The Scottish press have a history of scoops on stories which have been the subject of gagging orders in English courts
Scottish newspapers have a history of serving scoops on stories which have been the subject of gagging orders passed by English courts. This has been possible because of Scotland's distinct legal system.
An injunction served in London under English law is not binding north of the border. Anyone wanting to prevent the whole of the British media from reporting on a story needs to get separate injunctions, or in Scottish law, an interdict, in all jurisdictions.
In what was perhaps the most celebrated case, in 1988 the Scotsman – under editor Magnus Linklater – broke an injunction by publishing extracts from Inside Intelligence, the memoirs of former MI6 spy Anthony Cavendish. The govenment took the paper to court, and lost. In the House of Lords appeal, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle recounted how Cavendish distributed some 257 copies of his book as "Christmas cards". One of these Christmas cards was sent to a Scottish MP who passed it to the editor of the Scotsman. Though the case against the paper was quashed, interim injunctions were granted against the Observer and the Sunday Times publishing material supplied by Cavendish "in breach of his duty of confidence owed to the Crown." These injunctions were later restricted to selected "blue-pencilled parts" of the book, and, despite further proceedings by the Crown against the Scotsman and its editor, these were finally quashed.
In the same decade, and with another spook's memoirs, as the government in Westminster was fighting to keep Peter Wright's Spycatcher out of print in the UK, the West Highland Free Press audaciously published extracts from the memoirs of the former MI5 agent in Gaelic.
On New Year's Eve 1997, the then British home secretary Jack Straw's 17-year-old son was found in possession of drugs. Initially, an English court passed an order that prevented the press from revealing the boy's name. But after a Scottish newspaper disclosed the identity of Straw's son, the English injunction was lifted.