A defamatory comment is one which reflects on a person’s reputation so as to lower the plaintiff in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally. The ordinary and natural meaning of the words may include any implication or inference which a reasonable reader guided by general knowledge would draw from the words.
Publication consists of communicating defamatory material to a third party. If this is in written form then the tort is Libel, if spoken it is slander The tort of libel is actionable per se (unlike slander where special damage must be proved).
That is the legal requirement to establish the offence. However, the defences to the above include Truth (known as justification). As the house of lords select committee report criticised day, merely repeating these criticisms would not amount to libel.
That is the position in the law of tort. However, the sticking point could be QR 999, where (paraphrasing) it is quite simply not on to criticise a senior officer where those criticisms would lead to others being dissatisfied with the actions of that officer or with their terms of service generally. As the HoL has already criticised day i dont personally think they could proceed with disciplinary action under that QR, as they could not prove that the letter from jenks caused any dissatisfaction that had not already been caused (and criticised) by that officer himself.
2 words to say about this. $h1te.