The lawyer for News International who threatened to sue the BBC last March if it went ahead with a Panorama report alleging that the publishers of the now-defunct News of the World , had misled Parliament when they claimed that a single "rogue" reporter was responsible for the voicemail hacking conducted by the tabloid may face disciplinary proceedings by Britain's Solicitors Regulation Authority. Julian Pike, a partner of Farrers, whose clients include the queen, admitted to a parliamentary committee last week that he knew that executives of NI had made misleading statements to Parliament about the hacking. In a letter to Britain's Guardian newspaper, the BBC said that the producers of Panorama , the public broadcaster's top-rated morning talk show, said that they "were surprised to hear Mr Pike's testimony ... since, on the face of it, it seems to contradict one aspect of what he'd written in a letter to the program." In his response, Pike said that his testimony to Parliament last week referred only to one case that did not involve the "rogue" reporter, Clive Goodman.

24/10/2011