Corrections and clarifications

March 23, 2024

​An article ‘Dear Rachel: ‘I want an affair, but I don’t want to leave my wife’ (March,16) stated that vaginal mesh surgery was available for stress urinary incontinence on the NHS as an outpatient under local anesthetic. This was incorrect as the procedure has been paused since July 2018 following Baroness Cumberlege’s report ‘First Do No Harm’.  We are happy to correct the record.

March 12, 2024

An article ‘Surge in support for Portugal’s hard right as Socialists ousted’ March 12, miscaptioned an image of Luis Montenegro as being Andre Ventura. We are happy to correct the record. 

March 8, 2024

An article ‘Pharmacy First is good for patients – and good for the NHS’ reported that 18-week waiting lists were down by 90 per cent.  This was a production error and should have read 18 month waiting lists. We are happy to correct the record. 

March 6, 2024 

An article ‘Crackdown on NHS, university and charity staff peddling extremist views’ reported allegations made by Michelle Donelan in a letter to to the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) which she also posted on social media.  She accused Professor Kate Sang of Heriot Watt University and Dr Kamna Patel of University College London of sharing extremist content online and claimed they had breached the Nolan principles, which set out how public officials should behave.  She also suggested Professor Sang had expressed sympathy and support for Hamas.  Michelle Donelan has now withdrawn the allegations against Prof Sang and apologised.  Following an investigation into the women, UKRI announced it had “found no evidence in the public domain of support for a proscribed terrorist organisation or the sharing of extremist material”.  We are happy to correct the record.

February 26, 2024

IPSO upholds accuracy complaint about disability Motability scheme against The Daily Telegraph

Grace Sparks complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Daily Telegraph breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “‘Disabled’ drivers claim £40k cars for free”, published on 8 July 2023. A similar version of this article also appeared online, under the headline “People on benefits with mental health problems given cars worth £40k” and was shared on the newspaper’s official “X” account. 

The complaint was upheld, and IPSO required The Daily Telegraph to publish this adjudication to remedy the breach of the Editors’ Code. 

The complainant said the article misrepresented the Motability Scheme, designed to provide people entitled to mobility welfare payments with access to a vehicle. She denied that claimants could claim a vehicle “for free”, as reported by the print headline; or that they were “given” cars, as reported by the online headline. She also said the article was inaccurate to report that “people who say they are immobilised by anxiety or depression can claim £40,000 cars on benefits” and that a survey found that “nearly a third of those who cited anxiety as their primary condition were granted the enhanced rate, which would make them eligible for the car scheme”. While she accepted that those with a mental health condition – such as anxiety and depression – could qualify for the Scheme, she said that the threshold for qualification exceeded these conditions on their own. 

The Daily Telegraph said that the text of the article – both online and in print – accurately reported how claimants applied to the Scheme. However, it accepted the headlines were inaccurate. The newspaper had published a correction, in print, and in its established Corrections and Clarifications column, 9 days after it had received the complaint from IPSO. It also amended the online headline and offered to publish a correction beneath the headline. Later, during IPSO’s investigation into the matter and 83 days after the article was published, the newspaper offered to publish a standalone correction on its website. It also offered to publish this correction on its “X” account. 

IPSO found that the article – both online and in print as well as the newspaper’s post on X – had significantly misrepresented the Motability Scheme: claimants did not receive vehicles for free. Instead, those deemed eligible were able to claim subsidised leasehold cars through the scheme, and they had to meet at least some of the cost, either via giving up a portion, or all, of their Personal Independence Payments (PIP), or by paying additional amounts on top of their allowance. 

Further, in IPSO’s view, the references in the article, taken together, including the findings of a survey from 2020, suggested that those with mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression could qualify for the scheme. However, the assessment criteria for the Scheme make clear that claimants are unable to qualify if they only have a mental health condition; diagnoses of depression or anxiety would not make a claimant eligible under the Scheme, unless these conditions also affect their mobility. 

For these reasons, the Committee considered that the newspaper’s characterisation and presentation of the Scheme – information that was publicly available – represented a failure to take care not to publish inaccurate and misleading information, and a breach of Clause 1(i).

Given the article misrepresented the conditions of taxpayer-funded scheme, this was considered significantly misleading and, as such, required correction under Clause 1(ii) of the Editors’ Code. 

The Committee concluded that the action taken – and offered – by the newspaper did not fulfil its obligations under Clause 1(ii). While the print correction had been published promptly and with sufficient prominence, it did not acknowledge the significantly misleading impression given by the headline and the article as a whole regarding the eligibility criteria of the Scheme, or adequately correct it. Further, the newspaper’s offer to publish a standalone correction – in relation to the online article and X post – was not considered sufficiently prompt, particularly given the prominence and significance of the breach: a standalone correction was required and had only been offered 83 days after the article was published, and 29 days after IPSO had launched its investigation into the matter. 

The Committee therefore found a further breach of Clause 1(ii). The complaint under Clause 1 was upheld.  

February 13, 2024

An article ‘Braverman: ‘Don’t make people feel guilty for being white’ (Feb, 13) reported that the National Trust, RSPCA and World Wildlife Fund said the countryside was a ‘racist and colonial space’ based on the report by Wildlife and Countryside Link provided to Parliament. It was incorrect to attribute the words in the report directly to each charity as they were not signatories to the report. We are happy to correct the record.

November 17, 2023

Sir, your article ‘BBC crisis over £1.7bn pension bill for stars’ (4/11/2023) is incorrect and significantly inflates the BBC’s obligation to fund its defined benefit pension scheme shortfall and employer contribution rate. 

The BBC’s Annual Report and Accounts 2022/2023 state that the most recent triennial actuarial valuation of the scheme as at 1 April 2022 shows a funding shortfall of £841 million in total. The valuation is required by law and the figure is assessed independently by a pension specialist and has been reviewed by the National Audit Office.

We have agreed a payment plan with the Pension Scheme Trustee to help ensure that the shortfall is eliminated by December 2028. The plan incorporates cash payments supplemented by contingent contributions. The cash payments are £50 million annually from April 2023 to April 2027, and a payment of £38 million in the following year. The contingent contributions would be payable in addition to the cash payments, based on future assessments of the funding level. Since the 2022 valuation, funding has improved. The latest interim valuation report shows that by 1 April 2023 there was a small funding surplus.

The incorrect deficit contribution figure derived by the Telegraph inflates the BBC’s obligation to fund the shortfall by more than double. Both our Annual Reports and Accounts and the agreed Recovery Plan are publicly available. Further information about the Scheme and its funding position can be found at https://www.bbc.com/mypension/documents/scheme-documents

Your article also reports a contribution rate of 42.3% of staff salary into the defined benefit scheme. The Schedule of Contributions agreed with the Scheme Trustee as part of the 2022 actuarial valuation states that the employer contribution rate for the defined benefit pension scheme is currently set to 30% of members’ pensionable salaries.

The defined benefit pension scheme was closed to new joiners to the BBC in 2010, and we are currently awaiting a hearing at the Court of Appeal to clarify what options are available to us for the future of the scheme.

Leigh Tavaziva - Group Chief Operating Officer, BBC

September 21, 2023

An article ‘Heart attack victims are 19 mins from the nearest defibrillator’ (Aug 29) was incorrect as defibrillators are used when someone has a cardiac arrest and not a heart attack. We are happy to correct the record. 

September 19, 2023

An article “‘Honey I’m suing the kids’: court cases treble as Bank of Mum and Dad demands refunds” (7 Sept 2019) reported that Mr Karl Watkin MBE had sued his daughter ‘to claw back some of the money he gifted her to buy her first home’. This was inaccurate. Mr Watkin’s daughter was the subject of legal proceedings brought by the joint trustees in bankruptcy of Mr Watkins. The legal action failed. We apologise for this error and are happy to correct the record.
 

August 29, 2023

An article “We are all paying the terrible price for lockdown” (Nov, 19) reported that pandemic related measures in Sweden cost 60 billion kroner in 2020 and 2021, a tenth of the UK figure for Covid-related spending. This was misleading. The 60 billion kroner related only to business support. This correction has been published following an upheld ruling by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.  

An article ‘TikTok now the biggest source of news for young teens’, (July, 20) included statements which may have been understood to mean that TikTok is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”) and is operated for the benefit of the CCP against the West. We are happy to make clear that TikTok categorically denies the allegations.  We apologise to TikTok for not approaching it for comment prior to publication.