Letters roundup: 9 June 2023

IPSO criticism wide of the mark

Your recent roundup of the litigation over historical claims of phone hacking and invasion of privacy (News Cop, 19 May 2023) rightly highlighted what is at stake, both for victims of past press abuse and trust in the newspaper industry. I was disappointed to see such prominence given to criticism of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) by the chairman of the board of Hacked Off.  

Last month, former senior civil servant Sir Bill Jeffrey published his thorough and detailed review of IPSO. This followed a six-month assessment of every aspect of our governance, operations and management to determine our independence and effectiveness, including submissions from more than 80 people and organisations.  

Its conclusion on this issue was clear: ‘The work IPSO has done in recent years to develop guidance on the Editors’ Code, including in some sensitive areas, and on training and other forms of outreach to the industry, takes it well beyond the handling of complaints. The characterisation of it by some critics as no more than a complaints handling organisation, and not really a regulator, is wide of the mark.’  

Of course, IPSO can improve, and we will need to move with purpose and care to meet the many changes coming our way, not least the arrival of artificial intelligence. But to claim that we are not in the business of regulation at all flies in the face of the well-documented reality: IPSO is working actively to improve editorial standards in the UK. To quote another of the review’s findings: it has influenced the industry for the better.

Lord Faulks KC

Chair, IPSO, London

Banks put critical client business on hold

I’m a sole practitioner running a small firm just outside Balsall Common, Warwickshire. My business has banked with the same bank for 23 years. During most of that time we have had a dedicated relationship manager. However the bank’s business model has now changed and, like everyone else, we have to access the bank via a generic switchboard number.

On Friday last we sent a CHAPS payment to the sellers to enable completion to take place that day. Contracts had been exchanged. The bank confirmed that the payment had been successfully sent ‘subject to the usual verifications’. We noticed at 4.30pm that the payment was still not showing on our bank statement as having been sent, although other CHAPS payments were.

We called the bank and were repeatedly cut off, rerouted back to the automated loop, asked to verify our identity eight times in total, told that we had passed voice recognition twice and left on hold for periods in excess of 20 minutes. This lasted until 6.15pm when we spoke to someone who asked if he could call back in 20 minutes as his system was working slowly. We told him that under no circumstances could he call back and that we needed an answer immediately.

He said that the payment had been withheld as he needed us to go through standard checks with the fraud team. These included confirming that we were not sending the payment under duress, the nature of our business, what the monies were for, whether we had checked that the property our client was buying actually existed and whether anybody had asked us to send the payment. Eventually at 6.45pm the payment cleared the fraud check.

He would not confirm whether the payment would actually be going out that day. It did not go out until Monday morning with the obvious repercussions flowing from failure to complete on Friday. If we cannot rely on our bank to action our requests we have to question whether we should continue to offer this service to our clients. We have raised a formal complaint with the bank but wonder whether any fellow practitioners have encountered a similar problem?

Larger firms with higher volumes of conveyancing surely could not possibly accommodate this type of intrusion into their business, so is it just sole practitioners who are being subjected to it? Should there not be some sort of waiver for solicitors who are highly regulated and well versed in fraud prevention (more so than the banks?).

It is inconceivable that a bank can see fit to intervene in a solicitor’s confidential transaction, in effect intermeddling with client money and preventing completion of a transaction in accordance with the contract. In addition, it took nearly three hours to sort this out – who is paying for that? Surely as solicitors we should be maintaining our control and insisting on a change in the banking process?

I’m now extremely anxious when asking for funds to be transmitted and have to wait for eight weeks for my complaint to be looked at – ludicrous.

Carol A Sketchley

Sketchley Solicitors, Honiley, Warwickshire

Negligence question

In the recent case of Lewis v Cunningtons a firm of solicitors was held to have been negligent in failing to give advice on pension-sharing on divorce even though they obtained a signed disclaimer from their client. If this case were to come to appeal, the judgments will make very interesting reading.

Apart from the main issues, of which there are certainly more than one, I see that the case has been categorised as negligence. I’m not sure this is correct. The solicitors acted deliberately, not accidentally, so surely this is a case of breach of contract or breach of duty or both, but not negligence.

The case has also made me wonder whether allocating cases involving the conduct of litigation to the King’s Bench Division is ideal. There must be an argument that such cases would be best heard by a judge of the division to which the proceedings were, or would have been, allocated. In this case, of course, the Family Division.

Neil McCormick

Solicitor, Frome, Somerset