Democracy, free speech and TV: the case of the BBC and the ProLife Alliance

Freedom of political expression generally receives a very high degree of protection from the courts. Political expression in the UK’s broadcast media, by comparison, receives far lower levels of protection. This has been graphically demonstrated recently by the decision of the House of Lords in R (on the application of the ProLife Alliance) v BBC in which a majority of their Lordships upheld a refusal by the BBC and independent broadcasters to transmit a Party Election Broadcast by the ProLife Alliance, depicting an abortion, prior to the 2001 general election. It will be argued that this decision is inconsistent with the jurisprudence underlying the free speech right and with the Article 10 case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In particular it will be argued that the court failed to have due regard to the type of expression at issue in the case resulting in an inadequate assessment of the proportionality of the restriction