The Guardian newspaper and libel lawyers Carter-Ruck were wrong to conclude that a ‘super-injunction’ could prevent reporting on parliamentary proceedings, justice minister Bridget Prentice said yesterday.

Last week Carter-Ruck was accused of trying to gag parliament by preventing the Guardian from reporting on a parliamentary question tabled by Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme. The question named Carter-Ruck’s client, trading company Trafigura. Carter-Ruck said at the time that ‘neither Trafigura nor Carter-Ruck has at any time improperly sought to stifle or restrict debate in parliament or the reporting thereof.

In a debate yesterday afternoon, Prentice said that both parties’ lawyers had wrongly concluded that Carter-Ruck’s injunction was wide enough to prevent the Guardian publishing details of the question.

Prentice said that she will ask justice secretary Jack Straw and lord chief justice Lord Judge whether additional guidance on injunctions should be sent to the judiciary. David Heath, Liberal Democrat MP for Somerton and Frome, suggested that every injunction in the High Court and every secret injunction should be lodged in a repository, so that their numbers are known.

Farrelly said in the debate: ‘Aggressive lawyers like Carter-Ruck are given too much freedom by the courts. In this case we don’t have the rule of law, we have the rule of lawyers.’

In the debate, MPs acknowledged that none of Carter-Ruck’s injunctions stated directly that reports of parliamentary proceedings were intended to be within their scope, but agreed that the injunctions were wide-ranging enough to have had that effect.

Shadow justice minister Henry Bellingham said: ‘Trafigura had every right to come to our country and go before the courts and instruct a law firm. Carter-Ruck had every right to use the procedures that were in place.’