Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has received an apology and “substantial damages” from the police and crime commissioner for Essex after a High Court judge found press statements made about her could be defamatory.
Pearson brought legal action against commissioner Roger Hirst over statements he made in an LBC interview and an article on the Conservative Home website, which she alleged related to a social media post she wrote.
She said the post on X, which has since been deleted, led officers to investigate her for a potential offence of inciting racial hatred, knock on her door on Remembrance Sunday in November 2024, and invite her to be interviewed under caution. The investigation was later dropped without any charges being brought.
In the interview on LBC, Hirst, who did not comment on Pearson’s case specifically, said: “We can’t go around ignoring crimes just because it’s politically sensitive, and we perhaps need to just think about how our black and Asian communities are hearing this debate.”
In April, Mr Justice Chamberlain ruled Hirst’s words “did bear the meaning that, in the light of the complaint and the post itself, there were reasonable grounds to investigate Ms Pearson for the offence of inciting racial hatred”.
He also said Hirst’s Conservative Home article meant there were grounds to investigate whether Pearson had committed a hate speech offence, which had a similarly defamatory meaning.
Hirst has published an apology to Pearson and agreed to pay her “substantial damages and costs” which is understood to be a five-figure sum, according to The Telegraph.
“I wish to apologise to Allison Pearson, the Daily Telegraph journalist, for accusations I made about her in an interview I gave to Lewis Goodall of LBC on 17 November 2024, and in an article I wrote for Conservative Home which I later published on my own website,” Hirst said in a statement on his official website.
“I intended to address wider issues about hate crimes and policing rather than to make accusations against her personally, but I accept, as the High Court has found that I did accuse her personally, I should not have made those allegations against her.
“I am very sorry for the damage and hurt I have caused to her, and I have agreed to pay her substantial damages and costs in recognition of that.”
Pearson told The Telegraph she was “delighted and relieved” to have won the case, adding that she found Hirst’s statements “deeply distressing”.
She wrote in a column: “It was astonishing to me that Hirst, a man elected by Conservative voters, would appear on LBC radio while I was under criminal investigation for some clearly absurd charge under the Public Order Act, and suggest that the police had nothing to be held accountable for.”
Essex Police published a statement which said officers visited “an address in Essex and invited a woman to come to a voluntary interview”.
It was later updated to say that, following a review from the Crown Prosecution Service, no further action would be taken.
Pearson also lodged a separate defamation claim against Essex Police, which is ongoing.
Essex Police had complained to press regulator IPSO about Pearson’s own reporting of the police visit at her home, saying she was wrong to claim officers described the matter as a “non-crime hate incident” and provided a transcript of video taken filmed by officers at the time.
But IPSO rejected the complaint, saying The Telegraph had taken sufficient care to establish the facts ahead of publication.
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