The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations. (The Guardian)

Since when did we stop living in a democracy, where free speech and a free media are guaranteed? This should not be allowed to happen.

As much as I may disagree with the editorial line of the Guardian, it must have the right to report on the activities of members of parliament and of parliamentary undertakings. If we don’t have a free media, we don’t have a real democracy.

All forms of media must have the right to report on parliamentary activities; they are deciding things for us, the people, as our representatives whether elected as MPs or not as hereditary or life peers. Parliament may be sovereign, but it is subserviant to the people. We have a right to know what questions are asked in Parliament and by whom, and the only way 99.9% of us are ever going to know about it is through the media.

They must have the right to report pretty much everything. Otherwise we don’t have free speech. And without that, we don’t have democracy.

The blogosphere, however, refuses to be gagged. This is the question the Guardian is gagged from reporting:

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This is why the blogosphere exists. To expose the things that the dead tree press cannot or will not. To make the games played by lawyers like Carter-Ruck backfire spectactuarly by spreading news further, wider, and higher than it ever would have done if they hadn’t intervened.