A reporter from the Bucks Free Press has successfully challenged an application for a section 39 order that would have made reporting of a case of a mother who had failed to send her daughter to school impossible.

Solicitors at Wycombe Magistrates Court had claimed that the order should be granted to protect a 12-year-old’s right to privacy enshrined in the Human Right’s Act.

They argued case law had decided that the right to privacy outweighed considerations of freedom of expression, and quoted examples which included Mary Bell’s recent successful case for anonymity.

But reporter James Clements successfully argued that such an order would not be in the public interest.

He said: “What I tried to get over was that there was a world of difference between prolonged and intense media interest and a local newspaper producing a transient and localised report.”

James’s argument was supported by Bucks County Council solicitors who wanted to bring the case to prominence, and magistrates agreed.

They said: “The decision we have made is that the interest of the public outweighs the rights of the individual.”

They added that non-school attendance is linked to youth crime although there was no evidence of it in this case.

Afterwards James said: “I was a bit surprised and I was not expecting an order on a case such as this.

“They are by no means automatic in such cases and the magistrates made clear they would decide on a case by case basis.

“Merely because a case is going ahead does not mean that a section 39 order should apply.

“The irony is that after the case we spoke to the mother who told us that we was happy to have the case reported because she felt she had been treated badly by the authorities.”

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