Parliamentary privilege explained

PARLIAMENTARY privilege gives MPs and members of the House of Lords full protection from the law in anything they say on the floor of either House.

The ancient right is meant to defend free speech among politicians and protect them from being gagged.

However, with the rise of super-injunctions preventing publication of any detail of an individual's private life including the fact that one has been taken out, it has also proved to be a means to circumnavigate decisions made by judges on what information can be made public.

Because MPs and Lords, when they are speaking in either House, are above prosecution it also means they cannot be sued.

The other result is that under absolute privilege governing the reporting of Parliament, anything that is said by them can be reported on in the press as long as that report does not go beyond the facts quoted in Parliament.

This has led political campaigners in the Commons and the Lords to use their position to challenge super-injunctions.

The Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming was the first to ask whether Sir Fred Goodwin was one of those who has a super-injunction and also asked whether it was true that he could not be identified as a banker under the terms of the injunction.

Then yesterday Lord Stoneham of Droxford went further and asked about the alleged affair with a colleague which the super- injunction supposedly covered.