The moment a Lib Dem MP became my hero (well, briefly…)

To most onlookers, the words of Birmingham Yardley Member of Parliament John Hemming may not have meant an awful lot.

“In a secret hearing this week Fred Goodwin has obtained a super-injunction preventing him being identified as a banker,” he said in Parliament.?”Will the Government have a debate or a statement on the issue of freedom of speech and whether there is one law for the rich, such as Fred Goodwin, and another law for the poor?”

However, the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament was using Parliamentary Privilege (in its correct context) to out Sir Fred’s super-injunction, knowing that he could not be hauled before the courts as a result.

For those of you who need refreshing, Sir Fred Godwin was the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland when it went belly-up and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer.

In response to (almost) destroying the bank, he was awarded a ?3m pay-off and a ?700,000 per year pension, though he found it in his heart to reduce it by ?200,000 per year when he realised the taxpayers were not happy about bankrolling his farewell.

Now, though, it has been revealed (thanks to Mr Hemming) that Sir Fred had obtained an injunction that prevented information about him from being published.

Indeed, the court order was so strict that it could not even be revealed that the injunction had been granted to a banker.

But, following the Trafigura incident in 2009, when it was agreed that it was inconceivable that an elected representative could make a statement in an open session of Parliament, which any member of the public could attend, watch or listen, yet that same statement could not be reported in the media, Mr Hemming outed Sir Fred in seeking a debate on the increasingly popular “super-injunctions”.

Mr Hemming won the Birmingham Yardley seat from Labour on the fourth attempt in 2005, taking over from retiring Estelle Morris. In 1983 and 1987, the seat had been held by the Conservatives with the Lib Dems?languishing well behind?in third place. But when Mrs Morris (now Baroness Morris of Yardley) won the seat with a wafer-thin majority of 162 in 1992, Mr Hemming managed to turn a 16-point gap between second- and third-placed candidates to just over four points, though still with Mr Hemming in third place.

Undeterred, he pushed the Conservatives’ Anne Jobson into a convincing third place in 1997 (though probably with some help from the national situation), holding a 15-point lead over his third-placed rival, but sitting 14 points behind Estelle Morris. He closed the gap in 2001, trailing by just seven points, and holding a 25-point lead over third-placed Conservative Barrie Roberts.

He won the seat in 2005 with over 46% of the vote, but dropped to a 40% vote share in 2010, when both the Liberal Democrats and Labour lost support equally to the Conservatives’ Meirion Jenkins.

In short, John Hemming is a man who does not give up. He stands in a corner and fights to the death. He became famous last December when he defended his support for the tuition fee rises and voted in favour of the rises after a student occupation of his constituency office in Coventry Road, Yardley.

In choosing to fight his latest battle against the over-used and, in my opinion, often too freely granted super-injunctions, John Hemming has become my hero for the day.

Only briefly, mind you.

I’m not about to become his new best friend if I move into his patch in August…