Sir Frederick Barclay releases video connected with Ritz Hotel bugging

Billionaire tycoon Sir Frederick Barclay has released a video that appears to show his nephew Alistair Barclay planting a bug at the Ritz Hotel. Sir Frederick and his daughter, Amanda, are involved in a legal dispute over the bug, allegedly placed by the son of Sir Frederick’s brother, Sir David Barclay. They are suing three of Sir David’s sons – Alistair, Aidan and Howard – Aidan’s son Andrew and Philip Peters, a board director of the Barclay Group. They allege misuse of private information, breach of confidence and breach of data protection laws in a case that they filed in January. Since then, lawyers for the parties have been arguing over access to the recordings, described as “commercial espionage on a vast scale” by Sir Frederick’s legal team in documents prepared for a court hearing two weeks ago. At that hearing, representatives of the press asked the judge, Mr Justice Warby, to hand over the footage, which made up part of the legal arguments. In a ruling on 7 May, Warby said the court wasn’t in a position to hand over the video but there was nothing to stop the parties in the case from doing so, which Sir Frederick did earlier this morning. In a statement, Sir Frederick said he was doing it to highlight how easy it is for people to have their privacy breached. “The decision to release this video of this deliberate and premeditated invasion of my privacy is in the public interest,” he said. “I do not want anyone else to go through the awful experience of having their personal and private conversations listened to by scores of strangers. “Furthermore, it is surely in everyone’s interests for the law to be changed to prevent people, outside the authorities, using sophisticated spying devices that have such an intrusive impact. “My understanding is that following a question asked in Parliament, the government has said it is ‘open to suggestion’ on this issue. I am putting this video evidence forward as a graphic demonstration of how easy it is to spy on people in public places and to help bring about legislation to prevent such damaging intrusion.” Without proper legislation, members of the public are vulnerable to invasive surveillance by individuals or companies such as Quest, which can obtain sensitive and personal information that can be used to harmful effect. The recordings, according to Sir Frederick’s legal team, “captured over 1,000 separate conversations over a period of months. They run to 94 hours of audio recordings”. According to an earlier ruling, these took place between November and January this year.