Strict limits
It's been an interesting evening for lawyers - and a rather more frustrating one for journalists.
Lawyers representing the 91Èȱ¬ and lawyers representing the Attorney General spent about two hours locked away at the Royal Courts of Justice this evening. The decision came about 21:00 - and that decision was an injunction, sought by the Attorney General, preventing the 91Èȱ¬ from broadcasting an item it had planned to show tonight about the cash-for-honours investigation.
This will be baffling for the public, and I'm afraid I can't unbaffle many of you - there are strict limits on what we can say and report. But what we can say is that as far as we are aware, this is the first injunction that has been sought - and it is certainly the first successful one - in a long process of media reporting on this investigation.
A spokesman for the Attorney has said that the move was taken in response to a request from the Metropolitan Police, who were concerned that the disclosure of information contained in the story could have harmed their inquiry. The spokesman added that Lord Goldsmith - a member of the Cabinet - was acting independently of the Government in seeking the injunction.
Readers will know that there have been complaints from those involved in the investigation that there has been so much reporting - so much of what they refer to as speculation - during an ongoing police investigation. And while this injunction means that this particular news item cannot be broadcast, it's not yet clear what the implication is for any future broadcast.
PS: You may notice below that I've closed this post to comments. Sorry about that, but as I mentioned above, there are strict limits on what can be said.
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