PCC gets its knickers in a twist

Following last week's session about codes of conduct and the various regulatory bodies, right on cue the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has obligingly shot itself in the foot.  It, and its Chair, Lady Buscombe, have had to formally apologise to lawyer Mark Lewis, and pay him an undisclosed sum in damages.


This is yet another case linked to the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the News of the World (see 'Private eye piracy', 18/11/2010), and involves documents seized by the Met when it raided Private Eye Glenn Mulcaire's offices.  It all goes back to last September when Mark Lewis gave evidence to a Commons' Select Committee.  In that evidence he said that a detective had told him that there were 'something like 6,000 people' who had had their messages intercepted or their phones hacked.  This is in stark contrast to the official line which is that there were only eight victims, including Lewis's client, Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers' Association.  The PCC had endorsed that version of events.

Speaking to the Society of Editors late last year, Lady Buscombe defended the PCC's endorsement of the official line, and went further, claiming that she had received 'new evidence' from Sotland Yard saying that the detective had been misquoted.  She also said that she would send the new evidence to the Chair of the Select Committee, adding that 'Any suggestion that a parliamentary enquiry has been misled is, of course, an extremely serious matter'



Lewis sued the PCC and Lady Buscombe on the basis that her speech clearly implied that he had lied in his evidence to the Select Committee.    

The Baroness and the PCC have now made a formal statement at the high court sying that it was never their intention to imply that Mark Lewis had misled the Select Committee.  The Baroness's original statement, and the apology, can be found on the PCC website:

http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjA0OQ==

Lord Prescott, that's 'Two Jags' as was, is suing the police for breaching his human rights after they initially declined to hand over details relating to him found in the Mulcaire documents seizure.  His name was on some of those documents and he is claiming damages over the Met's failure to inform him of that fact.  No fan of the PCC, he was quick to turn the knife:



'Today's humiliating apology by Lady Buscombe and the PCC exposes the sham of self-regulation for newspapers. The Chair of a body that is supposed to enforce newspaper accuracy has had to apologise to the high court and settle a libel action prompted by here own misleading comments. 

'The public has rightly lost all confidence in the PCC and I see no other option for Lady Buscombe but to resign her position immediately.' 

As of today, Tory peer Lady Buscombe is still in her £150k p.a. job, but who knows what tomorrow might bring, as there are sure to be further voices raised in support of Prescott's call for her to go?