Daily Mail Comment: A good day for the grubby and corrupt

So that's all right then. It is perfectly acceptable for the multi-millionaire head of a multi-billion pound sport that influences countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable depravity.

That, in effect, is the verdict of Mr Justice Eady, who ruled yesterday that fascist leader's son Max Mosley's privacy had been invaded by a newspaper and that there was no public interest in exposing what he was doing.

Firstly, let it be said that the Daily Mail holds no torch for the News of the World.

It is not the kind of paper that most of our readers would have in their homes.

But it is important to remember that it has broken many significant stories about corruption and wrong-doing over the years and that the opinions of its millions of readers carry no less weight than the (much smaller) readership of papers such as the Guardian.

And, although the Mail lays itself open to the accusation of special pleading, we sincerely believe the principle involved transcends any narrow commercial interest.

For what Mr Justice Eady's decision effectively means is that the law in Britain is now morally neutral.

As he says: 'There is a strong argument for not holding forth about adultery.'

This from the same judge who once ruled that a man whose wife had an affair with a sporting celebrity should not be allowed to speak to the press, meaning the married celebrity's right to privacy let him sweep his affair under the carpet.

Marriage is the basis of a civilised society and the judge's ruling effectively undermined its status, by removing any idea of shame from the act of adultery.

Indeed it effectively insisted that the celebrity's right to privacy mattered more than a young man's determination to tell the truth about his own marriage.

Such decisions have huge implications - in the Mosley case, the judge is effectively arguing that there is no public interest in revealing a public figure's involvement in acts of the utmost depravity.

What the judge loftily calls the 'new rights-based jurisprudence' effectively rules out the idea there is any such thing as public standards of morality and decency.

Yet, surely, that concept is the very basis of the common law of this land.

His argument is also intellectually inconsistent. How can he insist that 'behaviour of this kind is in this context merely neutral', and then argue that Mr Mosley's wife was distraught and his own life ruined by the revelations?

But perhaps most worrying of all is the fact that a single judge is creating a privacy law.

Although politicians have often considered the arguments for one, they have been unable to find a way to protect the vulnerable, while leaving those who rule our country and order our lives open to proper scrutiny.

If Gordon Brown wanted to pass a privacy law, he would have to set out a Bill, argue his case in both Houses of Parliament, withstand public scrutiny, and win a series of votes.

Now, thanks to the wretched Human Rights Act, a judge can do the same with the stroke of his pen.

Thanks to Mr Justice Eady, the rich and powerful who are hiding something grubby or corrupt from the public can tonight sleep more soundly in their beds.

To reverse the damage, first of all the judicial system must reconsider the good sense of putting one single judge in charge of most privacy cases.

But really it's up the politicians to reclaim for themselves the power that they gave up when they introduced the Human Rights Act.

Until they repeal it, press freedom and parliamentary democracy in Britain are significantly diminished.