The court of appeal has ruled that green energy entrepreneur and Labour donor Dale Vince should receive damages from Associated Newspapers after the Daily Mail used his photograph alongside a headline about a “sex pest donor”. The judges found that this created an “obvious injustice” because many casual readers would have been misled into thinking the allegation referred to Vince, even though the article itself was about another donor. The decision matters because it strengthens the idea that publishers can be held responsible for misleading presentation, not just the wording buried in the full text.

The disputed article was published in June 2023 under the headline “Labour repays £100,000 to sex pest donor”, but the donor in question was Davide Serra, not Vince. Vince’s image appeared in print and on the Mail+ app, and although it was replaced online after 47 minutes, it remained in the print edition. Vince, who has donated more than £5m to Labour over several years, brought a data protection claim after an earlier libel action failed; the appeal court overturned a high court decision that had dismissed that claim, with Sir Geoffrey Vos saying ANL had “no real prospect” of defending the damages case.