Category Archives: BBC

Charlie Brooks Will Lewis email exchange: Chris Bryant MP “making stuff up”

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This little gem from Peter Jukes comes from documents released in the hacking trial and shows the dislike in the Murdoch Empire for Chris Bryant having the temerity to suggest they could have been. involved in phone hacking. Note BBC Panorama being ” hit” by two legal letters and the determination that Rebekah Brooks must be protected from any suggestion that phone hacking took place prior to 2005. ” We will not let this happen”says Will Lewis. No comment is necessary now.

peterjukes's avatarThe Criminal Media Nexus

Here’s the email exchange cited today in court between Rebekah Brooks‘ husband Charlie, and Will Lewis, formerly a senior executive at the Telegraph and then a senior News International executive.  It was prompted by questions raised in the House of Commons by the Labour MP Chris Bryant.

Will Lewis went on to run, under Lord Grabiner, the Management and Standards Committee, which provided evidence to the three MPS investigations – Operation Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta – as proof of co-operation with the police and compliance with US Department of Justice requirements under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Lewis is now a senior News Corp executive in New York.

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Why the Tories have only themselves to blame for not reining in BBC excesses

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Last week top BBC figures cut a pathetic stance in front of the Public Accounts Committtee. But two years ago Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, actually PREVENTED the National Audit Office from getting direct access to their accounts. Don’t take my word for it, see the actual correspondence between Sir Micheal Lyons, Chris Patten, Jeremy Hunt, and Amyas Morse, head of the NAO released under Freedom of Information to Exaro News. How dare Maria Miller now say she wants direct access to accounts, it could have been done two years ago

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

Remember the great fuss from the Conservatives on how they were going to hold the BBC to account, expose those mega salaries paid to Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and make sure the taxpayer got the best value for their money from the BBC.

Well if you beleive  culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster, it will be all happening from next year in the new cash frozen agreement to fund the BBC. He has spent the last year telling us about his success in allowing Parliament’s National Audit Office the right to launch any inquiry it likes into whether the BBC is value for money.

To quote him directly: “It is right that licence-fee payers have confidence that the BBC is spending money wisely, so I am pleased that the NAO now has the right to full access to BBC information. Its new power to decide which…

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Work Programme providers’ plea is an insult to everyone they have mishandled

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This is not good news for the BBC, the work programme or the government. If you take in context the scandal involving A4e which provided placements under first programme I did an extra investigation on top of the work done by the Public Accounts Committee exposing failings in A4e internal audit. My investigation revealed in one small town Bridlington A4 e had placed people with as firm going into liquidation, one run by people from a a house in Rotherham that never filed accounts, another with a company not registered at Companies House, and two with a cafe and taxi firm that subsequently went bust. In other places it turned out they had sent one person to a lap dancing club in Liverpool and a person with a criminal record to a firm which didn’t want to employ people with criminal records. See my own blog https://davidhencke.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/exclusive-how-you-got-state-funded-work-experience-in-a-strip-club-with-a4e/

Mike Sivier's avatarMike Sivier's blog

It isn’t very often one can say a news report was shocking – not because of the subject matter, but because of the way it was reported.

That was the situation tonight with the BBC’s item in which Work Programme providers complained that they need more money to “help” the most challenging jobseekers into work.

This group, of course, being benefit claimants in the work-related activity group of Employment and Support Allowance.

This group being the most consistently abused and neglected element of the new underclass created by the Conservative-led Coalition government, demonised and hated by the right-wing press, often attacked in the street (to judge from first-hand accounts), many of whom have been driven to suicide or death caused by their conditions, which have been worsened by the unacceptable (and to most people reading this, inconceivable) amount of stress the DWP, Atos (the private company assessing their fitness…

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BBC Newsnight:This hysterical media frenzy must not obscure the real child abuse story

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BBC Newsnight; Frenzy could obscure the real child abuse issue Pic Courtesy:BBC

Prompted by the mass media interest in the North Wales child sexual abuse scandal last week  I was asked on the Today programme whether I  thought there was a witch hunt against  leading Tory figures. I said No.

If I was asked the same question about a witch hunt  this week, I would say unhesitatingly say yes. But not against Tory politicians, against the BBC and the cause of investigative journalism.

Don’t get me wrong I am appalled by the shoddy journalism that meant a paedophile victim was not shown a photo of his alleged perpetrator – whether he would be named or not – and the scandal that followed the naming of the unfortunate Lord McAlpine across the internet.(see original Guardian story –   http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/08/mistaken-identity-tory-abuse-claim).

Anybody in touch with reality should know that when the victim was a young vulnerable person in a care home  he would be very unlikely to know the names of any Tory politicians. Ask any young person today , and unless they are a political nerd like me, they are more likely to be able to name the Man U and Chelsea front bench than be able to tell  you any of the names of  Dave Cameron’s  coalition Cabinet. And I am puzzled why a much better researched programme on Jimmy Saville was not broadcast..

What is alarming me  is the media hysteria surrounding this. Journalists are natural gossips,nervy, adrenalin fuelled, and totally obsessed with the workings of their own trade. Joe Public, while  naturally alarmed that organisation like the BBC should get such a major fact wrong – and rightly unhappy that an elderly senior politician should be traduced in this way, is by no means so obsessed.

The resignation of the BBC director general should allow the BBC to put its top-heavy chain of command in order and get a proper grip on the way it commissions its investigative journalism work. As readers of this blog will know I am not an uncritical fan of the Beeb, previous blogs attacked it for wasting money on moving offices, its failure to be properly accountable to Parliament, and its tax affairs. I did not call it the British Tax Avoidance Corporation for nothing.

However the idea that everyone in Newsnight is as dead as a dodo is frankly nonsense.  My own experience in bringing with Exaro News  an outside story about the scandal of the tax avoidance practice surrounding the appointment of Ed Lester, the head of the Student Loans Company, gives a  different impression. Peter Rippon, the then editor and a young producer, Robin Punt ( now on loan to BBC South East ) could not have been more thorough and  Robin was prepared to spend hours examining the hoard of  Whitehall documents which disclosed the scandal. They could not have been more professional. Nor were they fazed that the BBC would come under the spotlight for the same thing I was investigating, they were interested in the story. And it proved right, sparking a government investigation exposing 2500 others.

But my main complaint is something else. We are still in the middle of a very serious investigation into what  happened to a lot of very vulnerable young  people and whether they were used for the sexual gratification of older men while they were in the care of the community.

I firmly believe that by no means everything has come out about this troubled period in the 1980s and 1990s but I am not going to speculate while I am still gathering evidence. There is certainly enough to prove that people did raise this appalling spectre not just in North Wales and it was known to the authorities. But it is too early yet to point fingers at particular perpetrators.

It is vitally important that people who know about this and the victims can come forward with the confidence to  talk to the police. It is a  valid role for journalists to investigate this area – not least because we are the one group of people who have the time and ability to tell this sad story. Also the very knowledge that journalists – and in this case Mps like Tom Watson –  are determined to get to the bottom of this matter – often spurs the authorities to keep digging  because we won’t go away.

There is another reason. That the care system allowed this to happen is appalling. If the stories of some of the victims are true, it is a life damaging criminal act and a betrayal of trust. But as the  Newsnight debacle shows it must be accurate and it must not trash the reputations of other people.

Today’s care system also needs reform after the appalling grooming scandal in Rochdale. Have we learnt anything and could this happen now?

If I want anything out of this I want social workers, local government officials, the police  and the perpetrators of such foul deeds to think twice before either condoning or participating. I want them to think like many politicians do already ” what would this be like if this was published on the front page of  The Sun, the Daily Mail, The Guardian or leading the BBC News?”. And then not do this or blow the whistle on such dark deeds.

Tax Avoidance:Treasury ” We screwed Up”,BBC ” Nothing is wrong.”

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Treasury mandarin Sir Nick Macpherson- admitting catalogue of errors Pic Courtesy: BBC

Yesterday Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee had the Treasury, the BBC, Revenue and Customs and local government before them. Subject: How have so many publicly paid figures got away with tax avoidance.

You could not draw more of a distinction between the evidence given by Whitehall and the BBC on the  same issue. There are are detailed reports by me and Mark Conrad on the Exaro news website ( http://www.exaronews.com) about the hearing.

Suffice to say Sir Nick Macpherson, permanent secretary to the Treasury, put his hands up. He admitted ” a catalogue of errors” had led Student Loans Company chief, Ed Lester, to get a £182,000 a year  job with the government and avoid having tax and national insurance deducted at source. Indeed Howard Orme, the financial director of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, admitted he originally wanted £260,000 a year to do the job.

The disclosure that 2400 Whitehall staff have personal contracts shocked Sir Nick. He was forthright: “The Treasury had been asking the wrong questions. We were concentrating on value for money and not on the tax implications. We should have looked have looked at the figures more carefully.”

Contrast this with the BBC’s chief financial officer,Zarin Patel, who despite disclosing that the BBC employs a third of staff – some 25,000 – as freelances and admitting that 148 of the 467 journalist talent are paid through personal service companies, thought there was no tax avoidance at all.

Patel said: “There is no difference to the HMRC whatever way this is done.” In other words it doesn’t matter.

Not a view shared by the committee, Margaret Hodge, the chair, pointing out there was nothing worse than ” a person paid by the taxpayer avoiding tax.”

Patel’s complacency was also shattered later when HM Revenue and Customs chief, Lin Homer, revealed the paucity of checks on these people who have personal service companies. She disclosed that over three years the number of checks had been 25,12 and 23 respectively. One MP  even wondered whether this should be made public because it would only encourage more tax avoidance and evasion. This is now going up to 230 – but with 3,000 non journalists at the BBC on personal service contracts alone – how much difference will this make. More grist to the case presented by Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, that the Revenue is indeed well understaffed to do its job.

More interest for Freedom of Information freaks – it emerged that the information I got through  the freedom of information request  which blew the whole story – is now to be used as a case study by Whitehall of how something can go wrong ( or at last I hope so!).

The London borough of Barnet also emerged in its true colours . Evidently it had not replied to a request from the Local Government Association to disclose how many senior staff were on personal service contracts – the number according to the redoubtable Mrs Angry @brokenbarnet is 13. But Mps appear to be on the case – they will need to be vigilant, Barnet has a habit of not co-operating with anyone who wants information.

The hearing was a success. The next stage will be to ensure there is proper action to get these wheezes stamped out, the sooner, the better. And of course end the BBC’s complacency over this issue.

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now with full cast of characters to appear before MPs

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

On Monday BBC chiefs will appear before Parliament’s most powerful committee, the Commons Public Accounts Committee.

They will be there to answer questions on the vexed question of employing people through personal service companies to avoid paying tax and national insurance at source.

The BBC will be joined be civil servants from Whitehall and local government who have all been exposed of using this device to employ people and avoid paying tax and national insurance at source.

The scandal was first exposed by me on the ExaroNews website (http://www.exaronews.com)  and BBC Newsnight when it was discovered that Ed Lester, the Student Loans chief, had used this device to be paid £182,000 a year.

The furore that followed led Danny Alexander,Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to launch an inquiry which discovered that another 2500 civil servants were using the same device across Whitehall. The review’s findings were also leaked to…

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Why Margaret Hodge must hold the British Tax Avoidance Corporation to account: Updated

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George Entwistle, new director general. Time to tackle tax avoidance? pic courtesy: Metro

On Monday BBC chiefs will appear before Parliament’s most powerful committee, the Commons Public Accounts Committee.

They will be there to answer questions on the vexed question of employing people through personal service companies to avoid paying tax and national insurance at source.

The BBC will be joined be civil servants from Whitehall and local government who have all been exposed of using this device to employ people and avoid paying tax and national insurance at source.

The scandal was first exposed by me on the ExaroNews website (http://www.exaronews.com)  and BBC Newsnight when it was discovered that Ed Lester, the Student Loans chief, had used this device to be paid £182,000 a year.

The furore that followed led Danny Alexander,Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to launch an inquiry which discovered that another 2500 civil servants were using the same device across Whitehall. The review’s findings were also leaked to Exaro and BBC Newsnight.

Less well covered is that the BBC and local government were up to the same thing . Until now both sectors have got away with it. on Monday they can be called to account and should be.

The BBC has enjoyed the protection of Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, and as never been required to disclose the full picture.  Indeed the biggest disclosure came from David Mowat, a former member of the public accounts committee, who  found out through a freedom of information request that the BBC employed 3000 people- more than the whole of Whitehall – through personal service companies. And none of these were journalists who are exempt from FOI because they are regarded as ” talent.” So the full  picture is bound to be much,much bigger.

Similarly Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, has not followed through vigorously what is going on in local government.No attempt has been made to probe tax avoidance at the London boroughs of Barnet, Hackney and Hammersmith and Fulham or the blatant disregard for employing people directly on the Isle of Wight.

Monday will be a great opportunity for the terrier instincts of Margaret Hodge, Richard Bacon, Stephen Barclay, Meg Hillier and Fiona Mactaggart to name but a few to ask a few very pointed questions and demand explanations from the BBC and town halls. I hope they will not disappoint and not be put off by Whitehall  sniping about the way they question witnesses.

The BBC after all would not exist if it did not receive licence  fees from taxpayers and even non taxpayers. Its new director general George Entwistle, should make the Corporation becoming more transparent as a priority. Over to you, Margaret.

Since this has appeared a full cast list of people  summoned to appear has been announced. They are:

 Carolyn Downs, Local Government Association, Zarin Patel, Chief Financial Officer, BBC and David Smith, Head of Employment Tax, BBC; Sir Nicholas MacPherson KCB, Permanent Secretary, HM Treasury, Howard Orme, Finance Director, Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Lin Homer, Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary, HMRC and William Hague, Executive Director, Efficiency and Reform Group, Cabinet Office.

Followers of the story might be interested to know that documents released to me  under Freedom of Information point to Harold Orme being directly connected to the controversial appointment of Ed Lester, head of the Students Loan Company, with the knowledge that he would not have any tax or national insurance directly deducted by the Student Loans Company. This is a good call by the committee.

Exaro  News will have a story up on their website  on Monday evening –  after the committee has met.

Is the BBC the British Tax Avoidance Corporation?

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BBC now in row over paying 3,000 people through personal service companies

The BBC has disclosed that around 3000 people on the Corporation’s books are paid through personal service companies – the same system used until banned by the Treasury by Ed Lester, the Student Loans Company chief, to avoid paying tax or national insurance at source.The full story is in Exaro News at http://www.exaronews.com It comes from a Freedom of Information request by David Mowat, the Conservative MP for Warrington,South and only covers part of the picture.
Altogether the BBC across the globe has 20,000 directly paid employees and 12,000 freelancers – 3,000 of them through personal service companies.
The figures are an underestimate since it does not include many of the BBC’s commercial companies and all of BBC’s talent – defined by them as ” people who appear in presenting or journalistic roles on our television, radio and online.”
So none of the high paid presenters will be in this breakdown nor will be people employed on many of the BBC’s commercial activities. Nor are people supplied through Reed Personnel who can choose to be paid through a personal service company, and BBC has decided to keep their numbers secret.
This means the figure must be much, much higher. A breakdown provided by the BBC – suggests that more than half the 3,000 are taking less than £26,000 a year, which suggests that they are genuine freelance. Another 1300 or so earn over £26,000 – 318 over £50,000 – and of these five earning over £150,000 and 31 over £100,000.
The BBC insist that none of them are permanent staff and like the government point out that none of them are being paid illegally.
A BBC spokeswoman said:”In the main they are hired to do specific jobs for a fixed period of time such as directing, editing and other craft skills. When a person is contracted in this way it is their responsibility to organise their tax arrangements directly with the HMRC. This is entirely in keeping with HMRC regulations and is standard practice across broadcasting and many other industries.”
However there are other questions to be answered. Why are the BBC not doing the same review as Whitehall in finding out whether all these contracts are genuine? David Mowat is right when says the BBC management should do this.
And why can’t we find out what the BBC Talent is paid – rather than the BBC sheltering behind an exemption through their Freedom of Information Act aimed to protect journalists; sources not disclose their pay – since it is paid by the licence payer.
Also rather disturbingly two prominent journos (one ex BBC)have told me the BBC tried to encourage them to be paid through personal service companies when they did not want to do it. Is this pressure from the BBC to avoid having to pay national insurance and encouraging possible tax avoidance. We should be told.

Victory: Ed Lester now started paying full tax

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Following the exposure by the joint  Exaro News and BBC Newsnight investigation  Ed Lester, head of the Student Loans Company, is  now having  his tax and national insurance deducted at source.

 The deal backdated to February 1 will mean he will be on the pay roll until his contract ends in February 2013. The change will mean that he will have to pay full National Insurance contributions. The SLC – which has avoided paying NI will have to pay £17,000 to the tax authorities  this coming year.  Calculations by accountancy specialists means that on his £182,00o salary (including £14,000 bonus and £28,000 pension ) he will be possibly have to pay £26,000 in tax which he could have avoided by placing the contract through his personal service company, Placepass, based at his home on an island in River  Thames  at Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

He could also be charged benefits in kind on his Glasgow flat which the government is funding as part of a £550 a week expenses package.

This is the statement from the Student Loans Company:

“We are taking forward the changes to Ed Lester’s contract, following the announcement by Universities Minister, David Willetts on 2 February 2012.

“Ed Lester will be a Student Loans Company employee with effect from 1 February 2012 and tax and NI will be deducted at source. His salary and bonus arrangements will be consistent with his previous contract.”

One down, how many more to go, when the investigation by Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, starts to bite.

Why the Tories have only themselves to blame for not reining in BBC excesses

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Jeremy Hunt : Playing a blinder in making sure the public don't know too much. Pic Courtesy: The Guardian

Remember the great fuss from the Conservatives on how they were going to hold the BBC to account, expose those mega salaries paid to Graham Norton and Jeremy Paxman and make sure the taxpayer got the best value for their money from the BBC.

Well if you beleive  culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster, it will be all happening from next year in the new cash frozen agreement to fund the BBC. He has spent the last year telling us about his success in allowing Parliament’s National Audit Office the right to launch any inquiry it likes into whether the BBC is value for money.

To quote him directly: “It is right that licence-fee payers have confidence that the BBC is spending money wisely, so I am pleased that the NAO now has the right to full access to BBC information. Its new power to decide which areas of activity to scrutinise will increase transparency while maintaining the BBC’s independence.”

In fact this statement is the worst kind of spin and churnalism. The hilarious fact is that the national papers that were critical of the BBC, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph plus for that matter the Huffington Post website  ( see it here http://huff.to/vDq6y5 ) fell for the whole thing, hook line and sinker.

How do we know this to be true? Well reluctantly after both the NAO and culture ministry had refused to reveal it,  all the correspondence between the remarkably named Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, Jeremy Hunt and the Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust and his predecessor Sir  Michael Lyons, were released under a  Freedom of Information request to Exaro News, the new investigative website I work for. You can see  the two detailed factual articles at http://www.exaronews.com/ .

What they reveal is that Amyas – the nearest person we have in Britain to ” Mr Taxpayer” was engaged in a bloody war of attrition with the BBC and Mr Hunt on behalf of you, the licence fee payer, to get proper unfettered access to the BBC and that he lost.

At one stage he was extremely fed up.  In Whitehall language he wrote, ” “I am concerned that audit access that depends on continuing agreement between the government and the BBC rather than on statute leaves important matters unresolved and may mean that, in practice, the coalition’s proposals may not take things much further forward in terms of independent scrutiny of the BBC.”

In even more stark language he said:”“I am disappointed that it remains your view that my reports should reach Parliament via the BBC Trust and secretary of state.” “It raises the possibility that the BBC Trust or the secretary of state could redact material or, indeed, not publish the report.” You can  download all the letters at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport website See http://bit.ly/ujwp60 if you want to trawl through them.

The reason why this public official is so cross is plain to see. Why he might have the right to investigate what he likes, he is shackled by what he can find out. For a start all those BBC stars can protect their deals from public scrutiny because he has no statutory right of access and cannot override the Data Protection Act.  Even the Royal Household is not so well protected from this and the mega salaries, also paid by the taxpayer, and  the rest of Whitehall can be  scrutinised.

Also no other organisation  examined by the NAO can delay the publication of a critical report by running off to the secretary of state.

Hunt also rejected giving the right of the NAO to audit the BBC accounts – something I am told auditors find extremely useful because  throws up very quickly information when money is misspent.

  He told Morse: “I do not intend to give the NAO statutory access. “I am not persuaded that I should require the BBC to appoint the NAO as its external auditor. I do not consider this is a necessary step in ensuring that the government commitment on NAO access is achieved.”

 Finally he put a gun to his head: ” “If we do not reach agreement, the NAO will not have access to the BBC at least until there is another chance to review the agreement in 2016.”

Hunt has played a blinder over this. He convinced the media that he is Mr Good Guy when actually he is a baddie. The trouble is that  it is you, the licence payer, who have been conned. You could tell  him if you want to. His e-mail is jeremy.hunt@culture.gsi.gov.uk.