Latest In High Court Channel 5 Challenge

In the High Court this afternoon the QC for the ITC rounded on the criticisms of the ITC’s award of the Channel 5 license.

He matched each point with an argument to refute it. The ITC was accused of accepting an increase of £100 million in C5B’s funding plan: the argument against this was that the increase was a legitimate response to the ITC’s request for more information regarding the plan; in response to the accusation that the ITC never demanded evidence of the legitimacy of this increase, it was put forward that future predictions about the financial status of companies can never be given a firmer commitment than a statement of intent; the acceptance of this increase by the ITC was not unfair to the other bidders because they could have been treated in the same way – indeed, UKTV and Virgin were similarly questioned about the viability of their plans; the final accusation, that because the whole of the ITC did not know about the increase in C5B’s funding it was unlawful, was countered by the fact that only a small number of people at the ITC had knowledge of a particular bidder and had no obligation to pass any information around. The hearing continues tomorrow.