Wakeham makes break with PCC - but takes £91,000 for doing nothing

Matt Wells, media correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 March 2002 07.51 GMT

The chairman of the press complaints commission, Lord Wakeham, is to be paid his full salary until he steps down from the organisation in September.

It was revealed yesterday that the Tory peer, who stepped aside on a temporary basis in January while his role in the Enron scandal was investigated, had asked to be released from his contract permanently.

Pressbof, the press watchdog's funding body, said it had agreed "with regret". But the decision to allow Lord Wakeham to be paid his full salary, £156,000 a year, has raised eyebrows among some newspaper industry figures: the peer is not working for the PCC while his role as a director of the collapsed US energy giant is investigated by Senate committees in the US.

Pressbof will make an announcement on the peer's successor on September 1, the same day that Lord Wakeham will be released from his contract. Until then, the PCC will continue to be run by its acting chairman, Professor Robert Pinker, who took the reins after Lord Wakeham stepped aside "as a matter of honour" on January 31. In the intervening seven months, Lord Wakeham will have been paid £91,000 for, officially at least, doing nothing.

The Tory peer was an £80,000-a-year non-executive director of Enron, and was facing pressure to answer questions about the energy firm's multi-billion dollar bankruptcy.

He has since resigned as a director of the company, which is the subject of a series of investigations in the US.

It was widely expected that he would not return to his post, because the investigations into Enron could take years.

In a statement Pressbof paid tribute to Lord Wakeham, 69, saying: "The board wishes to record its appreciation of his outstanding contribution to self-regulation of the press over the past seven years."

The board also moved to shore up the position of Guy Black, the PCC director whose friendship with the News of the World editor Rebekah Wade has been called into question.

Its statement read: "Pressbof is confident that in the period until the new chairman is in position, the PCC under the competent and skilful guidance of its acting chairman, Professor Robert Pinker, and director Guy Black, will continue to provide a first-class service to the public and uphold the tough ethical code on which self-regulation of the press is based."

Pressbof yesterday began the process of finding a successor to Lord Wakeham. Reports that the broadcaster Sue MacGregor was to be approached were dismissed as fanciful.

Other names mentioned include the data protection registrar, Elizabeth France, and the former Commons watchdog, Elizabeth Filkin.

But industry sources suggested the speculation was premature. It is suggested that the PCC will need a robust chairman as its role comes under pressure from the encroaching influence of human rights legislation.

The selection process will be managed by a sub-committee of the Pressbof board, consisting of chairman Sir Harry Roche; Jeremy Deedes, managing director of the Telegraph group; David Newell, director of the Newspaper Society; Robin Miller, chief executive of Emap; and Grahame Thomson, secretary of Pressbof.