Category Archives: Whitehall

Did the former Cabinet Secretary unwittingly sanction “tax avoidance”?

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Gus O'Donnell: Tax avoiders friend in Whitehall? Pic Courtesy: Daily Telegraph

The huge  row following the disclosure  of the tax  ” avoidance” arrangements for Ed Lester, chief executive of the Students Loans Company, has concentrated on how government ministers approved the arrangement.

Not highlighted was the role of the then Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, recently retired on an index linked pension and getting £300 a day for every day he turns up as a newly ennobled peer.

Documents released to me under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Gus O’Donnell when he heard Lester was not going to be on the pay roll of the Student Loans Company rightly demanded an ” urgent clarification “. He also insisted on an explanation about the ” costs to the Exchequer” of the arrangement. He was then sent a detailed document which showed that if he was paid through an agency it would cost less than if he was on the staff. Details of  the document are published tonight on the Exaronews website (www.exaronews.com)  and also detailed in a story by Rajeev Syal on the Guardian website(http://bit.ly/yWOy7H ).

Basically it is a scam explanation – revealing huge fees (£83,000) to be paid to Penna Consulting, the management firm, who acted as middlemen to pass money on to  his private company – if he was taken on the pay roll. It also suggested that his expenses of £550 a week for a flat and fare would have to be grossed up to cover his personal tax bill if he was on the staff.

Meanwhile the savings side if he was not on the pay roll included a whopping £17,000 to the SLC for avoiding paying the employers national insurance contribution.

 Any cursory glance at these figures by anybody reasonably intelligent would suggest that these were sham calculations and could have been knocked down, particularly the big fee to the agency. Yet the e-mails show Gus was ” content”.

Frankly this is as bad as Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, not realising the tax implications of the deal. Here one of the most highly paid people in Whitehall and head of the civil service appears to be oblivious of what he is sanctioning. What does this say of the ability of people at the top or are they so used to paying out such big fees (taxpayers money) that they don’t notice?

I have tried to contact Lord O’Donnell for an explanation but he has not returned my calls. And the Cabinet Office is now sheltering around the fact that Danny Alexander has ordered a review to stop answering questions – even though some of the points I have raised have nothing to do with the review. Senior civil servants seem rather good at covering their tracks – it is probably a key part of their training.

Update: Whitehall tax avoidance – more evidence on the way

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Since this blog  revealing the Exaro News (http://www.exaronews.com) and BBC Newsnight investigation into the tax arrangement ministers approved for  Ed Lester, chief executive of the Student Loans Company, I have received a number of calls and e-mails suggesting this practice is more widespread than  just Whitehall. Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, has rightly ordered a Whitehall wide review to find out the scale of the arrangements, which he appears to have unwittingly endorsed. It looks like Mr Lester  will have to pay tax in the way everybody does when they hold down a full-time equivalent job – through PAYE.

Some 2500 people has so far viewed this blog on top of millions who would have seen it on TV, on the radio  and read it  in newspapers from the The Guardian to the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.

 I am now gathering more information to continue this investigation and would like to thank a number of people who have already contacted me. However if you know of a similar practice where you work  you can contact me direct on my e-mail david.hencke@gmail.com. All information will be treated in confidence and all sources – like the original tip-off – that led to the exposure – will be protected under the journalist’s code of practice.

Also if you know of consultancy firms  who make big charges for supplying these people  to the government and the public sector and then help them arrange how to avoid paying their full tax, let me know. Their fees are coming out of your taxes.

 Help stamp out people ripping you off by using your taxes from your hard-earned cash – by avoiding pay their fair share of tax – and stop HM Revenue and Customs having one rule for the workers and kid glove treatment for those with the money to exploit every loophole possible.

Exclusive: Whitehall tax avoidance “scam” revealed

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Flashy Student Loan Co HQ where Ed Lester works without being taxed at source. Pic courtesy BBC

Civil servants could be able to avoid legally paying tens of thousands of tax while working in Whitehall. An investigation by Exaro News and BBC Newsnight based on documents obtained by me through a Freedom of Information request has revealed an extraordinary personal tax deal negotiated by the Student Loan Company for its £182,000 a year Whitehall boss, Ed Lester. The deal is £140,000 salary,£14,000  bonus, £28,000 pension and £28,000 expenses for flight and Glasgow flat.

Documents released by the SLC and the Department of Business,Innovation and Skills reveal that Mr Lester, chief executive,pays no tax or national insurance at source but instead the SLC pay a consulting firm called Penna who pass the gross cash to a personal service company run by Mr Lester and a partner. This arrangement was approved by HM Revenue and Customs and the deal was signed off by David Willetts, the universities minister, and Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury.

As a result instead of paying tax at the top rate of 50 per cent – the company is likely to only have to pay corporation tax at the government’s new lower small company rate of 21 per cent and minimal national insurance. Mr Lester has declined to discuss the matter with Newsnight or Exaro News.

Full and extensive details are revealed in a series of articles on the Exaro News website (http://www.exaronews.com) – behind a pay wall but if you register  it is free for a week – or you can see the film about it on BBC Newsnight.

The investigation has forced Mr Alexander into ordering a  Whitehall wide inquiry to find out how many civil servants are benefitting from the same secret deals.  The reason is that ministers  DONT’ KNOW  and it looks like in Mr Willetts’ case DON’T CARE.  Alexander personally examined each top pay contract and now admits he missed the tax implications of this particular deal.

Whatever his inquiry reveals this arrangement looks to me on a par with all the recent scandals involving banker’s bonuses and Sir Fred the Shred’s stripped honours. Basically you as a taxpayer are paying the state to negotiate a deal for a very highly paid  official to avoid tax. This can’t be fair, right or decent to millions of low paid public and private sector workers who are paying a big whack in tax and can’t set up personal service companies – effectively to avoid paying tax. It also has the added insult that the man who has got this deal is pursuing every single student in the UK to make sure they pay every penny back of their student loan.

Dole queues – What dole queues? The huge divide among the unemployed

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Dole queues -growing rapidly in Labour, falling in some Tory and Lib seats Pic:courtesy Daily Mail

Ever wondered why with  dole queues at their highest levels since 1996, in many areas pubs and restuarants are heaving, the West End theatres full and motorways crowded with traffic? The answer is provided in an extraordinary analysis by the House of Commons Library of the latest claimant figures released by the government (see http://bit.ly/x6wWxw).

Far from  the picture painted by David Cameron’s infamous slogan ” We are in it together” the United Kingdom is as divided over who is on the dole and who isn’t as it is over bankers’ bonuses and public sector worker pay freezes. And it is not just the differences between the disproportionate numbers of young people-under 24- on the dole and an older generation in work.

It is  the fact that across  the nation the number of people claiming job seekers’ allowance is now dividing area against area and becoming party political. Put it simply the government – whether it intended to or not – is dumping on areas that voted Labour and leaving many coalition seats- Liberal Democrat and Conservative alike – completely unscathed from the grim dole reaper. In fact -taken year on year in some Tory and Lib Dem seats unemployment claims are, believe it or not, actually FALLING.

Am I making this up?  No it is all in the report. The Commons library report looks at dole claimants and breaks them down by constituency -taking as its base the economically active – those aged between 16 and 64 – and working out how many people in the constituency are unemployed.

It then ranks them all. The top 15 dole  constituencies-with the exception of three- are all Labour seats. And the other three are in Northern Ireland. The bottom 15 are all Conservative or Liberal Democrat. And the difference is stark . In Labour held Birmingham,Ladywood, – the Number One seat for dole claims- more than one in five people are claiming. In Liberal Democrat held West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, the figure is 1 in 100 and falling for the long term unemployed.

Among prominent politicians John Redwood and David Cameron both have miniscule numbers on the dole- and the overall jobless claims are falling in Redwood’sconstituency despite a rise in youth unemployment. While Liam Byrne, the shadow works and pension secretary, and ex union leader Jack Dromey have some of the highest. There is more on this in an article by me and Rajeev Syal on the Guardian Society website (see http://bit.ly/xvUv8M ) and by me in Tribune (http://bit.ly/z3dAhM).

Perhaps it can be best illustrated by comparing Liam Byrne constituency with Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Works and Pensions.

Liam Byrne’s Birmingham Hodge Hill  seat has the second highest number of dole claimants in the UK with 7257  claiming benefits – 1750 for over a year – and a rise of 723 – 250 on the long term register.

Chris Grayling in Epsom and Ewell has  1007 on the dole – an increase of 44 in a year – with a rise of just 5 people out of work for a year -to just 135.

No wonder perhaps the dole queues do not have the same resonance for the Tories  as Labour. Tory Mps’ surgeries are hardly going to be packed with desperate people looking for jobs – but Labour Mps are going to be overwhelmed. It also has a political impact and might be one reason why Labour is not capitalising on the recession- simply because in some areas it does not exist.

The most interesting point is that Lord Young’s much criticised statement about people never having it so good – is actually true in some Tory areas.

Labour is going to have try much harder to get the point of the horror of the dole queues across to a wider general public – because as it stands the Tories seem to have manipulated a recession that concentrates almost entirelyon their constituencies and affects mainly their voters.

More Revelations after Christmas

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A seasonal Xmas Picture: courtesy http;//email-junk.com/wallpaper

It is time for a Christmas break. Thanks to all followers  and viewers who have read this blog over the past year.

Normal service will resume after Christmas with fresh investigations in the pipeline  including one on a leading Labour councillor. There may also be further revelations about the life  and wealth of Francis Maude as the government in the season of good cheer ratchets up its campaign to increase pension contributions from teachers, civil servants, firefighters,probation officers, health workers and local government staff while cutting their benefits.

Francis Maude is  the first national figure subject to an armchair audit on this blog – part of the open society which he and David Cameron say they are keen to promote.

Also expect some suprising and fascinating revelations about Whitehall.

In the meantime have a good festive break while you can afford it.

Maude’s Tory Madrassa: The House of the Rising Spads

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Come into the garden,Maude. leafy outlook at Denny Garden - a tenant's perk

This is the second part of the Armchair Audit of Francis Maude -looking at his role as a landlord.

Not only can Mr Maude look forward to a platinum pension  from investment bankers, Morgan Stanley, (see previous blog) but he is  also making money as a  landlord in Kennington, south London by letting out rooms available only to young  ambitious Tories.

Just off the Kennington Road where he once lived lies Denny Crescent, a beautiful and leafy enclave in a somewhat grotty  area.

Here Mr Maude purchased  a home for £240,000 cash in 1999. The  three bedroomed property, one of a terrace, has more than doubled in value since then – a next door home was recently sold  for £485,000 – and boasts two special  features.

One is  a restricted covenant signed between Mr Maude and as the title-deed shows ” His Royal Highness Charles Philip Arthur George Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Rothesay,Earl of Chester, Carrick,Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland.”  Originally it was owned by the  Duchy of Cornwall which has imposed restrictions.

Mr Maude’s  terraced home  is Grade II listed. Lambeth Council’s description describes the  terrace as built in  “1913 by J D Coleridge for Duchy of Cornwall Estate. Crescent of 2-storey red brick cottages in Dutch style. Dark tiled roofs with dividing chimney walls and moulded wood eaves cornice. Returned crowstepped gables, with Roman cement coping, at ends and flanking centre. First floor brick band. Sash windows with glazing bars in moulded wood architraves. Half glazed doors in plain wood frames have low oblong fanlight. Handsome rainwater heads with Prince of Wales’ feathers and motto. ”

The second is membership for £125 a year and use of a private garden for his tenants, Denny Garden Ltd, opposite his home. You can find out all about this at http://dennygarden.wordpress.com.

EXPENSES SCANDAL

This property featured in the Daily Telegraph’s expenses scandal. It was the family’s London home – the electoral register shows Francis, Christina, and two of his daughters  Julia and Cecily, lived there until 2006.

Then Mr Maude  and his family swapped homes to a flat in nearby Imperial Court taking out a £345,000 mortgage and began claiming  substantial Parliamentary expenses on the flat. They charged the taxpayer £387.50 for moving the furniture from Denny Crescent there.

What the title deeds reveal is that Mr Maude also took out another mortgage with the HSBC Private Bank  on Denny Crescent raising another tranche of cash.

Mr Maude’s “tax efficiency” as they call it  is clever – at the time he claimed  interest on one mortgage from the taxpayer and offset new rental income from Tory activists in his old home  by loading all the mortgage  interest costs and repairs against the rental charge. That way he pays little tax.  And he has released hundreds of thousands of pounds of capital to spend himself. No wonder he is a highly paid former investment banker.

The property unlike next door – where the tenant pays Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall  £500 a month for the unfurnished house – is not registered as a  fair rent.

MAUDE’S TORY MADRASSA

Westminster gossip  among Tory Spads ( the name for political advisers to ministers) has it that the only way you can get a convenient place to lay your head at the Maude address is to be vetted by his daughters. No chance if you are not a rising Tory activist, preferably a special adviser or wannabe MP. It also ensures no indiscretions to outsiders at the dinner table. Some wag described it as “Maude’s madrassa”.

True or not Mr Maude has had both  infamous and rising stars as his tenants.

Maude's most infamous tenant: James McGrath Pic courtesy: Daily Telegraph

 Chief among them is Australian James McGrath, a  40 something strategic adviser to Boris Johnson.

 He was exposed by journalist and campaigner Marc Wadsworth for suggesting that black immigrants who were unhappy with living in a London run by Boris Johnson should go home (See Guardian comment  is free  http://bit.ly/sWjUCq). Despite being close to Lynton Crosby( now masterminding Boris’s campaign again) he was forced to quit and he ended up going home to Australia where he is campaigns director for the Liberal Party. He has threatened to return.  In an interview with Shane Greer in Total Politics,(see http://bit.ly/sN4Sgd ) he said: ” I might come back here, we’ll see what happens.

Shane: Who knows, maybe the Boris re-election?

James: “Maybe actually, that would be nice actually especially if Ken runs again. No worries.”

Shane: “Good to stick it to him?”

James: “Totally.”

Less controversial is Martha Varney, Maude’s tenant until 2010, but a rising star,in her late 20s / eraly 30s and now special adviser to  eccentric bin dumper Oliver Letwin, who works with Francis Maude, in the Cabinet Office.  She is paid between £40,000-£54,000 a year.

Even less well-known is Alistair Richardson, in his late 20s, another Tory wannabe who has written blogs for Platform10, urging in 2o08 that MPs  (now on £65,000) should be paid at least £100,000 a year.

There are also  people not on the public electoral register. So which rising Tory star will kip at Maude’s listed home next?

Francis Maude powers site hits to 80,000+

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Thanks to all who read my tale on Francis Maude’s gold plated pension. The number of hits is 1671  so far – most in the 48 hours after the story went up. Special thanks to Political Scrapbook who made it their main story for a couple of days, Hugh Muir at the Guardian Diary who wrote up the tale in the paper and Jonathen Ledger, general secretary at NAPO, plus the 25 or more of you who liked the tale so much that you retweeted it- fromRichard Simcox at the  Public and Commercial Services Union, Barnet bloggers,to cityalan, a professor at City University.

There is more on Maude to come soon -watch this space.

Exclusive: Francis Maude’s secret gold plated banker’s pension

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Francis Maude: The man with the gold plated pension. Pic courtesy: The Guardian

Armchair audit is  raising its sights. As well as looking as councillors like Brian Coleman, it is now turning the spotlight  on auditing the  seriously wealthy to see if they follow David Cameron’s dictum that we are in it all together.

Francis Maude is the public face for taking on the public sector trade unions and  insisting their low paid members are being offered the best possible  pension terms which anyone in the private sector will be really envious.

But is everyone in the private sector worse off than public sector workers? Not Mr Maude for a start.

He has taken one hit and is about to take another since he rejoined the Conservative led coalition.

His  Cabinet Office minister salary  is £98,740 (includes MP’s salary of £65,738). This is a reduction of £5197 on his Labour predecessor, Tessa Jowell.

It is his pension history which marks the real divide. When he reaches retirement age at 2018 he will be able – unlike his public sector colleagues –  to be able to draw FOUR pensions.

 He will get the state pension – promised by the coalition to reach £140 a week – which will go to everybody.

He will get  TWO public sector pensions – one as an MP and one as minister. Their arrangements are hideously complicated – and not as open as figures available for public sector workers.

As an MP  since 1983 of 28 years standing ( he was out of parliament between 1992-97) by 2015 he will entitled – assuming a virtual wage freeze – to a pension of around £31,000 a year because he has a private sector pension and this taken into consideration to save taxpayer’s cash. Otherwise it would be worth over £46,000.

But while workers will be paying higher pension contributions Mr Maude is able to pay less under this deal. His contribution rate drops from 7.9 per cent to 5.9 per cent.

His minister’s pension by 2015 will be worth over £10,000 a year. His contributions, to be fair, are now 11.9 per cent and will rise to 18 per cent.

This gives him a state pension in excess of £40,000 a year – TEN times the average pension of lower paid civil servants bearing the brunt of the cuts and FIVE times the average civil servant pension. For that matter it is also FIVE times the average teacher’s pension.

But this is by no means the full picture. These calculations  miss out Mr Maude’s private pension – which is a huge elephant in the negotiating room.

 During the period he was out of office Mr Maude was director of  27 companies between 1992 and 2011. Six were dissolved and three went bust.

 But standing out from the lot is a period of over two years from February 1994 to November 1996 when Mr Maude was managing director of  investment bankers,Morgan Stanley, in London and New York.

The accounts are still available at Companies House and the salaries – paid in 1990s money – were stratospheric for directors.

The highest paid director’s salary went from £786,873  in 1994 to £1,234,690 in 1995 and to £1,708, 063  in 1996 – a rise  of well in excess of 100 per cent. And that excludes pension payments.

Mr Maude’s salary is not  identified –  but as MD in two countries – it will be nearer to those  figures – plus a pension to boot.

 The Cabinet Office declined to comment on his private pensions arrangements. But a City management consultant told me:

“It would be inconceivable that Morgan Stanley would not have paid Mr Maude a high pension because it is a much more tax efficient way of paying out money. Often City firms offer pensions equivalent to say 10 years service, rather than three, as a way of giving more money to people when they leave.”

Indeed Mr Maude had a lot of spare cash in 1996. Land registry records reveal that on 1st August 1996 Mr Maude and his wife Christina, bought for cash a large farmhouse and land at  Dial Post in West Sussex.  Property around there with land goes now for sums well in excess of £1m.

Perhaps the time has come for Mr Maude to reveal his true pension status when he is lecturing people to settle for less for life. He is the Government’s Mr Transparency and has released lots of personal data on individual civil servant’s  pay and pensions.

Just this weekend, his boss at the Cabinet Office, Nick Clegg, called for more transparency on top executive pay and perks. Mr Maude could lead by example by revealing the historic facts of his secret pension deal.

 My guess is that he has a private fund worth well over £1m on top of his three other state pensions. Prove me wrong, Mr Maude.

You can of course express your own views – you might feel Francis Maude is worth a mega pension, or you may feel he doesn’t  deserve anything like it.. You can e-mail him on psfrancismaude@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk .

Council Fraud up £50m Eric Pickles- so let’s relax auditing nearly 100 authorities

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Eric Pickles: Slashing audit checks as council fraud booms

Detected fraud in local councils has jumped £50m in one year – with the biggest scams involving cheating on council tax benefits, unlawfully subletting council homes and false benefit claims.

 You would think Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, and Grant Shapps. the local government minister, would only be too delighted that someone is collecting this, advising councils how to tackle the problem, and saving the taxpayer up to £185m.

But soon you won’t know because the Audit Commission, the body that collects  all this information,  is to be abolished. And to save more money the government is raising the ceiling on councils that needed to be fully audited from £1m to £6.5m next year.

 Perhaps you might think these councils – mainly town and city councils, museums and drainage boards, are paragons of virtue and nobody working so close to the parish pump would dream of defrauding them.

But read the Audit Commission report,Protecting the Public Purse 2011, (summary and download here http://bit.ly/sSfVJG ) and you will find that one parish clerk managed to defraud four councils  out of £63,000 and get an 18 month prison sentence. As the report reveals: “The clerk forged signatures, altered cheques, and made unauthorised payments to herself and her family. ”

The chair of one of the parish councils said, “We have had to take out a £30,000 loan as a result of her leaving us practically bankrupt.”

In another reported case a parish council clerk set up an internet banking account for the council without its knowledge. He used this account to pay himself. The clerk told councillors the council did not require an audit. Councillors believed him and failed to ensure their responsibilities for protecting public money were undertaken properly.

So perhaps it is a bit stupid of ministers to decide that 96 authorities each spending between £1m and £6.5m a year WILL no longer require a full audit – the perfect excuse for the fraudster who conned his local councillors.

Not only is  this an opportunity for fraud but incompetence as well. An investigation I did for Exaro News revealed that among the 96 – a number had recently had their accounts qualified because they were full of mistakes or just plain wrong. One authority, Swanage Town Council, was  qualified twice in successive years. Another council, Tavistock, was told by its auditors to  resubmit its accounts to the council because they had approved completely inaccurate documents.

 You will find the full story and the  list of authorities on the Exaro News website ( http://bit.ly/vWuRFK ). In the meantime you could always ask Mr Pickles to justify what he is doing – his work e-mail is eric.pickles@communities.gsi.gov.uk . Bet you he won’t want to know.

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.