The press watchdog has rapped a regional daily for wrongly describing a politician as a “failed Conservative Party election candidate” – even though he was elected.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation has upheld a complaint against the Belfast Telegraph over a comment piece it ran, in which it referenced a Twitter post Jeffrey Peel had made about Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long’s decision to vote in favour of vaccine passes.

In the column, the writer made the claim about Mr Peel’s electoral record, which he said was inaccurate.

Complaining under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, Mr Peel said he had only stood for the Conservative Party on a single occasion in England at local government level where he was elected with more than 50pc of the vote.

In response, the Bel Tel said the claims was a brief reference within an opinion piece that focused on his tweet and criticism of the government’s pandemic response.

In addition, the newspaper said his electoral success was not widely publicised because his LinkedIn profile and company website made no reference to it.

For these reasons, it believed this was not a “significant” inaccuracy but did offer to publish a clarification on the point.

While the reference appeared in a comment piece, IPSO found it amounted to a statement of fact that Mr Peel had failed as a Conservative Party representative in an election and, as such, the Bel Tel should have been able to provide a basis for this statement in order to demonstrate that it took sufficient care over the accuracy of the reference.

The paper was unable to provide any information to support its assertion and as such there was a failure on its part to take care over the accuracy of the statement.

The complaint was partially upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.