The Aftermath — For the ITC: Judicial Review — For ITV: The Monopolies and Mergers Commission

Abstract

The IBA had been subject to a judicial review in relation to the programme Scum broadcast on Channel 4 on 10 June 1983, which had previously been banned by the BBC. Mary Whitehouse, President of the National Viewers and Listeners Association (NVALA), had been granted leave by the High Court to seek a judicial declaration that the IBA had breached its statutory duty in allowing Scum, a programme about conditions inside a Borstal for young offenders, to be broadcast. On 13 April 1984 the High Court ruled that although the programme was highly controversial and at the borders of tolerance allowed by Section 4(1)(a) on taste and decency and offence of the 1981 Broadcasting Act, the decision to show the programme was not perverse. But it ruled that the IBA Director General, John Whitney, had committed a grave error of judgement by failing, initially, to refer Scum to Members of the Authority. However, following an appeal by the IBA against the High Court declaration, the Appeal Court, on 3 April 1985, under Sir John Donaldson, ruled that the IBA (unlike the NVALA) had been set up to make qualitative judgements about programmes and that the Divisional Court was wrong to criticise the Director General. Mrs Whitehouse’s considerable costs, estimated at £30,000, were paid by an unnamed donor.