Complaints Committee

Lord Faulks

Chair of the Committee

Lord Faulks has a long career as a barrister specialising in claims arising from the Human Rights Act, professional and clinical negligence, personal injury, education, police claims and public law. He became a KC in 1996. He was appointed to the House of Lords in 2010 and served as Justice Minister from 2013-2016. He now sits as an unaffiliated peer.

David Hutton

Deputy Chair of the Committee

David Hutton is Chair of the IPSO Readers’ Panel and spent 22 years as a senior leader in secondary schools, initially as Deputy Head and then as Head. He represented fellow headteachers on Suffolk’s Schools’ Forum, chaired the Governing Body of a Special School, and was a founder member of the Ipswich Opportunity Area Board. He is also a qualified Ofsted Inspector.

Bulbul Basu

Bulbul Basu is a qualified accountant and has over 20 years' experience working within the financial services industry in London. During this time, she has worked in many different roles in different institutions and has an expert understanding of controls, corporate governance, and regulatory affairs within the financial services context.

Sarah Baxter

Sarah Baxter is a prominent journalist and editor, she is a past deputy editor of The Sunday Times, editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, Washington correspondent at The Sunday Times, and political editor of the New Statesman, among other roles. She is director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting at Stony Brook University, which is part of the State University of New York.

Andy Brennan QPM

Andy Brennan was a Deputy Director in the National Crime Agency and prior to this, a senior police officer in the West Yorkshire Police where he held positions as the Head of the Homicide and Major Enquiry Teams and Head of Professional Standards and Counter Corruption Unit. He was awarded the Queens Police Medal for services to policing and the public in 2012.

Manuela Grayson

Manuela Grayson is a solicitor and is a Legally Qualified Chair for a number of professional regulatory tribunals including the General Pharmaceutical Council and the Tax Disciplinary Board, and an Adjudication Chair of fitness to practise committees for Social Work England. Previously she had a career as a senior broadcast journalist for the BBC and was an editorial adviser to the BBC Trust.

Carwyn Jones

Rt Hon Carwyn Jones spent nine years as First Minister of Wales until December 2018. He was previously the chief legal advisor to the Welsh Government and held ministerial responsibilities for Open Government and Rural Affairs. He is a professor of Law at Aberystwyth University, chair of the environmental charity Size of Wales, and a non-executive director of the Food Farming and Countryside Commission.

Alastair Machray

Alastair Machray is the former Editor of The Liverpool Echo and Editor-in-Chief of Trinity Mirror Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales. He spent 25 years as a daily newspaper editor, making him the longest-serving daily editor in the UK. He has worked in both national and regional newsrooms, winning numerous awards, including, in 2020, an MBE for services to local journalism. He lives on The Wirral and now runs a media consulting business.

Asmita Naik

Asmita Naik is an independent consultant on international development and human rights following a career at the United Nations in Geneva in the 1990s. She serves as a magistrate and on various professional regulatory bodies. She co-authored a 2002 landmark report which put the issue of sexual exploitation by aid workers on the global agenda and has been involved in measures to strengthen oversight of the aid sector since then.

Mark Payton

Mark Payton is an editor and journalist with 30 years of specialist publishing experience. He was editorial director at Haymarket Consumer Media and now works as compliance consultant for the Trust Project, an international consortium of news organisations working towards greater transparency and accountability in the global news industry.

Allan Rennie

Allan Rennie is Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Stirling and Non Executive Director of NHS Forth Valley. In a 30-year career in local and national newspapers, he edited the Clydebank Post, Daily Record, Sunday Mail, served as Editorial Development Director of Trinity Mirror Nationals and was managing director of Media Scotland. Allan is a member of the Scottish Government’s short-life working group on public interest journalism.

Ted Young

Ted Young was editor of Metro. He started in journalism at the Harrow Observer and over his career has worked at the Northern Echo, Today, The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express, London Lite, Mail Online, and New York Daily News. He served for five years on the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee.