8 January 2001

Mrs Justice Butler-Sloss decided that the two killers of Jamie Bulger, will, upon being released from prison, have the benefit of a permanent injunction restricting the freedom of all forms of media from indentifying the two young men. There has been a news blackout already whilst the two boys were serving their sentence.

There has been considerable disquiet in the media about the judgment. It is clear that, in general, such restrictions on the freedom of the press are unwelcome and dangerous. The injunction was granted on the basis that the judge felt that the boys would face persecution, upon leaving prison if their identities were ever revealed. The press reports, and the comments to camera from friends and family of the victim, do suggest that the two killers would be at substantial and immediate risk of serious physical harm. I do not suggest that the Bulger family themselves would be involved, but the tone of remarks they hve made could easily leave others quite ready to act without further encouragement.

In those circumstances, however regrettably, the injunction is correctly granted. It cannot be right that newspapers can be allowed to conduct campaigns, which they know full well would lead to unlawful violence.

The two defendants were ten years old when they committed the crime. It was an appalling, terrifying series of actions. Nevertheless, I think it extraordinary that they cannot be forgiven for something done at that age. A child at ten bears no real relation to the same life at eighteen or twenty. There are continuous elements, but I just think it wrong to continue to punish them as adults for something done at that age.

The reality of the threat which they might face was demonstrated in a news story on the same day. Shortly before Christmas 2000, police in the Midlands arranged for images of their three 'most wanted' suspects to be projected onto a wall in the town centre. The images were 60 feet high. As at January 10th, two of the three suspects identified, have been found dead. One was stabbed to death. The second was found on the 10th January. In a statement which is remarkable for its obscene complacency, the police said that no obvious cause of death was known, but that they were not treating it as suspicious. The matter had been referred to the police complaints authority. The police set out to identify to the public three people they wished to interview. The three may have been suspected of very serious offences, and any evidence against them might eventually have proved to be strong. Nevertheless, the way in which was done seems utterly irresponsible. It is surely beyond coincidence that two of the three suspects should be dead within a matter of days.

Returning to the Venables and Thomson case, the case is interesting in law because of the way in which the judge appears to be extended the law of confidence. The law of confidence has always been one of the lesser intellectual property rights. In recent yearse, the absence of any law of privacy in England, has meant that claimants have had to turn increasingly to the law of confidence for assistance. That same law has been extended now through a working partnership with the Human Rights Act to create what is now a nascent right of privacy in UK law. I welcome it.

In effect, what the judge has done is to indicate that the human rights act gives the two young man a right to a life free of such a vengeance, and therefore the law of England should be interpreted, or in this case re-interpreted, to support that right. She has therefore chosen to extend the law of confidence to protect them.

The decision is also so extraordinary, and the profits to be made by the newspapers so great by keeping the story going, that I am sure that this decision will be appealed to the Court of Appeal and as necessary to the House of Lords. I must say that that, whatever the distressed to the parents of Jamie Bolger, the injunction should stand.