Paul Dacre savages Justice Eady

Paul Dacre (pictured), the Daily Mail's editor-in-chief, has rounded on Justice David Eady, the judge who found in favour of Max Mosley in a case the F1 boss brought against a Sunday tabloid that had revealed, wrongly, that a sado-masochistic orgy he took part in was Nazi-themed.

Dacre made his attack in a speech at the opening of the annual Society of Editors conference in Bristol last night, lambasting the judge for supporting a privacy law in the light of the trial. He said: "This law is not coming from parliament. No, that would smack of democracy, but from the arrogant and amoral judgments, words I use very deliberately, of one man. I am referring, of course, to Justice David Eady who has, again and again, under the privacy clause of the Human Rights Act, found against newspapers and their age-old freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places."

Dacre highlighted the successful action brought against the News of the World by Mosley for invasion of privacy earlier this year, which ended with Mosley being awarded punitive damages of £60,000 against the paper. Said Dacre: "[Eady] in effect ruled that it is perfectly acceptable for the multimillionaire head of a multibillion sport that is followed by countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable sexual depravity with him."

Dacre added: "He [Eady] found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a 'sick Nazi orgy' as the News of the World claimed, though for the life of me that seems an almost surreally pedantic logic as some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform. Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Eady. To him such behaviour was merely 'unconventional'."