Mayor’s affair warrants public glare

An article revealing that Boris Johnson is the father of a three-year-old daughter following an extra-marital affair was in the public interest, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, and two appeal judges, held in AAA v Associated Newspapers [2013] EWCA Civ 554 that the Mayor of London’s “adulterous affair” was “a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering [Johnson’s] fitness for high public office”. 

The mother brought the privacy case in 2010, when the Daily Mail revealed the child’s paternity. She was awarded £15,000 damages at the High Court for breach of privacy by the publication of a photograph of the child, but was refused an injunction regarding the written content of the articles because the information was already in the public domain. The judge refused damages for this content because it was in the public interest, and because of the mother’s participation in a Tatler interview and photoshoot with her child, for an article which contained references to the paternity allegations.

Declining the appeal, the Master of the Rolls said it was in the public interest to name Johnson because it “went to the issue of recklessness and whether he was fit for public office”.

“The judge did not spell out what she meant by ‘recklessness’ as fully as she might have done,” he said. “But it is clear that she had in mind that the claimant was alleged to have been the second child conceived as a result of the father’s extramarital affairs. She may well also have accepted the defendant’s case that in his sexual activities the father was reckless about the feelings of others, particularly his wife and family.”

He concluded: “The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother’s partner and that the claimant, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father’s child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office.”

Keith Mathieson, a partner in RPC, who acted for Associated Newspapers, says: “The judgment is welcome confirmation that public figures and those connected with them cannot expect the law to keep information about them from the public just because it touches on their private lives. There are many ‘private’ facts about public figures which the public are entitled to know.”