Thank you for your letter of January 12^th regarding Trevor Kavanagh’s appointment to the IPSO Board.

IPSO’s Articles of Association (Section 22.5.2) ensure that all sectors of publishing - from national ‘broadsheet’ newspapers through regional newspapers to magazines - are represented on its Board. 

At least one Board member must have recent senior experience at a publisher operating in the national mass market newspaper sector and Trevor Kavanagh’s experience over decades made him a suitable candidate in the eyes of IPSO’s independent Appointments Panel. Upon appointment all Board members, though selected for their relevant experience, exercise their duties on behalf of the Board, rather than the sector from which they came.

As political editor for The Sun from 1983 to 2006, Mr Kavanagh covered all of the significant political stories, many of which were controversial and contentious. One such story was the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. He is on record as having said that he does not defend the newspaper’s Hillsborough coverage, for which they have repeatedly and rightly apologised.

His role in the story, as a Westminster-based journalist remote from the newsroom, was to pass on what a senior Downing Street figure told him after the then Prime Minister’s visit to the stadium which tallied with what the police were telling journalists and news agencies in Sheffield at the same time. You write that Mr Kavanagh accepts that appalling lies were published as headlines as a result of his doing. This is not true - he did not file copy, did not write any part of the story or the headline, and apart from a brief verbal conversation, played no further role.

Mr Kavanagh is very clear that those who died were completely innocent and it is worth quoting an article he wrote in October 2012 which states that that he believed he had been told the truth and that it was his job as Political Editor to pass on “…. an apparently copper-bottomed corroboration for a major running story. After all, sources don’t come any higher than a Chief Constable and a Prime Minister’s most trusted colleague. It wasn’t until [the] devastating Hillsborough Independent Report that the REAL truth emerged - the despicable conspiracy at the heart of the South Yorkshire police force.”

Mr Kavanagh’s appointment was announced in the normal way, shortly after the panel interviewed both him and Ruth Sawtell, who joined the Board at the same time. I appreciate completely the strongly held views of many people in Liverpool about The Sun’s article and Mr Kavanagh’s acknowledged role in it and our decision is in no way an attempt to ‘airbrush’ his involvement. 

IPSO’s vision is for a trusted, thriving, free and responsible press, reinforced by independent, effective regulation. Having a strong, knowledgeable and qualified Board is an important part of that work. We firmly believe that Mr Kavanagh’s appointment is a mark of the value and importance that journalists attribute to IPSO and we have no plans to review his position.