Andrew Marr reveals he took out superinjunction
BBC presenter says he feels 'uneasy' about high court order, which he won to protect his family's privacy
Andrew Marr has revealed he took out a superinjunction to protect his family's privacy. Photograph: Yui Mok/PABBC presenter Andrew Marr said on Tuesday he had taken out a superinjunction to protect his family's privacy.
Marr said he felt "uneasy" and "embarrassed" about the use of the high court injunction, which he won in 2008 to suppress reports of an extramarital affair.
He said the use of the so-called rich man's gag "seems to be running out of control" and said he would no longer seek to prevent the story being published.
Marr's decision to go public comes after Private Eye launched a challenge to the injunction last week.
"I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists. Am I embarrassed by it? Yes. Am I uneasy about it? Yes," Marr told the Daily Mail.
But he added: "I also had my own family to think about, and I believed this story was nobody else's business.
"I still believe there was, under those circumstances, no legitimate public interest in it."
Marr, the BBC's former political editor who now presents a Sunday morning politics show on BBC1, said that the use of injunctions seemed to be "running out of control".
"There is a case for privacy in a limited number of difficult situations, but then you have to move on. They shouldn't be forever and a proper sense of proportion is required," he added.
His comments come amid a growing disquiet at the use by celebrities of injunctions and so-called superinjunctions to prevent media reporting of their private lives.
At least 30 superinjunctions currently appear to be in place, including one relating to allegations of water pollution and another to a right-to-die case.
Private Eye editor Ian Hislop said he had challenged the Marr injunction last week.
"In a sense he led the pack because he was the most respectable of the people putting super-injunctions in," Hislop told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"But the principle remains wrong, which he knows, articulated once and should still believe."
Hislop said he thought the super-injunction had been "a touch hypocritical" because Mr Marr had written an article saying that Parliament - not judges - should determine privacy law.
"As a leading BBC interviewer who is asking politicians about failures in judgment, failures in their private lives, inconsistencies, it was pretty rank of him to have an injunction while working as an active journalist," he added.
"I think he knows that and I'm very pleased he's come forward and said 'I can no longer do this'."
Hislop said Private Eye did not have the money to challenge all super-injunctions, adding: "Here was a case that was quite important and should be challenged so I wasted the money challenging it."
Last week David Cameron sounded a warning about the way judges are creating a new law of privacy "rather than parliament".
Cameron said: "The judges are creating a sort of privacy law whereas what ought to happen in a parliamentary democracy is parliament, which you elect and put there, should decide how much protection do we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press and the rest of it.
"So I am a little uneasy about what is happening."
The prime minister's remarks came after high court judge Mr Justice Eady issued what was thought to be the first order permanently blocking publication of material relating to an individual's private life.
In another high court hearing, a married Premier League footballer who reportedly had an affair with Big Brother star Imogen Thomas won the right to maintain his anonymity.
Comment: Andrew Marr could have at least also admitted that he was trying to protect his reputation. I recall Angus Deayton being sacked from Have I Got News For You because he was involved in an affair...
This is worth a listen.
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