UK Supreme Court Blog

EDITORS: Dan Tench, Emma Cross, Zainab Hodgson, Francesca Knight, James Warshaw and Natalie Haefner (CMS)
Hugh Tomlinson KC, Matthew Ryder KC, Dévante Gravesande-Smith and Rebecca Khan (Matrix)

UKSC Blog is a little behind the news (for which apologies to our readers).  The Guardian last week provided some more detail regarding the claimant in R (A) v B which was heard before the Supreme Court last month and in respect of which the judgment is awaited. According to The Guardian, the Claimant is suing the Evening Standard in a separate action over the revelation of his name which he says is confidential.   The story was also reported in the Press Gazette. The book is provisionally entitled “Siberia”.

Whether he can assert the confidentiality in his identity at the same time as publishing a book, as he intends to do, must be open to some doubt.  Earlier this year, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an injunction to an anonymous and prize winning blogger to prevent The Times from identifying him (a case close to UKSC Blog’s collective heart since its bloggers Hugh Tomlinson and Dan Tench acted for the unsuccessful Claimant) .  The judge said that blogging was “essentially a public rather than a private activity” and so his identity could not be confidential.  You might have thought that publishing a book would be an equally a public activity. 

But perhaps the position is different in relation to former MI5 agent authors.  Since the Guardian published its story last week, there has been a curious media silence n the issue.  We can only assume that Mr A’s legal proceedings were successful and that his anonymity has been properly preserved.  If there is anything more about this story which is (properly and lawfully) in the public domain we would be interested to know.