Newspaper lawyers are fighting a judge’s decision to block publication of an article about the teenage son of Meriden MP Caroline Spelman.
Express Newspapers is challenging an urgent injunction granted to the Environment Secretary preventing a story being published about her 17-year-old son Jonathan’s private life.
The Conservative MP, who is Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, originally applied for an anonymity injunction that would have prevented the identities of any of her family being revealed, but that application was denied.
But giving his reasons for making the order, Mr Justice Lindblom said the sensitive personal information, to which the intended story related, attracted a reasonable expectation of privacy.
He said it was a case of a minor facing the prospect of considerable scrutiny in a tabloid newspaper.
“There is an additional aspect to this story in that the claimant is the son of a Cabinet minister. Thus there is a political dimension which cannot be ignored,” he said.
Mrs Spelman, 53, has been MP for the constituency since 1997. The minister has three children including Jonathan, who attends a £10,000-a-year boarding school.
Her husband Mark, a senior executive at a management consultancy firm, has also stood as a Conservative candidate.
The couple are estimated to be worth £1.5 million and have homes in the West Midlands, London and Portugal.
