Complaint
Commenting live on the day when Rishi Sunak replaced Liz Truss as Prime Minister, the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s Chief Political Correspondent Nick Eardley said "Seven weeks ago, Liz Truss stood at that very lectern and told us all that big tax cuts were coming. That was the Conservative plan to boost economic growth. What we’re about to see in the next few days is the exact opposite. The economic backdrop has changed – Mr Sunak is going to have to agree to spending cuts and to tax rises". 12 viewers complained that this misleadingly presented austerity as inevitable, whereas it was in fact a political choice (an alternative being simply to tax the rich). The ECU considered the complaints in the light of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s editorial standards of due accuracy and impartiality.
Outcome
The ECU took the view that Mr Eardley was presenting an analysis (rather than making a recommendation or expressing a preference, as some complainants took him to be). In a context where those favouring lower taxes offset by bigger spending cuts were unlikely to be happier with the new Government’s approach as those favouring higher taxes on the rich with little or no reduction in spending, there was no departure from due impartiality in his comments. In relation to accuracy, the ECU accepted that Mr Eardley’s words, if taken in isolation and in a purely economic sense, could have given the impression that the Government was acting out of economic necessity, and that it might have been better if he had referred to a changed political (rather than economic) backdrop to explain why he believed Mr Sunak’s policies would be fundamentally different to his predecessor’s. It noted, however, that he was speaking as a political, not an economics, correspondent, and concluded that, as it was the economic impact of his predecessor’s measures, in such areas as government borrowing costs, mortgage interest rates and the solvency of pension funds which had the effect of circumscribing Mr Sunak’s political options, his comments could not be considered materially misleading in this context. Consequently it found no breach of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s standards of due accuracy.
Not Upheld