A regional daily has won a privacy battle which could have had “enormous implications” for publishers if a finding had been made against the newspaper.

Gary Disley, pictured, complained to the press watchdog after the Liverpool Echo reported that he had previously been jailed after “being caught buying secrets from a serving police officer” in a story about him winning a role in the Hollywood move Creed.

The newspaper reported that questions had been raised as to how he had won the role because the USA has “stringent” laws to block people with criminal records from visiting the country.

The Echo argued that a spent conviction did not constitute private information, and in a ruling published yesterday, the Independent Press Standards Organisation agreed in this case.

Mr Disley, above, who had been jailed for the offence in 2006, complained to IPSO under Clause 2 (Privacy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

He argued the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 was framed to prevent intrusions of this nature, saying it made clear that following a specified period of time, convictions (except those resulting in prison sentences of over four years and public protection sentences) may become spent, and the offender is regarded as rehabilitated.

But the Echo argued that IPSO finding a spent conviction was private information would have enormous implications for publishers, given their vast online archives, adding that it would be disproportionate and would undermine the work of the Information Commissioner, the courts and parliament.

It said the fact that the conviction was historic had been acknowledged explicitly in the article, and it did not accept that reporting the fact of a spent conviction represented an intrusion into an individual’s private life.

Mr Disley’s case had been widely reported on in 2006, and the Echo added the details of the conviction was available to anyone who carried out a search for his name.

The Echo also noted that the Information Commissioner’s Office had previously rejected a complaint that suggested that a newspaper was in breach of the Data Protection Act for holding an archived story on an individual’s spent conviction on its website.

It referred to guidance, published by the ICO, to demonstrate that there was a difference between the rules applied to search engines and those applied to journalistic content.

The Echo added that the matter of how Mr Disley had entered the United States given his conviction, which must be declared on an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorisation) or a working VISA application, was a matter of public interest, and supplied IPSO with US Embassy guidance which states that “the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act does not apply to US visa law and spent convictions, regardless of when they occurred will have a bearing on a traveller’s eligibility for admission into the United States”.

Mr Disley did not accept that the publication of this information was justified in the public interest, saying thousands of individuals with criminal records are able to enter the United States, further arguing that the article under complaint disclosed the information to a new audience, who would not have delved into the newspaper’s archive to find the story.

IPSO recognised that an individual may have a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to a spent conviction, but found the Echo’s reporting of this was relevant to his role in the film, wich was the focus of the article, and therefore related to an aspect of his professional life.

The article had further identified a matter of public interest in that it had questioned how the complainant had been able to enter the United States and work there, when the country had “stringent rules” blocking individuals with criminal records from visiting.

Further, the complainant’s conviction had been widely reported on previously and information relating to it remained publicly accessible online.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.