The BBC ignores Donorgate's latest twist

I've just been listening to Today, and am flabbergasted by their news judgement. Other than in the paper reviews, I heard no mention ofA David Hencke's sensational scoop today. (Maybe they mentioned it in the few minutes when I was, er, otherwise engaged?)

According to Hencke: Labour officials helped lawyers acting for David Abrahams to draw up complex covenants that allowed the millionaire businessman to pay up to £650,000 indirectly to the party, the Guardian has learned.

The arrangement, which was set up four years ago, was regarded as a "loophole" that allowed Abrahams to lawfully pay the money and remain unidentified.

The Guardian understands it was drawn up in 2003 through John McCarthy, the Newcastle solicitor acting for Abrahams, and put to two middle-ranking Labour officials at the party's London headquarters.
If this is correct, it doesn't just give 'Donorgate' legs; it adds an entirely new dimension to it. And the BBC effectively ignores it. Bizarre.

I add one caveat. It may be, I suppose, that the BBC wants its own proof, given that the story is by David Hencke. He is a brilliant sleuth, but sometimes his enthusiasm runs away with him. I've been a victim of this.

Seven years ago, I was greeted by this Guardian story:

Chance chat over dinner led Blair to order u-turn on private beds

David Hencke, Westminster correspondent, The Guardian
Friday July 28, 2000
The Guardian

When Tony Blair took Cherie for dinner at the fashionable River Cafe restaurant in west London earlier this year, it was coincidence that a Daily Express associate editor, Stephen Pollard, was eating with his girlfriend at a table nearby.

On the way out, the prime minister called the other couple over for coffee, and they began talking animatedly about the NHS bed crisis.

During the conversation Mr Blair mentioned a chap, whose name he could not remember, who had challenged him on Newsnight in February over people left on trolleys in NHS hospitals.

Mr Blair was seeking confirmation from an old colleague (Mr Pollard had been a Labour researcher when the PM had been an opposition MP) that he had not been fed a line by the private sector. The unknown man turned out to be Tim Evans, external affairs director of the Independent Healthcare Association - effectively the most powerful lobby for the 460,000 beds and 211 hospitals and nursing homes in the private sector.

Mr Evans had in essence caught out the prime minister by getting him to agree to use spare capacity in private hospitals to help out the NHS.

After the TV programme, Mr Blair went over to Mr Evans and questioned him. Mr Evans, a fast-talking postgraduate who previously worked at the free market Adam Smith Institute, gave an instant run-down of the country's private facilities, pointing out 800 high dependency beds and operating theatre facilities that were underused. He also mentioned he knew Mr Pollard, and that the NHS executive had sent out a circular making it all but impossible for the NHS to use private beds.

Mr Blair went away and did some checks. The story stood up, and it helped persuade the prime minister that he should take personal charge of the whole NHS initiative.

He then discovered that his former health secretary, Frank Dobson, had shifted the NHS's position from neutrality toward using the private sector when necessary, to one of being positively hostile.

The NHS executive annual letter sanctioned by Mr Dobson and sent to all chief executives and GPs on September 9, 1997 read: "Health authorities, GPs and NHS trusts should explore the scope to make maximum cost-effective use of local NHS capacity before contemplating recourse to private sector hospital provision. Where care is nonetheless commissioned from private hospitals, the reasons must be reported to the regional office."

The circular had made hospital trusts nervous at using beds in nearby private hospitals in the winter beds crisis. It also led to a heated but fruitless exchange between the private sector and Robert Hill, the Downing Street policy adviser, weeks before Mr Blair's appearance on Newsnight.

Within days of the River Cafe conversation, Mr Blair is understood to have ordered Alan Milburn, the health secretary, to repeal the offending letter. But that was not all. Letters were sent out to a range of leading doctors, health care companies and drug firms to come for talks at No 10 - ostensibly with the Downing Street policy unit, though most visitors were ushered straight into the PM's office.

What emerged was an instruction from Downing Street for a concordat with the private sector to be negotiated by senior civil servants at the Department of Health, who months before had dismissed the idea. The fruits of the deal were published yesterday.

An interesting scoop on the inside story behind the NHS Plan. The only problem was that it was total and utter nonsense. Not a word ofA the story about me, my girlfriend, Mr Blair and the River Cafe was true.

Now it's hardlyA defamatory to be accused of being influentiual. But if a story is based on a supposed conversation between two people, one of whom is a journalist, the other the PM, then there's only going to be one source - and it ain't going to be the PM. So it looked as if I'd been shooting my mouth off about my supposed influence on the then Prime Minister (which was, in reality, zero). I hadn't been, as the meeting in the River Cafe never happened.

Once you get the reputation as a blabbermouth, you never lose it, so I had to get a correction asap. And to give the Guardian credit, when I told them that the story was pure fantasy, they caved in (although quite why David Hencke never bothered calling me to ask about his story - a basic rule of journalism - remains a mystery.)

They printed what I'm sure you'll agree was one of the most humiliating apologies ever:

Stephen Pollard, an apology.

There were a number of significant errors in a report by David Hencke on page 9, yesterday, headed Chance chat over dinner led Blair to order u-turn on beds.

The report depended substantially on the assertion that Tony Blair had had an animated conversation on the NHS beds crisis with Stephen Pollard, described as an associate editor of the Daily Express, whom he was said to have met by chance while the latter was dining in the River Cafe with his girlfriend.

Mr Pollard is not an associate editor of the Daily Express; he is a columnist. He has never eaten in the River Cafe, let alone with Tony and Cherie Blair. While it is true that he has strong views on the NHS and the private sector, he has never discussed them "animatedly" with Tony or Cherie Blair.

Mr Hencke did not check any of this with Mr Pollard. Profuse apologies.

Game, set and match.