyone with a Twitter account, or Scottish newsagent that Giggs was the culprit. So it could be argued that all Hemming was doing was bringing an unsustainable situation to a head.

I think this is wrong. Parliamentary privilege exists in order to make sure that parliament can freely speak on issues without fear of its MPs being prosecuted. There are situations where this is vital for our democracy and it should be a cherished and carefully used privilege. It should not be used to out philandering footballers who have allegedly been sleeping with former reality TV contestants.

There are various arguments about superinjunctions going on at the moment and I have some reservations about how they are currently being used. But it is not the place for a member of parliament to unilaterally decide to flout a court order under protection of this ancient parliamentary right on such a trivial matter.

Not least because the more this right is abused, the more likely it is in future to start to be eroded. I can certainly imagine if this sort of thing continues that eventually the argument will be put forward that there are certain things currently covered that need to be excluded from parliamentary privilege. I for one would not want to see that happening. It is telling that most MPs of all parties are reportedly very annoyed with Hemming. I suspect they are concerned about this too.

MPs need to make sure this debate never gets started, because who knows where it could lead. Nowhere good for our democracy I am sure.

*Incidentally, I am wondering if Bercow could have asked for Hemming's contribution of specifically naming Giggs to have been redacted from the parliamentary record and edited out of Hansard? Does anyone know if this is an option that was open to him or whether even if it was it would have opened its own can of worms?

Keep it up Mr Speaker

I have noticed recently that the Speaker, John Bercow has been going further and further in trying to control the baying mob at PMQs. There is still barracking and heckling but when it gets too much he is more frequently stepping in and embarrassing individual members who are behaving badly even threatening to sin-bin them. He also keeps pointing out how most people watching outside the chamber find this sort of behaviour very off-putting.

Mike Smithson now thinks that Bercow is being high-handed and that PMQs is in danger of becoming a bore.

I'm afraid I totally disagree. If anything he has not yet gone far enough. He should start to exclude MPs from the chamber if they persist with this sort of infantile behaviour. I would much prefer there to be little or no barracking and heckling at all.

What Mike is failing to appreciate is that there are only a few thousand political junkies in this country (in which I include myself) who largely view PMQs as theatre and a sort of verbal jousting with the opposing sides cheering for their leader and heckling their opponents. They perceive it as good sport and sit on the sidelines "scoring" it often based on how up or down the "troops" seems to be in response. For most of the rest of the population, the highlights that they see on the evening news of those who we have elected to represent us in our primary political chamber consist of grown adults baying at each other like schoolchildren. It is one of the things that drives a wedge between the political classes and the rest.

Of course our Prime Minister should be held to account and the fact that we have this weekly session is admired around the world. But there is no need for the sideshow stuff and it regularly spoils what should showcase the best of our political system.

Keep it up Mr Speaker. Who knows, eventually maybe even I will be proud of the weekly sessions.