Ryan Giggs should have kept his money in his pocket, says PR man Max Clifford

PR guru Max Clifford said that, ironically, if the footballer had not taken out the injunction, then probably no-one would have known about the relationship.

He said Ms Thomas had never intended to sell her story.

The law on injunctions has been thrown into further turmoil after Giggs was named as the married star at the centre of a controversial privacy case.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to name him as the Premier League player who took out an injunction over his relationship with Ms Thomas.

Mr Clifford, who is due to see Ms Thomas at his London office today to discuss her next step, told ITV1’s Daybreak programme: “I will see what she wants to do but, because of the previous conversations, I know that she never had any intention of selling her story.

“She came to me because she wanted to make sure the story didn’t come out, and I told her ‘Phone Ryan Giggs and warn him that The Sun are looking into this, and knocking on your door, because if you don’t talk, and Ryan Giggs doesn’t talk, no-one will know’.

“And that’s the irony of it - if Ryan Giggs hadn’t taken out a super-injunction, probably we wouldn’t know what had been going on. It’s only because of that, and of course the fact that, in that super-injunction that he got to protect his privacy and that of his family, he named Imogen, that the whole thing started down that trail that led to it coming out in Parliament yesterday.

“If he hadn’t taken out a super-injunction, no-one would probably have known about this relationship.”

Mr Clifford said it was “easy” for him to phone a lawyer to take out injunctions to stop newspaper stories coming out about his clients.

“It doesn’t make it right, though, because it’s only for rich people.”

Asked if the other 80 people with injunctions should be worried, he said: “I think all the ones I’m aware of - and that’s probably most of them - are worried, because people around them know, so with what’s going on, there’s a chance that it will come out.

“But hopefully the days of the super-injunction are numbered, because it’s only a law that protects the rich.”

Mr Clifford has already said that Ms Thomas, 28, is “extremely upset about the whole thing” and remains bound by a court order which prevents her from defending herself.

“She finds herself in an impossible situation where everybody in the country can discuss what has happened except her,” he has said.

“She wants the opportunity to defend herself against the accusations that have been put out about her.”

When the case went to the High Court for a private hearing last week, Mr Justice Eady said evidence “appeared strongly to suggest” that the footballer was “being blackmailed”.

Outside court, Ms Thomas said she was “outraged” at being accused of blackmail and added: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Speaking in the Commons, Mr Hemming said: “With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter, it is obviously impracticable to imprison them all.”

Commons Speaker John Bercow immediately took the MP to task over his comments, telling him that “occasions such as this are occasions for raising the issues of principle involved, not seeking to flout for whatever purpose”.

Earlier yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron said that banning newspapers from naming such stars while the information was widely available was both “unsustainable” and “unfair”.

He has written to the chairman of the Commons Justice Committee, Sir Alan Beith, and the chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, John Whittingdale, asking them to convene a joint committee of both Houses to consider the issues of privacy and the use of injunctions.

Earlier, Mr Whittingdale told MPs: “You would virtually have to be living in an igloo not to know the identity of at least one Premier League footballer who has obtained an injunction.

“The actions by thousands of people of posting details of this on Twitter are in danger of making the law look an ass.”

The row came to a head after the Sunday Herald newspaper in Scotland published a thinly-concealed front page photograph of Giggs, showing his face with his eyes blacked out and the word “censored” written over the top.

Mr Hemming explained that he decided to name Giggs to prevent people being jailed for gossiping about him.

The Birmingham Yardley MP said in a statement: “When he sued Twitter, it was clear what he was doing. He was going after the ordinary people who have been gossiping about him on Twitter.

“To prosecute someone for contempt of court is quite a serious step. It comes with an up to two-year jail sentence.

“I have spoken to people of ordinary means who have received these injunctions.

“I have also spoken to people who faced jailing in secret hearings and who were subject to anonymity orders themselves.

“This is a really oppressive system.”

He said Giggs should be “held to account”, adding: “Before he sued Twitter, there was no public interest in naming him.

“However, when his lawyers decided to go on a ‘search and destroy’ against the ordinary people who gossip on Twitter, he had taken a step that should not be done anonymously.

“In Burma they jail people for criticising the king and people here are up in arms.

“Here they threaten to jail people for criticising a footballer and the lawyers say I should not name the footballer.”

Last week, Mr Hemming said a review by senior judges of the use of injunctions was an “attempt to gag the media in discussing the proceedings in Parliament” and was “a retrograde step”.

Asked whether the Prime Minister thought Mr Hemming was wrong to use parliamentary privilege to name the footballer at the centre of the row, Mr Cameron’s official spokesman said: “I don’t think it is for the Government to comment on individual cases.”

The Sun newspaper challenged the order twice yesterday, saying it was time for courts to “do the right thing”.

But, rejecting the newspaper’s latest attempt to lift the anonymity order, Mr Justice Tugendhat said it was important to remember that the law of privacy was not concerned solely with secret information, but also with intrusion and harassment.

The name “has been repeated thousands of times on the internet, and News Group Newspapers now want to join in”, the judge said.

There was no immediate comment from Manchester United.

The developments in the row over secrecy in the courts will increase tensions between Parliament and the judiciary and comes after two of the most senior judges in England and Wales criticised politicians who use their positions to deliberately flout court orders last week.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge and Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls and the most senior civil judge, warned that the law surrounding reports of comments in Parliament which intentionally contravene court orders was “astonishingly unclear”.

The judges insisted that by granting injunctions they were only following the laws as set down by Parliament, which was aware of the consequences of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.