In rejecting Niema Ash's application for permission to appeal against a controversial privacy ruling, the House of Lords has dealt a severe blow to freedom of expression. Of course, seen from the opposite position, it has cemented the legal protection of individual privacy (despite there being no specific privacy law).
Ash was seeking to appeal against against the Court of Appeal decision in December which had upheld Canadian singer Loreena McKennitt's right to "the human dignity of privacy". She had objected to passages in Ash's biography, Travels with Loreena McKennitt: My Life as a Friend.
The Lords decided that Ash's petition for appeal "did not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance." That, of course, is the narrow legal ruling relating to this specific case. What is at issue though is the much broader matter of both press freedom and freedom of expression in general.
This case, which looks to have reached its conclusion at last, still leaves the whole business of where to draw the line between a right to privacy and a right to report in confusion.
