Before the hour is up, there is a brief mention of the issue of superinjunctions, the most recent fad amongst loose-belted premiership footballers, but the debate becomes particularly interesting when the panel discuss the manoeuvrings of a certain Mr Max Mosley, who is currently haranguing the European Court in Strasbourg in an attempt to finally ensnare that elusive beast, UK privacy law.  Mosley wants the current law amended to include a notice requirement, by which a public figure will be warned two days before a story on them goes to press, giving them time enough to prepare a case for a potential defamation.  Rather officious, considering that all Mosley really wanted was to frolic with the dominatrices in peace - ‘the respect for his or her family and private life', as the PCC has it.  Robertson condemns Mosley's campaign as a serious undermining of freedom of expression and instead, offers a solution of no prior restraint, basically advocating that claimants argue for libel and defamation after something's said, not before, therefore protecting the right of the press to say it in the first place.  In the meantime, journalists will be forced to tread extra carefully when saying anything about Mosley at all over the coming months.  That I considered very carefully how to put the words Mosley and dominatrices together in the same sentence is proof enough of the ‘chilling' impact of someone like Mosley on journalism - plus the knowledge that he could sue me to the Other World Kingdom come, and force me to bend to his privacy-pursuing will if the fancy took him.  For the time being, money will let you say and tart up what you say however you like, and it will take some inspired reworking of current UK law to dictate otherwise.

As an epilogue, it's slightly puzzling as to why the festival organisers decided to schedule this event before Jack Straw made his announcements on libel reform this week.  Not only has Straw agreed to crack down on ‘libel tourism' - the process whereby European libel cases are heard in British courts as a means of bankrupting the defendants, which Geoffrey Robertson QC alluded to - but he has also announced he will ‘consider' creating a statutory public interest defence which would go some way to protecting publications deemed messengers of the people.  Writing for the Guardian's online Comment is Free column in response, the Editor of Index on Censorship, Jo Glanville, attributed the Justice Secretary's thaw to the lobbying of campaigners like herself and Kampfner, but emphasised that the real victory was for civil liberties: ‘libel reform was not simply about protecting the interests of the media establishment, but about safeguarding the free speech of the public as a whole.' 

Of course, who decides which publications are free to espouse what in the public interest will soon expose whether this is gestural on Straw's part, a last stab perhaps at securing the ‘liberal' electorate before polling day.   But it would be interesting to hear the same debate again this weekend at the Oxford Literary festival, in light of these break-in-the-cloud changes to the law governing what we can say, and our rights to defend it.