A former Lord Chancellor rode to the rescue today of the High Court judge accused by a leading newspaper editor of creating a privacy law by the back door.

Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, has accused Mr Justice Eady of singlehandedly using human rights laws to curb the press’s freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places.

In a scathing attack, he said the “arrogant and amoral” judgments of the judge were “inexorably and insidiously” imposing a privacy law on British newspapers.

But Lord Falconer of Thoroton, one of the New Labour architects of the Human Rights Act 1998, said the judge was legitimately interpreting a law which had been passed by Parliament.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the Act had been introduced by elected MPs and pointed out that any decisions could be taken to the Court of Appeal.

“The judge is unquestionably applying the law as it comes from Parliament, as interpreted by the senior courts, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords.”

Mr Dacre, who is editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, also lambasted the “wretched” Human Rights Act in a speech to the Society of Editors annual conference in Bristol last night.

Mr Justice Eady has presided over a string of high-profile newspaper cases, including this year’s High Court action by the Formula One boss, Max Mosley, against the News of the World.

Mr Dacre said that in supporting Mr Mosley, the judge had “effectively ruled that it was perfectly acceptable for the multi-millionaire head of a multi-billion sport that is followed by countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable sexual depravity with him”.

Mr Dacre said: “Most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely 'unconventional’.

“Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way. Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter?”

He added: “But what is most worrying about [Mr] Justice Eady’s decisions is that he is ruling that – when it comes to morality – the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being ’amoral’.”

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