Millionaire Tory MP Zac Goldsmith insists he was right to take out a super-injunction after private emails were hacked

Millionaire Tory MP Zac Goldsmith insists he was right to take out a super-injunction after private emails were hacked and passed to newspapers.

The Richmond Park MP said the affair cost him an "absolute fortune", and called for reform to make it possible for the less wealthy to protect their privacy.

But he accepted Parliament was unlikely to act - judging that most MPs were too scared of the consequences of taking on the press.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, which is conducting an inquiry into the issue of privacy, Mr Goldsmith explained the circumstances under which he, his then wife Sheherazade and his sister Jemima Khan obtained a super-injunction in 2008. The order was downgraded to a standard injunction earlier this year, allowing its existence to be made public.

Mr Goldsmith told PM his case was "probably the best example of why a super-injunction has merit".

"I discovered late at night that hundreds of emails had been accessed illegally from my wife's - my now ex-wife's - email account and also from my sister's email account," he explained.

"I had no idea which emails had been accessed. I simply know that they had been sent to editors of newspapers around the country, purporting to come from me and/or my ex-wife, which was not the case.

"We didn't know who had done this or why it was being done and I sought very quickly to close down any possibility that these emails would be published, because they were clearly illegally accessed.

"There was no great revelation in any of them, they were simply private emails and discussions and exchanges between members of a family."

PA