Commons Speaker's wife Sally Bercow has settled a libel action brought by Lord McAlpine after the High Court found a tweet posted by her was highly defamatory of the Tory peer.
After the ruling by Mr Justice Tugendhat in Lord McAlpine's favour, Mrs Bercow said: "I have accepted an earlier offer his lawyers made to settle the matter."
The amount of damages was not disclosed.
Her posting appeared two days after a Newsnight report last November wrongly implicated the former Conservative Party treasurer in allegations of sex abuse at Bryn Estyn children's home in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mrs Bercow denied that the tweet – "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*" – was defamatory, but Lord McAlpine, who has already received six-figure payouts from the BBC and ITV, said it pointed "the finger of blame" during a media frenzy.
Yesterday the judge agreed and said it implied Lord McAlpine was a paedophile who was guilty of sexually abusing boys living in care.
Mrs Bercow said later: "In November 2012, I tweeted the question 'Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *innocent face*'. I did not tweet this with malice, and I did not intend to libel Lord McAlpine. I was being conversational and mischievous, as was so often my style on Twitter.
"I very much regret my tweet, and I promptly apologised publicly and privately to Lord McAlpine for the distress I caused him. I also made two offers of compensation."
Speaking for Lord McAlpine, Andrew Reid of RMPI Solicitors said he was pleased with the judge's finding that the tweet was highly defamatory.
He said: "Mr Justice Tugendhat's judgment is one of great public interest and provides both a warning to, and guidance for, people who use social media.
"It highlights how established legal principles apply to social media, and how the courts take account of the particular way in which social media operates when reaching decisions on whether publications are defamatory."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article