You win some...

Solicitors Kingsley Napley, who masterminded the successful defence of Mr and Mrs Brooks, couldn't manage the same for Rolf Harris.

Until almost the end, Rolf's barrister was Sonia Woodley, of Furnival Chambers, but she fell ill, and junior counsel Simon Ray, of 6KBW College Hill chambers stepped up for final arguments. This pitted him against prosecutor Sasha Wass, of the same chambers.

As well as lawyers, Mr Harris had the services of Abel Hadden and Oktavia Dangel, working for Bell Pottinger PR - I recommend this piece from the Sydney Morning Herald on their contribution to proceedings, which hints at costs.

Information charges

Never mind £12,000 sofas. The BBC's Information Policy and Compliance team cost £682,000 to run in the last full year (2012/13), and, despite staff cuts, other costs, such as accommodation have risen, so that halfway through 2013/14 it's racked up £459,000.

And, between April 2010 and December 2013, £168,900 has been spent on legal support and barristers to fight cases revolving around Freedom of Information legislation.

Correction costs

Apparently, the Daily Star has apologised in print to former BBC CFO Zarin Patel over allegations of encouraging tax dodging - but, given the whacky world of Express Newspapers online, I'm blowed if I can find it.

An FOI discloses that the BBC spent £6,520.00 (excluding VAT) supporting Ms Patel's legal action. She claimed a Daily Star leader back in July 2012 meant she "had devised or connived in the BBC's deplorable practice of ordering its star employees, under pain of dismissal, to dodge tax by creating personal service companies so as to allow the BBC to save millions of pounds".

BBC internal legal effort is not costed in the response; letters secured a print apology from the Daily Mail over a similar story with days - a rare thing to come so quickly out of Derry Street.

Gusto

A twinkling light has left BBC Worldwide. Keith Rooney, unknown to many, has been Senior Lawyer, Digital Platforms and Distribution, until yesterday - but certainly his farewell email has been well distributed.

"These are exciting times at the BBC and it’s been a truly fantastic ride during the past year working with you all. I shall defo miss the collegiality and the entrepreneurial brio."

He will defo bring brio to his new job, with local tv service London Live, from the Evening Standard, which aims to bring diversity to the capital's screens by re-showing at least 50 hours of BBC output, this week purchased from BBC Worldwide.

Keith has a sideline in programme-making, with company Artists In Motion bringing a 24-part series to Channel 5, called Jungle Babies: Tarsier Tales which also seems to be available via BBC Worldwide. 

Island life

The disputatious duo of Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay have had a reasonably firm rebuff from the BBC Trust, after lodging 17 complaints about a Today feature on Sark from March last year. The piece, by Guernsey-born Sarah Montague, looked at tensions between the brothers' various enterprises on the island and elected officials - still rumbling on to this day. The brothers' charges were presented by barrister Gordon Dawes, of Guernsey's Mourant Ozannes, Offshore Law Firm of The Year, Chambers Europe Awards 2009, 2011, 2013.

Only one element of the brothers' case was upheld; a local resident lost business from their various companies on the island later than the report had indicated, and that, apparently, should have been checked.

I wonder if the BBC might consider putting the cost of this sort of exercise at the end of each case.

Busy line

BBC house organ Ariel says the new independent bullying hotline has gone "live" at the BBC. The service, known in the trade as an "Employee Assistance Programme" is provided by Care first, ("delivering relevant solutions that make a difference") who also have contracts with Network Rail and Stagecoach.

Ariel also notes that 30 cases of alleged bullying are currently being investigated. It's time-consuming stuff, and the results are not always clear. The DG told MPs this week that one employee has left the organisation following an investigation into harassment - but will we ever know their name, and departure details ?  In at least one case in the past year, I am assured, a compromise agreement (i.e. a pay-off) was required to deliver the exit. And Lord Hall has made it clear that m'learned friends are involved in disentangling DMI, which suggests issues are being contested, probably expensively.  

Riposte

The BBC - which has put its FOI publication promises into abeyance for over a year, apparently waiting for a new website - has released some stats on the number of requests it gets.

In 2010, there were 1743; in 2011, 1610, and in 2012, the BBC's "annus horribilis", a surprisingly low 999. This year there's been a spurt, with the first two months clocking up 339, with plenty about Archers' messageboard closure, James Purnell's appointment, and some regulars about the Cornish language. 

In other disclosures, the BBC has revealed that four people qualified as lawyers form part of the BBC FOI/Data Protection Scheme team. They are presumably helping with niggardly answers to questions cf this recent exchange.... 

Q :  The total number of lawyers employed by the BBC in all departments on the last day of each month in the year 2012 ?

A:  Lawyers can be employed in a large number of departments across the BBC, and do not all sit in the BBC Legal Department. Furthermore, it is quite possible for a Lawyer not to have the word ‘Lawyer’ in their job title (as is the case of the four Lawyers currently working in the Information Policy & Compliance Team). I therefore estimate that to deal with your request would take more than two and a half days; under section 12 of the Act, we are allowed to refuse to handle the request if it would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit has been set by the Regulations (SI 2004/3244) as being £450 (equivalent to two and a half days work, at an hourly rate of £25). 

Making a point

Colleagues inside and outside Auntie are watching the Byron Myers v The BBC employment tribunal with interest. And attention to detail.

One has noted an entertaining construction in The Daily Mail's reporting of proceedings.

At the tribunal, Caspar Glyn QC, for the BBC, repeatedly accused Mr Myers of fabricating conversations to bolster his claims, suggesting he had ‘made up a series of wholly untrue fictional lies’. Mr Myers insisted he was telling the truth. 

I've been searching for figures of speech that might cover this mangle, which, one assumes, the Mail man in court has noted accurately. Accumulation ? Commoratio ? Adynaton ? Complex epithet transference ?

Caspar seems a jolly bloke from his Twitter account, and has clearly recovered from a loss of voice last month.

Still lost my voice but looking forward to miming to 200 people at the 2013 Scottish EHRC Discrimination Conference with @mhrubenstein
— Caspar Glyn QC (@casparglyn) January 20, 2013

Legalled

It's been an entertaining first year for Sarah Jones as the BBC's top lawyer. She moved up to replace Nicholas Eldred in January 2012 (when the Newsnight team were still twitching about Peter Rippon deciding to drop the Savile investigation), and was in position for the deal to hold off action from Lord McAlpine against Newsnight in November.

Other minor tasks in 2012 have included selling Television Centre and sorting out Olympic rights and contracts. She's found time for EBU trips to Strasbourg and Istanbul, and declares that she also works as Deputy District Judge on the South Eastern circuit. This requires a minimum of 15 days (paid) work a year in Magistrate's Courts. She's on a package of close to £188k - compared with Mr Eldred's £228k (but then, he'd been in the job for ten years).

In 2007, the BBC had an estimated 100 lawyers on its books - it's probably closer to 75 now; unsurprisingly to a lawyer, there's an FOI question pending on the topic. There's also be interest in the full costs of the Pollard inquiry, now promised for "spring".

Sarah will feel comfortable at Lord (Tony) Hall's top table; she's another Oxford alumnus, graduating in 1983 from Lincoln College.

Routine matter

The NUJ are ramping up for the arrival of Lord Hall as Director General of the BBC. Their current mandate for calling a strike (over compulsory redundancies) runs out in March. How they wish that might extend to 2 April - Tone's first day.

The union says there are worries about possible compulsory redundancies in Scotland (9 still to be settled), Newsbeat, Five Live, staff on the Big Screens, Asian Network and the World Service.  Currently, the BBC is advertising at least six jobs for journalists externally; presumably there are more only visible to insiders.

Meanwhile BBC HR supremo Lucy Adams will be organising another re-training course for her team of advisers (vacancies there, too - "never has there been a more exciting time to be in HR at the BBC"). The BBC has lost an industrial tribunal brought by the NUJ against the compulsory dismissal of  Russell Maddicks, a Latin American specialist at the Monitoring Service in Caversham, run by Dr Chris Westcott. The judgement notes that Russell's internal appeal against the sack, conducted by the Doctor (and, one presumes, an HR helper) "started without the claimant and his representative having all the documentation they had asked for. Rather than allow the claimant to present his argument he asked a series of questions. He undertook an investigation after the meeting had concluded without giving the claimant the opportunity of hearing what his investigation had revealed and responding. The fact the BBC routinely conducts appeals in that way it does not make it reasonable in the circumstances of this case".

Arriving at a sum

When lawyers meet to arrange settlements, how does the gavotte go ? How did we reach a figure of £185,000 (plus costs) for Lord McAlpine, hugely discomfited by Newsnight, if not actually named ?

£185,000 is 40% of George Entwistle's £450k exit fee. You could hire 12 new BBC staff for a year (outside London) at the lowest grade. Samir Nasri's weekly wage at Manchester City is estimated at £185k.

Or you could trawl through the list of BBC executives' salaries to find those that match. I'm sure Lord McAlpine's solicitors didn't do that - did they ?

Oval ball

Westminster's Chief Magistrate is no part-timer. Judge Riddle - Howard Charles Frazer Riddle, 65 - was previously a solicitor with Edward Fail Bradshaw and Waterson, then a stipendiary magistrate, and a district judge before his current appointment. He lists his recreations as rugby football, walking, tennis, cycling. He's vice-president of the Tonbridge Juddians RFC  - there are around 80 VPs, and you pay for the privilege. The Juddians 1St  XV came second this year in the National League 3 London and South East. And probably minded their language along the way.

Live news

A relaxing week ahead for the daytime planners of Sky News. Boss John Ryley is up before Leveson on Monday, and his staff are hardly going to pull away from those pictures. Then Wednesday and Thursday sees James and Rupert Murdoch. Can Rupert last a whole day in front of Robert Jay without losing his temper ? Rupe's current Tweets suggest he's already in a fairly dyspeptic mood...

O'Reilly Round Two

Ten days ago, I wondered why on earth we had a second "apology to older women" from BBC DG Mark Thompson - and why this opinion BBC was given to the Daily Mail. Now all is clearer.

Miriam O'Reilly, whose exit as a Countryfile reporter brought the first "apology to older women" a year ago, has grievances about her second contract with Auntie. She apparently gave notice that she would not complete the final two years of her current deal to the BBC's legal department in December, and, in the past couple of weeks, to the DG in person.

This is Miriam's summary, of how "Round Two" of her engagement with the BBC went. (The full Mail version is here).

"After winning my case, I went back to work last April on a three-year contract. I gave my all in making it a success. Crimewatch Roadshow, which I co-presented, was a ratings winner (remember, ratings are the measure of success). And a short series I did for the Heart And Soul programme on the World Service received an ‘impressive’ review. Then, I found myself being paid to sit at home. 


A senior executive remembered to tell the World Service I was contracted to work for them, but ‘forgot’ to pass the message on to mainstream Radio  4. As a result, the programmes and documentaries that I was contracted to do were allotted to other people. I had already spent most of my time during that nine months at home. I now faced another four months sitting around doing nothing. 


The executive who ‘forgot’ was the same one who had written to me on my return telling me (the injured party) that I had to ‘rebuild trust’ with the BBC. It made me strongly question the BBC’s very public acceptance of the tribunal ruling. Life was made very difficult for me at times on my return to the BBC. I started to feel so undermined, ridiculed and sidelined (and I am a strong woman) that if I didn’t step back and let some of the boys try to come to terms with the fact that I had won my case, my health would permanently suffer". 


Miriam's new campaigning group has been set up with the solicitor who won her first case, Camilla Palmer, and Miriam's Mail piece has pretty clear indicators that she has grounds for a second go in court - "paid to sit at home" and "my health would permanently suffer" are clues. If Miriam's tale is right, Thommo will be pretty angry with the "senior executive" for not ensuring that "Round Two with O'Reilly" passed without these further difficulties.

Internal

There's clearly some tension in the BBC Operations department, evidenced by an exchange of letters in the virtual columns of staff organ Ariel.  One Clare Hoban, a solicitor supporting the editorial teams, finds it "extraordinary... that the BBC has the audacity to ask staff to volunteer to work for free during the Olympics". 

A recent message went out saying there were opportunities for 500 volunteers, in roles such as receptionist, guest greeter, runner or tape logger - but warned there would be no expenses, never mind pay, and staff would have to work out-of-hours or take leave.

Caroline Prendergast, Skills and HR Director, London 2012 replies thus "The range of volunteering opportunities on offer have been assessed by my team as those that would be useful and practical additional help to the running of a BBC production or event and, therefore, are in no way intended to replace essential BBC 2012 roles."

When does a task move from "useful" and "practical", to "essential" ? If there are no volunteers, will guests go ungreeted, and tapes unlogged ?

Fee structure failure

If the Daily Telegraph's figures are right, solicitors Harbottle and Lewis may be pleased to have parted company with former partner Lawrence Abramson.  In May 2007, he reviewed 2,500 emails at the request of News International, taking hard copies of 300 of them. He then signed a note which said he "did not find anything … which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman’s illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the editor, and Neil Wallis, the deputy editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, and others were carrying out similar procedures".

It was a narrow tranche of emails (only those mentioning Goodman over a specific period of time, in specific email folders). The Telegraph says the fee was "around" £10,000. So that's either £100 for a clean bill of health per printed email. Or £2.50 per email read. Hardly top dollar fee charging, Mr Abramson.

There must be more....

And so Parliament is recalled.  Either David Cameron hasn't revealed his whole hand (I hope that's true) or there's more to his plan than boosting the number of police on duty tonight to 16,000 (from last night's 6,000).

Last night the London Fire Brigade dealt with 2,169 fire calls.  If it happens again, and you send more than one policeman alongside each call, that's a few used up.  The core 6,000 have been on duty for three long shifts - including those specially trained for street disorder - and remember, they couldn't cope. The extras will include special constables and rural bobbies.

We're told all cells in London are full, and some of those detained have been shipped to Brighton.  If the number of arrests just doubled tonight, you'd need to open up an army prison camp or two, and staff it.

• Mark Duggan was the third most popular search term in "news and media" on Sunday, after Sky News and BBC News. 
• This is what happened in Paris in 2005. 

Difficult call

The most difficult meeting of David Cameron's career takes place this morning. He will have to emerge from No 10 with a serious and credible plan to deal with what has become "recreational rioting".  It's not often one picks up on a Daily Express headline, but "Flaming Morons" gets close to expressing what most of the country thinks.

There will, too, be guilty parents, noticing new trainers, phones, etc.  However, many will be as intimidated by their offspring as the rest of us.  

Most of the offenders look under 18; the majority last night under 16.  "Cracking down" on them - which most people would interpret as "taking them off the streets" is not possible under law.  Fining them is generally ineffective.  Curfews are for the rest of the world, surely  - and the last thing you want when investor confidence in UK plc is on a terrifying slide ?  But there's a long way to before the end of the school holidays, and the sense of impunity that these kids have has to be ended.

The options are limited; there is no guaranteed strategy in the handbooks. This is a big test.  

Nine steps to heaven

The BBC has released slides from a powerpoint presentation that its contracted TV Licensing team regularly makes to magistrates around the country - after a Freedom of Information request. There are a number of "redactions" - bits blacked "out on the grounds that disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention or detection of crime, the apprehension or prosecution of offenders, the collection of the licence fee and the BBC’s ability to discharge its public functions in respect of such matters."

Here's one slide. There will be a number of serial evaders amongst the 5% or so a year non-payers who would like to know what the last four steps are....

Unsolved

A criminal act is a criminal act - and lawyers, politicians, the police and the public get into trouble when they try to grade such acts in terms of "seriousness".   But it is worth remembering that the current momentum behind uncovering phone-hacking and e-mail rustling lies not with outraged celebrities and smug former Fleet Street editors, but in a horrible, unsolved murder, back in 1987.

Daniel Morgan, aged 37, father of two, was murdered in the car park of the Golden Lion in Sydenham. He'd left the pub around 9pm, after having a drink with his business partner, Jonathan Rees.  For three years they had been running Southern Investigations, from offices in Thornton Heath.  Daniel was hit more than once with an axe, which was left embedded in his head. The murderer/s took his £900 watch, but left £1,100 cash in his pocket. There have been five police investigations - ending, as of now, with a £50m trial which collapsed in March this year.  Jonathan Rees and four others walked free.  Mr Morgan's family were told by the police that Met corruption during the 1987 investigation was a "debilitating factor".

Now, according to the latest edition of Private Eye, the trial judge has pointed to police misconduct as one of the reasons for failure. Investigating officer DCS Dave Cook's case was supported by the evidence of three supergrasses, whose testimony was all discredited as the trial stuttered, and, in one case, the judge found that Cook had "improperly prompted" one of the supergrasses.

In this tangled web of crime, police and press, only since the trial halted has the background evidence come out - in two directions.  One, the amounts of money that was changing hands between the News of The World, the Mirror Group and Southern Investigations.  And two, that Dave Cook, whilst investigating the Morgan murder in 2002, had been put under surveillance, apparently at the behest of Jonathan Rees amongst others - and News of the World assistant editor, Alex Marunchak, had provided NOTW photographers and vans to do the watching.   Cook found out, and alongside Dick Fedorcio, Met media man, raised Marunchak's involvement directly with Rebecca Brooks/Wade in November 2002.

Daniel's brother, Alistair, has been campaigning tirelessly for answers about his brother's death for nearly 25 years - and has now written to the Home Secretary to ask for a judicial inquiry.

If you're interested further, try this piece from Channel 4 on July 18.