Dacre attacks judge over privacy

Mr Dacre said the "arrogant and amoral" judgments of Mr Justice Eady were "inexorably and insidiously" imposing a privacy law on the British Press.

Mr Justice Eady had used the privacy clause of the Human Rights Act against newspapers and their age-old freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places, Mr Dacre told the Society of Editors annual conference in Bristol.

"If Gordon Brown wanted to force a privacy law, he would have to set out a bill, arguing his case in both Houses of Parliament, withstand public scrutiny and win a series of votes," Mr Dacre said.

"Now, thanks to the wretched Human Rights Act, one judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do the same with a stroke of his pen."

In the case brought by Formula One boss Max Mosley against the News of the World, Mr Justice Eady "effectively ruled that it was perfectly acceptable for the multi-millionaire head of a multi-billion sport that is followed by countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable sexual depravity with him".

"Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely 'unconventional'."

He added: "But what is most worrying about Justice Eady's decisions is that he is ruling that - when it comes to morality - the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being 'amoral'."

Mr Dacre said that when it came to suppressing media freedom Mr Justic Eady was seemingly ubiquitous, adding: "Surely the greatest scandal is that while London boasts scores of eminent judges, one man is given a virtual monopoly of all cases against the media enabling him to bring in a privacy law by the back door".