Devizes MP Claire Perry is facing a legal challenge from the political blogger she accused of ‘sponsoring’ the hacking of her website. Hackers had inserted a link on the site to one showing ‘explicit adult photographs’ – or pornography.
Blogger Guido Fawkes – aka Paul Staines – included a screen grab from Mrs Perry’s site showing how the hacking appeared. Mrs Perry accused Guido Fawkes of ‘sponsoring’ the hacking of her website.
She took to Twitter to apologise to people who had come across the link. Just hours earlier she had been tweeting praise for David Cameron’s moves to block internet access to images of child abuse and pornography.
Mrs Perry, who is the Prime Minister’s special adviser on ‘preventing the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood’, has been championing the introduction of internet filters to protect children from seeing online pornography.
On Wednesday (July 24), Guido Fawkes ran a poll asking his readers whether he should sue Mrs Perry for making her allegation. Eighty-six per cent of respondents – or about 2,400 readers – said he should sue her. And as she had not removed the allegation from her Twitter account, he has said he has instructed solicitors to send a legal warning to the MP.
Paul Staines said: “If the readers say to sue by noon and she hasn’t taken it down we will send her a lawyer’s letter. I have an aversion to suing people but the lawyers say it’s open and shut. She’s been asked to take it down.”
As of noon on Thursday (July 25) Mrs Perry had not removed the allegation from Twitter. And she has not been tweeting since Tuesday evening.
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