Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has won complaints to press regulator IPSO about stories in the Sunday People and Daily Record.
The stories, published by sister Reach titles, stated British Steel had closed its plant in Darlington “after rent hike threat” from site owner Quidnet Reit, for which Tice is a director.
IPSO published rulings relating to the Sunday People in print and the Daily Record online on Thursday. A correction relating to the same story has also been published on the Mirror website.
Tice said British Steel’s decision to vacate the site in favour of a new location was publicly announced in 2021 – before Quidnet acquired the Darlington site in 2022.
He said leaving out this information meant the headlines and articles were inaccurate. He also said there had been no threat to raise the rent.
The articles ended by stating Tice had “dismissed certain claims, adding: ‘It’s completely untrue that the site shut down because of rent.'”
Tice said this did not remedy the inaccuracy because it would be taken “with a pinch of salt” given the confident manner in which the claims about the rent threat were made higher up.
He also complained that posts on X (formerly Twitter) would have been seen in isolation by many users, meaning they saw only the isolated headline, and that this would likely have caused serious harm to his reputation.
Tice felt the articles “implied he was a hypocrite by reporting that he championed the interests of British Steel and criticised the Government, while also being personally responsible for the closure of British Steel’s Darlington site and any resulting job losses”, the IPSO summaries of the complaints said.
He also noted the article in the Sunday People print newspaper appeared on a double page spread dedicated to the Steel story and was prominently featured alongside another article headlined: “If it shuts it will finish town and destroy families.”
He said the article about his company was therefore placed there deliberately as a “hatchet job”.
Reach removed all the articles and X posts after Tice submitted his complaints.
In support of the article’s characterisation of a threat to raise rent, the publications cited a trading update from Quidnet Reit in March 2022 that stated it had “multiple options” for the property including “to relet to British Steel at a higher rent”.
The newsbrands argued that the articles were accurate because the closure came after the “rent hike threat” chronologically. They said this phrasing was a “conscious editorial choice”, rather than stating the site closed “because of” or “due to” the threat.
However they admitted that the headlines “may have suggested that the British Steel site closed because of a threatened rent hike”.
IPSO’s complaints committee concluded: “By stating that British Steel had closed the Darlington site after a rent hike threat… this created the misleading impression that there was a causal link between the two.”
It added that including a denial from Tice was not sufficient to negate this impression given the inaccuracy appeared prominently in the headlines and X posts and the denial only appeared at the end of the articles.
IPSO said the articles therefore breached the Editors’ Code of Practice.
Although the titles published corrections before being ordered to do so by IPSO, the regulator said they had not been “sufficiently prompt” – they were offered 47 days after Tice complained – and the X posts were not “duly prominent”.
See the IPSO rulings in full here: Daily Record and Sunday People.
Tice responded to IPSO ruling in his favour by mocking up his own Mirror front page:
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