It would seem that the new fashion amongst lawyers is to try to silence Parliament, following on from Carter Fuck trying to stop Trafigura we now have Withers LLP trying their hand at preventing MPs talking about things in Parliament. This time though it’s not about dumping toxic waste in the third world but local planning issues, the full story is over at The Guardian. The key par of the e-mail sent by Withers LLP though is this gem:
“”In order to settle this matter we, therefore, require an apology in respect of both the serious allegations plus payment of our client’s costs, a substantial payment to a charity of his choice and an undertaking not to repeat the allegations or any similar allegations, particularly in parliament.
“Your threat to make a statement in the House of Commons referring to our client’s alleged ‘spoiling tactics’ in this and other situations and that our client’s threatened proceedings amount to ‘bullying and an attempt to gag opponents’ is tantamount to blackmail.
“These allegations are untrue as our client is only trying to put right a serious wrong to his reputation. We note that you would only make these allegations under the cover of parliamentary privilege. My client objects very strongly to you doing this and would ensure, via other sources, that the House of Commons were fully appraised of the true situation and not misled.”
Which Withers LLP claim is not in any way an attempt to limit John Hemming MP’s parliamentary privilege. I guess he could say what he liked as long as he didn’t mention their client. On the bright side our glorious parliamentarians are actually at least thinking about doing something about it – if we’re really lucky they might accidentally become concerned about our freedoms whilst they’re at it. Maybe reform the odd bit of libel law (though at least the offence of criminal libel has gone.)
update Forgot to link to this first time round sorry.
