Hacking row: PCC head ‘to resign’

29 July 2011 Last updated at 06:47 ET

Peta Buscombe took on the role in April 2009

The head of the Press Complaints Commission is to resign after growing criticism of its handling of the phone hacking scandal, the BBC understands.

Baroness Peta Buscombe has chaired the watchdog since April 2009 but has faced a backlash over the saga, which led to the closure of the News of the World.

A source said a formal announcement of her resignation was imminent.

The source said the PCC met on Tuesday but would not confirm whether she offered or was asked to step down.

Baroness Buscombe, 57, is a former lawyer and chief executive of the Advertising Association. She was elevated to the House of Lords in 1998 and has been a Tory frontbench spokeswoman on several subjects.

In November 2009, she withstood calls to resign after she questioned lawyer Mark Lewis’s evidence to MPs over phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World.

Mr Lewis brought a libel action against the PCC and Baroness Buscombe over the comments.

She also came under fire the same month for a report in which the PCC appeared to clear the NoW of phone hacking after after the paper’s former royal editor Clive Goodman and investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed in 2007.

The PCC was established in 1991 to enforce a code of practice for UK newspaper and magazine publishers and editors.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister David Cameron accused the PCC of being “ineffective and lacking in rigour” and cited the need for a “new system entirely”. Labour leader Ed Miliband said the self-regulatory body was a “toothless poodle”.

In other developments:

• Labour MP Tom Watson is asking the Culture, Media and Sport committee to recall News International chairman James Murdoch to give more evidence on phone hacking
• Allegations have emerged that News of the World illegally accessed the phone belonging to the mother of murder victim Sarah Payne
• BSkB’s board has unanimously agreed to keep James Murdoch as its chairman
• A man has admitted throwing a shaving foam pie at Rupert Murdoch

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