Exclusive: Lawyers order Parliament to stop publishing super-injunction document

Archerfield Partners, a firm of solicitors acting for the ex-wife of an unnamed Asian head of state, made a series of threats against the joint Parliamentary Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, made up of 26 MPs and peers.

The firm asked the MPs and peers to take down a submission from the committee’s website “as a matter of extreme urgency” and warned that its continued publication on the committee’s website would have diplomatic repercussions.

The attempt to bully the committee threatens to undermine the supremacy of Parliament and follows widespread criticism of British courts for injuncting the publication of information.

The 13-page submission from Channel Islands businessman Mark Burby claimed he had been gagged by the “ex-spouse of an Asian head of state” in a super-injunction in 2009.

He said the “Asian head of state” was a “substantial” backer of al-Qaeda, and had advance warning of the suicide bombings on London’s transport system in 2005.

The ex-wife “and her solicitors have boasted to me and others that she 'owns’ the courts in England and Wales and the Government”, he said.

Mr Burby alleged the unnamed ex–spouse, whom he described as one of the wealthiest women in the world, had a sexual relationship “with one of her two solicitors”, as well as two other men, one of which resulted in her having an abortion.

The law firm’s letter, which was leaked to The Daily Telegraph, was sent yesterday to every member of the 26-strong committee, as well as Attorney General Dominic Grieve, a High Court judge and John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons.

It said: “We have no doubt that should the committee continue to publish then the injunction will be fully breached and further harm done to our client.

“There is a great deal more damage which could be caused to her, and which could be averted by the timely removal of this material. We hope that the committee will appreciate the serious injustice being done.

“We also hope that the committee will appreciate the diplomatic repercussions of continuing to publish Mr Burby’s untested allegations about a friendly head of state in these circumstances.”

The same law firm also threatened The Daily Telegraph with an injunction ahead of its reporting of Mr Burby’s submission on Friday night. No application was made however, and the report ran in Saturday's Daily Telegraph.

Last night, the document at the centre of the order was still available on the Parliamentary website and could be read by anyone in the world.

John Whittingdale MP, the committee’s chairman, said last week that Mr Burby’s evidence was an “interesting and relevant submission”, given that his committee had been told by judges that the super-injunctions were now “time-limited”.

The last known attempt to gag the reporting of Parliament was in 2009, when Trafigura, an oil firm, attempted through its lawyers to prevent newspapers from publishing a parliamentary question.

Trafigura had obtained a gagging order preventing any details of the question posed by Paul Farrelly MP being made public.

However, there was enough information publicly available for tens of thousands of Twitter users to work out the focus of the injunction and post messages of protest identifying the parties involved.

The attempt to gag the reporting of the Parliamentary Question was abandoned, after an uprising by users of the micro-blogging website Twitter.

MPs have broken several other injunctions by naming public figures such as Ryan Giggs, the Manchester United footballer, and Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of RBS, who had used the courts to suppress information about their personal lives.

The committee is made up of both MPs and Lords and is considering the system of privacy and injunctions.

They were told earlier this year by Ken Clarke, the Lord Chancellor, that super-injunctions “are now being granted only for very short periods” and “you cannot have just long-running secret litigation”.