PRIVACY LAW: ROYAL PREROGATIVE

The Queen has warned freelance photographers with powerful lenses who were planning to spend Christmas staking out the Sandringham estate in the hope of snatched shots of her family that their activities will no longer be tolerated. The move is widely seen as the first step in a more general toughening of the right to a zone of privacy, which the courts now tend to take as protected by the Human Rights Act. The decision, taken in consultation with a leading media lawyer, raises two points. First, that the right to privacy is now seen by some to be becoming a kind of trump card that wins whenever conflicting rights are balanced. Second, by demanding the same rights as celebrities, the Queen is drawing attention again to the distinction between her own royal status and that of the fleeting fame of the mere personality. Being a ruling sovereign, or sovereign in waiting, is quite different from being the rat-eating winner of a reality TV show. Perhaps there is a distinction in rights too.

It has been five years since another Euro-royal, Princess Caroline of Monaco, won the right in the European court of human rights not to be photographed, in a case that has come to be seen as the cornerstone of the now fast developing law of privacy. Even though the pictures about which she complained had been taken in public places, the court held that she was entitled to live a life off camera. Lawyers call it the red-carpet rule. Between that ruling in 2004 and England manager Fabio Capello's successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about photographs taken of him and his wife on holiday this year, famous people have learned to be pretty confident that the courts will be on their side in cases where the right to privacy encounters press freedom. Mr Justice Eady, the judge who most often sits in such cases, seemed to suggest last week that privacy was no longer in practice one among several rights of equal status, but was being treated as predominant.

The royal family may fear that, partly because it is now closed season for celebrities, it will become even more vulnerable to the paparazzi's attentions. It is impossible not to feel sympathy for anyone living in dread of the sudden snicker of the camera shutter, or the breakfast-time discovery of the fuzzy shot of a wardrobe malfunction. It is reasonable to insist on a right to privacy in normal circumstances. But royalty, or at least the top royals, enjoy extraordinary privileges and a unique status that lends a public interest to their off-duty lives. It seems unlikely that the Queen would finally go to court to protect her family's privacy, but such is the implication of this weekend's warning. Sandringham paparazzi may yet find themselves assuming a role of constitutional significance.