Leveson Inquiry: PCC was ‘misled’ by News International over phone-hacking

The press watchdog was criticised by many for not doing enough when evidence of hacking at the News of the World emerged.

Baroness Buscombe, who stood down as chair of the body last year, was appearing before the inquiry today.

She said she believed she had been misled by News International, the paper’s publisher.

“I regret that I was clearly misled by News International, that I accepted what they had told me,” she told the hearing.

“I felt all the way through the process somewhat hands-tied by merely being able to ask questions, write letters to editors and so on.

“Indeed one or two editors didn’t even bother to reply.”

In 2009, the PCC dismissed allegations, arising from a Guardian investigation, of widespread phone hacking by journalists at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid and claimed in a report that the Guardian stories failed to live up to their “dramatic billing”.

Baroness Buscombe said “with hindsight” she regretted the report but pointed out the difficulties the regulator faced in trying to deal with the issue.

“I put my name to it but I was never comfortable with it,” she said of the report. “We didn’t have the locus, the powers, the structures, the processes in order seriously to consider this whole issue.”

Asked whether she thought the withdrawal of political support from the PCC in the wake of the hacking scandal had been unfair, she replied: “We felt very much we had been used as a scapegoat.”

Lady Buscombe indicated her belief in self-regulation of the press had been shaken since she took on her role as chair of the watchdog as editors had not always been honest with her.

She said: “I was, and still am to some degree, very supportive of the principles of self-regulation.”