Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson’s libel case against Essex Police is likely to go to trial after a judge said statements about her had been defamatory in meaning.
Pearson sued Essex Police over press statements published in November 2024 about an investigation into a tweet posted by Pearson, saying she had been invited for a voluntary interview.
She was not named in the statements but Pearson herself wrote about being visited by police over an alleged public order offence.
Pearson also sued Roger Hirst, the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Essex, over an article he wrote for Conservative Home and an interview he gave on LBC about the case.
The investigation into Pearson was dropped with no charges brought eight days after the press statement was posted online.
High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain said the press statements meant that there were grounds to investigate a woman at an address in Essex for an alleged offence of inciting racial hatred via a post on social media, and that this was defamatory in common law to the woman.
The final press statement, which said there was no basis of further action in light of the investigation, was found not to be defamatory.
Mr Justice Chamberlain added: “Each of the iterations of the press statement also meant that the woman had provided an account of her interaction with the police which was false.
“It is not possible to determine at this stage and in the abstract whether the second meaning is defamatory at common law. That will have to be determined at trial.”
This would depend, the judge said, on what a trial determines in terms of whether a substantial proportion of readers would have known the woman referred to was Pearson and that she was a journalist and columnist.
“Depending on the findings on these points, the court might decide that the statement did lower Ms Pearson in the estimation of right-thinking people and would tend to have a substantially adverse effect on the way that people would treat her, because, even though the statement did not say that the account was intentionally false, it suggested (at least) a lack of the care that would be expected of a journalist and columnist when reporting something newsworthy…”
Hirst’s LBC interview carried the meaning that there were reasonable grounds to investigate Pearson for the offence of inciting racial hatred and this was defamatory, the judge said.
He added that the Conservative Home article meant there were grounds to investigate whether Pearson had committed a hate speech offence, and this was similarly defamatory.
Mr Justice Chamberlain said: “The ordinary reasonable reader would see all these things as part and parcel of proper police procedure when investigating a complaint alleging the commission of a criminal offence, not as indicative of the existence of reasonable or proper grounds for suspecting that the woman was guilty of the offence.”
He added that a reader would infer that there were grounds to investigate the post and the complaint about it further, not that there were grounds to suspect her of having committed an offence.
The case will now go to trial unless it is settled out of court.
At a hearing last month, Godwin Busuttil, representing Hirst, argued the commissioner declined at least twice to comment specifically on Pearson’s case during the LBC interview, and he talked only about the “broader issues that are raised”.
He told the court: “There is nothing in there which is defamatory of Ms Pearson at any level.”
In written submissions, he said it was “perfectly obvious” that “only an unreasonable listener avid for scandal” would have thought Hirst was accusing Pearson of doing anything wrong.
Richard Munden, for Essex Police, described Pearson’s case as “illogical” in written submissions.
He said: “The reference in the title to an ‘ongoing investigation’ immediately indicates to the reader that the statement is about an Essex Police investigation into whether the subject has committed any offence, rather than reporting any conclusion or decision.”
He added: “It could not be clearer that all that is being said about the subject is that an investigation is being carried out, as is the police’s duty in response to an allegation of an offence.”
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.
[Read more: Telegraph calls for change in law after Allison Pearson accused of Public Order offence]
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