A welcome blow for freedom of speech

SLOWLY but surely, little by little, the veil of secrecy that once completely covered and protected the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, is being lifted.

Yesterday an order granting anonymity to Sir Fred, a so-called super-injunction, was lifted after a peer used parliamentary privilege in the House of Lords to make allegations about the former banker.

Lord Stoneham told the Upper House that every taxpayer had an interest in RBS and asked whether it could be right for a super-injunction to hide an alleged relationship between Sir Fred and a senior colleague which, the peer claimed, would be a serious breach of the Edinburgh-based bank's corporate governance rules and would not be known to City regulator the FSA.

Sir Fred's private life is his own business but it is in the public interest to know if this alleged affair influenced his stewardship of the bank, which had to be bailed out with billions of pounds of tax-payers' money. We can only judge that if the full facts, some of which have yet to emerge, are known. Lord Stoneham's action strikes a further and welcome blow against super-injunctions, which have been used by only the rich and powerful to curb freedom of speech and freedom to publish.