Gagging order hid UK political editor's affair

The respected BBC journalist felt uneasy using powerful 'super' injunction. Photo / AP

When the BBC's respected political editor was spotted in the regular company of a female journalist in the northern autumn of 2002, most assumed the relationship to be platonic.

Married for more than a decade and the father of three children, Andrew Marr's reputation as a cultured and incisive commentator did not include a label as one of Westminster's philanderers.

But when the woman, then single and a rising journalism star, went on maternity leave the following year and side-stepped colleagues' questions about who the father was, establishing her child's paternity became something of a parlour game among the journalists of the Parliamentary Lobby.

It was perhaps proof of Marr's lack of renown as a Lothario that no newspaper was in a position to publish a story revealing his affair, which had ended before the northern summer of 2003, until January 2008, when the child was approaching school age.

Around the same time that Marr admitted having had an affair to his wife, Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley, lawyers acting for the broadcaster, who is a former editor of the Independent, went to the High Court in London and obtained one of the first of the new "super injunctions".

In common with the same legal directions that currently prevent information about the sexual indiscretions of Premiership footballers, minor celebrities and a Hollywood actor entering the public domain, the order obtained by Marr against Associated Newspapers (publisher of the Daily Mail) went beyond the previous strictures of media injunctions.

As well as keeping secret the identity and alleged activities of the people involved, the "super" bit of the order meant its very existence could not be revealed either.

While the public at large duly knew nothing of Marr's adulterous relationship or his supposed love child, it was common currency in Westminster and spread rapidly across Fleet St.

For Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye and scarred veteran of many a court battle over revealing details that lay open public figures to charges of hypocrisy, the knowledge proved particularly unpalatable.

Hislop told the Independent yesterday: "Here was a political reporter, and not just any political reporter but the political editor of the BBC, whose job it was to challenge politicians about their failings, their lapses in judgment, including in their private lives.

"And he takes out an injunction via a High Court judge preventing anyone revealing just that sort of behaviour.

"To boot, he had also previously written an article stating that it was Parliament and not judges who make any privacy law."

The article in question was published by Marr when he was editor of the Independent in 1996 criticising what he called "intrusion for entertainment" and stating his support for privacy legislation.

He wrote: "Sniffing out double-standards and hypocrisy also means, on occasion, reporting the gap between what powerful people say and what they do in bed or behind closed doors ... There is no reason why MPs or journalists or anyone else in the public eye who are hypocrites shouldn't be exposed. But no one should be exposed simply because it is fun, or sells papers, or helps make an ideological point."

After the issuing of the super-injunction in January 2008, lawyers for the Eye began three years of legal trench warfare with Marr's lawyers, costing the satirical magazine "tens of thousands" in fees.

The counter-offensive, which Hislop said was driven by Marr's public standing, initially bore fruit in 2009 by obtaining an agreement that the "super" element of the injunction be removed, allowing the publication of the fact that the broadcaster had obtained a court order but prohibiting the revelation of details about why it was granted, including the identities of the woman journalist and her child.

In the meantime, bloggers and chatroom visitors exploited the frontier spirit of the internet to spread the name of Marr's former lover across cyberspace.

Last year, the saga took a further turn when it emerged that a DNA test had established that the BBC journalist was not the father of the child.

It was in this context and amid the furore about the increase in super-injunctions, that the Eye recently recommenced its efforts to have the gagging order lifted in its entirety, writing to Marr's lawyers pointing out that it had become untenable to prevent publication of the journalist's fathering of a child who had turned out not to be his.

With the threat of impending court action and further legal fees hanging over him, it is understood that Marr decided to withdraw the injunction after consulting his wife and family, granting an interview to the Daily Mail to break the news.

It is understood that his former lover learned of the removal of the court order on Tuesday.

Hislop said yesterday that Marr had conceded his conduct laid him open to accusations that he is a "stinking hypocrite".

For his part, the broadcaster insisted his legal manoeuvrings had achieved their purpose of keeping his marriage and family together.

He admitted to being "embarrassed" and "uneasy" about hiding behind an injunction.

"I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists," he told the Daily Mail. Marr said he thought the granting of injunctions "seems to be running out of control".

Index on Censorship - fighting what it sees as a growing threat to press freedom in the form of the use of injunctions - said it hoped that the Marr case would help to change public opinion on the issue.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, is due to report next month on the use of injunctions and super-injunctions having headed a committee that has been examining the matter for a year.

Keith Mathieson, a media lawyer, said the Marr injunction had been granted three years ago and that other older injunctions might now be tested by the media. "I suspect that there are some older injunctions that are in much stricter terms than injunctions granted in the last few months," he said. "The Andrew Marr case might prompt a reconsideration [by the media] of whether those injunctions should be revisited."

Keeping the lid on scandals

* A leading sportsman won a gagging order after learning the Sun planned to publish a story that he had cheated on his partner with two women. A judge said his private life could be "unlawfully exposed".

* A television presenter won an injunction to stop his ex-wife writing about their relationship and about claims that they had a sexual affair after he married again. Neither may be identified.

* A footballer won an injunction preventing the reporting of claims of a "sexual liaison, encounter or relationship" with an international female sports star, banning publication of "private or personal photographs".

* A world-famous married sportsman obtained a gagging order preventing publication of any suggestions that he had had an extramarital affair with a woman.

* A prominent figure associated with the alternative vote campaign was granted an order preventing disclosure of details of his sex life, as protecting his "rights and interests" outweighed "any public interest in reporting the proceedings".

* A man was granted an injunction in a "straightforward ... blackmail case" involving intimate photographs. The defendants agreed not to publish, but the judge said there was "clear risk" of that and upheld the gagging order.

- Independent