Ashworth and Ackroyd (page 148)

On page 154, I say that that the Court of Appeal sent a clear message to Ashworth Hospital: “back off, or risk losing the case”. They did not back off. Today, they lost their case.
Ashworth was ordered to pay the legal costs incurred by Robin Ackroyd, the reporter whose sources the hospital was seeking to identify.
The National Union of Journalists, which supported Ackroyd in court, said the judgment had maintained a fundamental principle: “that there is a strong public interest in upholding journalists’ right not to reveal their sources”.
Mr Justice Tugendhat said that the keeping patients’ records from unauthorised disclosure was “of the highest importance”. On the other hand, freedom of expression in a case like this would attract “the highest protection”.
Since the end of 1999, when information was published in the Daily Mirror about Brady’s treatment while on hunger strike, there had been no further disclosures.
“Considering the facts as I now do…” the judge concluded, “it has not been convincingly established that there is today a pressing social need that the sources should be identified.”
He added that to require Ackroyd to disclose his sources “would not be proportionate to the pursuit of the hospital’s legitimate aim to seek redress against the source, given the vital public interest in the protection of a journalist’s source”.
The judge stressed that nothing he had said should be taken “as providing any encouragement to those who would disclose medical records”.
He said he made his decision in the light of the passage of time and because of new evidence indicating that the source did not act for money. The extent of the material leaked by the source was more limited than previously understood.
“In addition, the stance of Ian Brady has changed, and I have not found that the disclosure was made without his consent,” said the judge.
“I have heard the evidence of Mr Ackroyd and have concluded that he was a responsible journalist whose purpose was to act in the public interest.”
Speaking after the judgment, Ackroyd said that, odious though Brady’s crimes had been, the murderer had been mishandled and mistreated in hospital.
“This was, and still is a matter of public interest, not least because it led to the longest-running hunger strike in British penal history,” he added.
Ackroyd said he had been vindicated, though Ashworth Hospital Authority’s six-year legal battle to discover his sources had “cast a shadow” over his personal and professional life.
“The authority’s pursuit of me has been relentless and entirely unamusing,” he said. “This is the third time the case has been before the High Court. The matter should now be at an end and yet it seems destined to go to the Court of Appeal for a third time. I’ve read Kafka. I really must get a copy of Bleak House.”
Mersey Care NHS Trust, which now runs the secure hospital, said later that the confidentiality of patient notes was an underlying principle of the NHS and the breach of confidentiality in this case was the first and only one of its kind at Ashworth.
The Trust welcomed the judge’s “ringing endorsement” of the maintenance of patient confidentiality.

Posted at February 7, 2006 02:00 PM