An award against the Sunday Times of £180,000 libel damages to the former Conservative party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas has been cut by the appeal court to £50,000.
The businessman had sued Times Newspapers and two members of the Sunday Times’s Insight team - Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake - over three articles published in March 2012.
Today, three judges allowed the group’s appeal on the claims for libel and malicious falsehood in relation to the allegation that, in return for cash donations to the Tory party, Cruddas offered to sell the opportunity to influence government policy and gain unfair advantage through secret meetings with prime minister David Cameron and other senior ministers.
They dismissed its appeal in relation to the allegation that Cruddas made the offer, even though he knew that the money offered for such secret meetings was to come, in breach of the ban under UK electoral law, from Middle Eastern investors in a Liechtenstein fund.
The newspaper also failed in its appeal over the allegation that, to circumvent and thereby evade the law, Cruddas was happy that the foreign donors should use deceptive devices, such as creating an artificial UK company to donate the money or using UK employees as conduits, so that the true source of the donation would be concealed.
But the Sunday Times issued a statement after the hearing to say that the court’s decision “completely vindicated” its reporting that Cruddas had corruptly offered access to Cameron and other leading members of the government in exchange for donations to the Conservative party.
The statement said the court of appeal ruled that it was “ unacceptable, inappropriate and wrong” for Cruddas to make such an offer. It continued:
“This was an important public interest story. Our journalists acted with professionalism and integrity and with the full support of the newspaper’s editors and lawyers. They and the newspaper have fought this case for three years.
Today’s judgment confirms that journalism, and in particular undercover journalism, plays a key role in exposing the conversations behind closed doors, that feed public mistrust. In so doing, it serves a vital purpose in a democracy”.
Calvert and Blake also issued a joint statement in which they spoke of their delight “that the overwhelming allegation in our articles has been found to be true”.
They argued that the offer by Cruddas “was an affront to the fundamental democratic principle that money does not buy power and every citizen has an equal stake in the governance of their country”.
They continued: “We believed passionately in the importance of publishing our undercover work and have fought for three years to defend this case”.
The journalists were critical of the original judgment made by Mr Justice Tugendhat - as reported here in the Sunday Times - and claimed it had been “found to contain glaring errors, and in our view it was astonishingly one-sided”.
The Calvert/Blake statement continued: “His finding of malice was a devastating attack on our integrity as journalists, which we reject absolutely. We were motivated at all times by our desire to hold power to account and stick up for ordinary, decent citizens by seeking the truth and we are delighted that our reports on the cash-for-access scandal have been vindicated by the court of appeal.
“We believe that the Lord Gold inquiry, which was set up to examine the Conservative party’s relationship with its donors in the wake of our story and then mothballed when Peter Cruddas began his legal action, now needs to be reopened as a matter of urgency”.
Cruddas said he was “disappointed that the court of appeal has allowed part of the Sunday Times’ appeal”. But added that “it is some consolation that I remain the overall winner of my action”
In his statement, he said: “The court has said that the newspaper failed ‘by a wide margin’ to justify their suggestion that I was prepared to break UK electoral law by accepting foreign donations.
“What is more, they have confirmed that based on the judge’s assessment of the oral evidence which he heard from the Sunday Times journalists, there is no basis for overturning his decision that they were malicious and knew that suggestion to be untrue”.
He concluded: “This is no victory for the Sunday Times when they still have to pay me damages, and their journalists remain condemned as malicious”.
Sources: PA Media Lawyer/Times Newspapers/PR for Peter Cruddas