Board of Deputies Vice President Marie van der Zyl has reacted to a ruling by the Independent Press Standards Organisation which acknowledged that a line in a column by Trevor Kavanagh “was capable of giving serious offence” but concluded there was no breach of its code.
Marie said: “This decision suggests that the IPSO code is unfit for purpose and is in urgent need of redrafting. It is incomprehensible that the committee could at once acknowledge that the article “was capable of giving serious offence, given it could be interpreted as a reference to the rhetoric preceding the Holocaust”, and yet conclude that there was no breach of the code. The IPSO code clearly needs to be reviewed to protect minority groups, not least from comments that echo the tone of Nazi propaganda.”