the times | Saturday December 4 2021 5
News
Boris Johnson has strongly defended
press freedom as No 10 said it would
“carefully” examine the Duchess of
Sussex’s latest victory in her legal fight
with the Mail on Sunday.
The Court of Appeal upheld the
decision by a High Court judge that the
duchess “had a reasonable expectation
of privacy” after the newspaper
published much of the contents of a
letter she wrote to Thomas Markle, her
estranged father. Associated News-
papers Ltd (ANL), owner of the Mail on
Sunday, is considering taking the case to
A mother left disabled by her son’s knife
attack has told his murder trial that he
came into the kitchen with “wild eyes”
before stabbing her and killing her
partner.
Anne Schreiber, 66, said that she had
nightmares about her son, Thomas, 35,
and that two years before the killing he
had attacked her while she was driving
them home from a party.
She said that she and her husband
David, an alcoholic from whom she
separated in 2002 and who died in 2013,
had “spoilt” their son by not addressing
his anger problems sooner. “I wonder
where it went wrong,” she told police.
Thomas Schreiber attacked his
mother and her partner, Sir Richard
Sutton, 83, a hotelier and landowner, on
the evening of April 7, exactly eight
years after his father’s death.
Mrs Schreiber, who was left for dead
by her son, was saved by medical staff.
She was initially paralysed from the
neck down. When she was filmed
speaking to police officers on June 29,
she was in a wheelchair in hospital.
In the video she said that she recalled
“singing a tune” while cooking in the
kitchen of Moorhill, Sutton’s mansion
near Gillingham in Dorset, before
hearing a “kerfuffle” from the living
room. She turned to see her son stand-
ing by the kitchen island, holding a
knife “like in crime films”. She
described his eyes as “definitely wild”
and “almost frightening to look at
When officers asked Mrs Schreiber
to talk about her son’s personality to
“help understand him”, she said: “Yeah,
I would also like to understand him.”
Schreiber, watching from the dock,
held his head as his mother began tell-
ing officers how he was “an attractive
little boy” who developed a “furious
temperament”. She said that she and his
father had spoilt him and given him “an
enormous amount of love”. As he grew
older he could become “very aggres-
sive” to his mother, father and two sis-
ters. “When it comes to Thomas it al-
ways ends in fisticuffs, and that is some-
thing I am very ashamed of,” she said.
Mrs Schreiber said that in 2019 her
son had “tried to strangle me in the
car” as she drove him home but she“didn’t retaliate at all”. When she
appeared in court via video-link, sitting
in a wheelchair and severely disabled,
she told the court her son could be a
“volatile young man” and “it would nor-
mally be hair pulling and things like
that”. Mrs Schreiber said he was
“always able to press a very nasty
button in a very eloquent way” in his
verbal abuse of his mother and sisters.
She said that in the weeks before the
knife attack she had “no indication that
anything aggressive was brewing”.
Joe Stone QC, for the defence, asked
Mrs Schreiber if she had told her son
that he was “drunk just like your father”
in the moments before he stabbed her.
She said that she may have done.
The trial continues.Thomas Schreiber listens as his mother speaks about him from her wheelchair. She described him as a “volatile young man”Cat owners will be required to have
their pets microchipped or face a fine of
up to £500 under new rules aimed at
ensuring they can be returned home
when they stray or are stolen.
Under the new rules, due to come into
force in England in 2023, all owners will
have to ensure their pet is microchipped
before they reach the age of 20 weeks
and their contact details stored and kept
up to date in a pet microchipping data-
Microchip your cat or face £500 fine, owners are warned
base. Owners found not to have micro-
chipped their cat will have 21 days to
have one implanted and if they fail to
comply within that period they could be
fined up to £500.
There are over 10.8 million pet cats in
the UK, with as many as 2.8 million
unchipped. Eight out of 10 stray cats
coming into Cats Protection’s centres
are not microchipped.
The Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs said legislation
would be introduced next year and thatthe rules would come into force 12
months later.
The delay in introducing the rules is
due to a review taking place into the
regulations on microchipping of dogs,
which is already compulsory. Vets have
raised concerns that the system, which
involves registering dogs on about 15
separate databases, can cause problems
with reuniting pets with owners.
Defra plans to improve the system
before extending it to cats.
Lord Goldsmith, the animal welfareminister, said: “Cats are much-loved
parts of our families and making sure
they’re microchipped is the best way of
making sure that you are reunited with
them if they are ever lost or stolen.
“These rules will help protect mil-
lions of cats across the country and will
be brought in alongside a range of other
protections we are introducing under
our Action Plan for Animal Welfare.”
Jacqui Cuff, head of advocacy at Cats
Protection, said: “Every day, we see how
important microchipping is for cats andfor the people who love them — whe-
ther it’s reuniting a lost cat with their
owner, identifying an injured cat, or
helping to ensure an owner can be
informed in the sad event that their cat
has been hit and killed by a car.”
The British Veterinary Association
said vets strongly recommended
microchipping of cats but it was “imper-
ative the government addresses and
learns lessons from issues in the dog
microchipping system to give the roll-
out to cats the best chances of success.Ben Webster Environment Editor
Anne Schreiber and Sir Richard Sutton
were attacked at their country homeJohnson defends press freedom after duchess wins privacy case
Jake Kanter, George Grylls the Supreme Court. A spokesman for
Johnson, a former journalist, said: “We
will study the implications of the
judgments carefully... a free press
is one of the cornerstones of any
democracy.
“This government recognises
the vital role that newspapers
and the media play in holding
people to account and shin-
ing a light on the issues
which matter to communi-
ties.” The spokesman said
that No 10 could not comment further
on a legal case, which experts
said “moves the goalposts” to
tighten privacy law. Mark
Stephens, a partner at the
firm Howard Kennedy, said
it would result in “more
primped and preened
glossy versions of celebri-
ties and the famous”. He
added: “Those who want
to publish the unvar-
nished truth about
them will find it more
difficult to do so.”
After the ruling onThursday, the duchess, 40, criticised
“cruel” tabloid newspapers and
attacked the Mail on Sunday’s “decep-
tion, intimidation and calculated
attacks”.
She said: “This is a victory not just for
me, but for anyone who has ever felt
scared to stand up for what’s right.
While this win is precedent-setting,
what matters most is that we are now
collectively brave enough to reshape a
tabloid industry that conditions people
to be cruel and profits from the lies and
pain that they create.”
ANL said: “We are very disappointed
by the decision of the Court of Appeal.Itis our strong view that judgment should
be given only on the basis of evidence
tested at trial.”
No 10’s intervention comes amid fur-
ther changes behind the scenes at
DMG Media, the holding company for
ANL. Martin Clarke, editor-in-chief of
the Mail Online, resigned yesterday. He
was responsible for turning the website
into one of the biggest in the world.
It follows the departure of Geordie
Greig, editor of the Daily Mail, and the
return of Paul Dacre, the former Mail
editor, as editor-in-chief after with-
drawing from the race to become chair-
man of Ofcom, the media regulator.What are you
doing, mother
asked son as
he stabbed her
because they were terribly, terribly
determined”.
She said: “I should have gone in the
opposite direction but what do I do? I go
towards him and I say, ‘What on earth
are you doing with that knife?’ Then he
hits me once with the knife and I am
rather surprised it didn’t hurt more, it
must have been shock.” Mrs Schreiber
said she had looked “at the knife in me”
and asked: “Why are you doing this?”
She recalled Sutton entering the kit-
chen and shouting, which she said
made her son stab her more before he
went behind her and stabbed her in the
back. Fighting back tears, she said: “I am
afraid that is as far as my memory goes.”
Winchester crown court has been
told that Schreiber, who was unem-
ployed and living rent-free with the
couple, felt that they had abandoned
his father and that Sutton was giving
him less money than his older sisters.
He has admitted killing Sutton but de-
nies murder and the attempted murder
of his mother. He claims he had dimin-
ished responsibility because of a mental
condition that caused a loss of control.
Mrs Schreiber told officers in June:
“[He] was definitely not himself. I would
swear an oath that the man who came
into my kitchen could have been a total
stranger. He looked very unusual, I was
shocked when I saw him. His eyes were
definitely wild. His face was screwed up
in an extraordinary grimace and he
looked very, very out of control.” She
added that she suffered “awful night-
mares” in which she was trapped and
her son was her “captor”.Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
The Duchess of Sussex
criticised “cruel” tabloidsELIZABETH COOK/PA