MST has written an open letter to the board that finances the PCC, posing a series of questions about the cost of the settlement and who paid
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The Media Standards Trust (MST) has written an open letter to the chair of the board that raises finances for industry watchdog the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) asking for greater transparency about its recent libel settlement with lawyer Mark Lewis. On Friday the chair of the PCC issued a formal apology in the high court to lawyer Mark Lewis for remarks made by its chair Baroness Peta Buscombe in a speech to the Society of Editors Conference last year. In her speech Buscombe claimed that Lewis had misquoted a detective superintendent in evidence he gave to the Culture, Media and Sport committee's inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World.
The letter to the Press Board of Finance (PressBoF) poses a series of questions to the PCC, including asking how much the settlement, including legal costs, was and who paid for the settlement. The trust says revealing such information is "highly relevant and in the public interest".
The MST claims it is unclear from the information made available about the case so far where the money to pay for the case is coming from.
"If it is to come from the PCC's £2 million annual budget, then this will necessarily have an impact on the PCC's services (jeopardising the sparse resources it has). If it is not to come from the PCC's budget then it is also in the public interest to know who is going to pay it and how it is going to be paid. Given this is the first time this has happened, the method of payment will set a precedent," it says in the letter.
The MST has also asked PressBoF to clarify the terms of employment for the chair of the PCC and asks what further action it will be taking following the libel settlement on Friday.
"This is the first time that the Chair of the PCC has had to apologise to the High Court and pay libel damages for misleading comments made. It would therefore be helpful to know what action the Press Board of Finance intends to take, particularly concerning how it intends to prevent this happening again, and how it intends to make financial provision for this in the future," says the letter, which has been sent to PressBof today by MST director Martin Moore and is also publicly available on the MST website .
