Why have the terms of the now-discharged Afghan super-injunction not been published?

There can be no good reason now for the substantial terms of the court order to be hidden (subject to redactions)

*SEE UPDATE AT END*

Now, here is a puzzle.

A couple of days ago, a raft of materials was published by the United Kingdom judiciary office in respect of what we can now call the Afghan super-injunction.

(A super-injunction is when the court order forbids even any public disclosure that the injunction exists.)

These materials were published on the judiciary.uk website - and one can tell care and attention was put into their publication.

There is even a prepared, four-page press summary.

But there is something which is not there, which perhaps should be there.

What is missing is the actual super-injunction court order itself.

There is a court order - the one which finally discharged the super-injunction - but not the super-injunction itself.

In the circumstances, this is a striking omission.

Indeed, it is so striking an omission given the other materials published, that the decision not to publish its terms (subject to any necessary redactions) must have been a deliberate decision by somebody.

*

There is a strong public interest in the actual terms of any super-injunction being published after it is discharged.

This is because the terms of such orders are so onerous - and the impact on other rights and freedoms so drastic - that once it is no longer in force then the public should be able to see the terms of such an order.

But in this case, there is an even stronger public interest.

It would appear that it was felt that the existence of this order meant parliamentarians could not even be told of the hidden data breach and subsequent policy-making and implementation.

It is also apparent that the original judge went further than even the government wanted in making this order a “super” injunction.

*

The judiciary press office has now been asked for a copy of the original order.

This request is being considered - and the request has not been rejected outright.

Of course, there may be details which should be redacted - but this was also the case with the published documents. Such redactions caused no practical problem.

But there cannot be any good reason why the substantial terms cannot be published, subject to redactions.

If the courts grant such super-injunctions - especially when the government (or other applicant) does not even ask for the injunction to be made a super-injunction - then it must be beholden on the courts to publish the substance of such orders once they are no longer in force.

UPDATE

The original ‘super-injunction’ court order has now been published by a media organisation, though it has not been published by the judiciary office. In these circumstances, I will await the judiciary office decision before linking to it.