Leveson Inquiry: The unedifying world of Matt Sprake

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Matt Sprake in action with the Met

Matt Sprake, the head of Newspics photo agency, whose website was exposed by me on the Exaro News website (http:// www.exaronews.com) and with Oliver Wright on the Independent, put on a bravura show at the Leveson inquiry this week.

He insisted that  the wording on his website offering thousands of pounds to police staff, prison officers, doormen and nurses, for years  for  stuff on celebrity’s private lives had been a “mistake” and had only not been taken down until the exposure by Exaro because his website was ” broken.”

During the rest of the questioning by Robert Jay, the Leveson counsel, and Lord Leveson himself, he tried to portray himself as a ” White knight” fervently checking that any of these informers had not obtained salacious gossip by breaking the law  and making sure that our great tabloids from The People to the News of the World were not so foolish to indict innocent people on their front pages. Unauthorised  snatch photography with morals, so to speak.

He even provided a detailed example where an innocent referee who had engaged the wrath of Alex Ferguson was saved by Sprake’s due diligence from an exposure at a late night party that never took place.

But he has probably dished himself with Leveson over his explanation of the 330 surveillance jobs he has done, mainly for The People and the News of the World and his amoral view  that whatever the scandal was – his sole interest was whether it was true or not and ” morality and ethics” was something left to the editors. I don’t do ethics that’s for someone else, to put it simply .All this has been more eloquently covered today by Roy Greenslade in his Guardian blog – see http://bit.ly/MpYH81 .

What emerged in detail was his treatment of two stories for The People – the chasing up the McCanns on their first private holiday in Canada without Madeline. Evidently it was fine for The People to spend thousands of pounds sending a team of snatch photographers and a reporter  to Canada because in Mr Sprake’s word he was a ” celebrity” and wanted “to keep Madeline’s name in the public mind.” Now  I would think Gerry McCann is the last person to want to  be a celebrity, more a diligent father trying to get to the bottom of his daughter’s tragic disappearance – and if he wanted the publicity, he could have organised a photocall in Heathrow before he went away. Obviously he didn’t and  that wasn’t good enough for Sprate or The People. They were happy enough to invade their privacy on a well-earned holiday for loadsa dosh.

Similarly the ” ethical ” treatment of Andy Hayman, the Met Police chief who is alleged to have had an affair with someone from the Independent Police Complaints Commsision was considered fair game just because there was an inquiry. Did the People or anyone else have a shred of evidence that the inquiry was compromised or that Hayman was after illicit information? No. But it was worth £10,000 to Sprake for the pics. Hayman did resign but  there seem to far more serious allegations about him over the first hacking inquiry years later.

I am backing Roy Greenslade on this one. Mr Embley needs to be summoned by Leveson for further questioning. The need  for this is made more compelling now Roy Greenslade has revealed that the People’s picture editor, Mark Moylan, forgot to tell Leveson  that he did ANY business with Matt Sprake – now revealed as enormous by Sprake himself. See his new post at http://bit.ly/PqViXw.

Meanwhile just 15 or so minutes after I had  finished covering the Leveson inquiry myself I had a phone call on my mobile.

An anonymous friend of Mr ” Ethical , never done anything wrong, guvnor” Sprake warned me to lay off any further inquiries. They named  some  person  they think is supplying me with information that  led to Mr Sprake’s appearance before Leveson. Sorry mate, the steer came from someone else.

They signed off with a cordial affectionate greeting: ” You fucking geek “. Nice circles you move in , ex police snapper Matt Sprake.

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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Ex Met Police snapper to face Leveson Inquiry over cash offers to public officials

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Lord Justice Leveson ; Pic courtesy Leveson Inquiry website

Update: There is a report today (wednesday) on the exaronews website (http://www.exaronews.com ) of today’s hearing where Matt Sprake  defends himself.

 Matt Sprake, the former Met Police forensic police photographer, has been summoned by Lord Leveson to appear  before his inquiry.

This follows the exposure by me on Exaro News website (http://www.exaronews.com)  and with Oliver Wright in the Independent last week.( http://ind.pn/M48suc ) which  revealed his http://newspics.co.uk  website was offering to pay thousands of pounds to police, prison and probation officers for tips on celebs having affairs. There is a new article on the site now.

Just to remind readers – as he has taken it down now – the wording included  the phrases:

Officials are told: “All sorts of people have been paid thousands of pounds by us for giving information that leads to a picture being sold or a story being written, are you a doorman, police worker, civil servant, probation officer, prison officer, nurse? Make some extra money without anyone ever knowing…”

The agency website has endorsements from the picture desk of The People, the red-top Sunday tabloid, OK magazine, the celebrity title, and the Press Association, the national news agency.

In a section headed “news exclusives”, the agency tempts public officials to provide details of “a scandal” or, “where a prominent person is living or what they get up to,” or, “a celebrity having an affair”.

“You can earn yourself good cash now by calling… 24 hours a day and remember, nobody ever needs to know it was you that told us!”

Mr Sprake’s forthcoming appearance was announced on the Leveson inquiry website this afternoon. Among those appearing on the same day – next Wednesday – will be Max Mosley.

Lawyers for the Levenson Inquiry had asked to see the articles on Exaro News and the Independent after they appeared. They have also examined his website.

So next Wednesday Mr Sprake will be able to explain in public exactly what is going on. He has also put a complaint into the Press Complaints Commission against the Independent  about  last week’s article. I look forward with interest to the next event.

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.

Exposed: The Ex Met Police snapper’s website offering “cash for celeb scoops” to public officials

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Matt Sprake: Trying Out the PM’s chair in the Cabinet Room in the 1990s while on the Met Police pay roll. Pic courtesy his Facebook page

Given the Leveson Inquiry is in full swing  can  you imagine this appearing on  a website supplying the national media – from the People to the Press Association?

” Do you know of a story, a scandal, something that made you interested, chances are that a newspaper will pay for that information.  Do you know where a prominent person is living or what they get up to, is a celebrity having an affair that you know of, do you know anyone who’s on reality TV?  You can earn yourself good cash now by calling 01277 (deleted) 24 hours a day and remember, nobody ever needs to know it was you that told us!

All sorts of people have been paid thousands of pounds by us for giving information that leads to a picture being sold or a story being written, are you a doorman, police worker, civil servant, probation officer, prison officer, nurse?  Make some extra money without anyone ever knowing…

Never go direct to a newspaper, come to us, it’s what we do, we are better positioned to get you much more cash. ”

The full story  on this is available  at http://www,exaronews.com   and on the Independent at http://ind.pn/M48suc. Since the disclosure the website has been rapidly redesigned and the page taken down but the website page is captured on the exaronews.com website.

Part of his agency’s website is devoted to its “surveillance photography”, offering a menu of services, including “covert foot follows”, “covert vehicle follows” and ”remote technical surveillance”.

“You can utilise the very same skills that are used by the security services and the police,” clients are promised.

“Our surveillance team has worked for and been trained by various police and government surveillance agencies within the UK. If you need it photographed without being seen, we are your experts.”

So what is the  explanation of the managing director  of  http://newspics.co.uk ,  ( one Matt Sprake, whose company is owned by his wife, Marion, described in her Companies House return as a banker.

According to him  the wording on his agency’s website was “just advertising” aimed at the “general public”.

He said that he would have removed it by now but for the fact that his website is “broken” and cannot be edited because the company that created it went bust.

“We are in the final stages of a company redesigning our website,” he said. “If there was a way of changing it, believe me, I would.” That seems to have  happened remarkably quickly after  the story was published.

On the social-media website, Myspace, he puts his income at between £100,000 and £150,000 a year.

Sprake continued: “I used to work for a specialist department at the Met in Scotland Yard looking, basically, at terrorism work. The level I was working at involved very covert stuff.

“I got out after 10 years. You are limited on the number of years you are allowed to do, so I am now doing other work. But I have still got all that training that is very handy to have.”

He also claimed his staff adhered to the Press Complaints commission code and his site promised to do surveillance work which would be covered by the Code.

The PCC were not so impressed – a spokesperson pointing out the code covered editors of papers not agency photographers.

I tried to contact Trinity Mirror publisher of The People- whose editor has already given evidence to Leveson . Their pages are all over his website including the page offering cash to public officials. But answer came there none.

One cannot  wonder why the reputation of the media is at such a low with such behaviour. If Sprake is telling the truth, it seems to me the height of folly and hubris  in these troubled times to put this on a website. If he is not this is exposing something else that is not particularly savoury and very worrying for ethical standards in the media and the people who are supplying him.

Q:Who’s afraid of the big bad Fox? A:The Charity Commission

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Liam Fox:Back in the News Pic courtesy:Metro

So Liam Fox is back from the political dead after having to quit as defence secretary.  How interesting! It comes after a little noticed report  from the Charity Commission into the affairs of  his doomed charity, Atlantic Bridge.  Conveniently it closes down any further investigation into his dubious past.

Remember this was the charity that promoted the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan view of Anglo-American relations and gave a Margaret Thatcher Freedom medal to Henry Kissinger.

 The Charity Commission would never have looked at it if it had not been the persistence of Stephen Newton the Labour blogger who lodged a complaint. The charity run by Mr Fox and his best man, former special adviser,Adam Werrity ( remember him too?) was found not to be a charity, not have charitable purposes and was also operating in breach of Parliamentary rules from Liam’s office in the House of Commons.You might have thought after the furore  over the Smith Institute which was dragged through a formal inquiry for being too close to Gordon Brown,you would get  a devastating critique from them. You’d be wrong.

The report reveals that because it was a faux charity – HM Revenue and Customs demanded that some £50,000 in back tax, which according to the Financial Times, was paid by Tory donor.billionaire City trader Michael Hintze. See http://on.ft.com/N5zxqS as part of a £53,478 loan to the charity from his hedge fund company CQS.

However the Charity Commission did not believe any of the trustees or for that matter their advisory board were culpable so it could not recover the money from them. As the report says: “in taking such proceedings it would need to be clear that the trustees were sufficiently culpable in law to make good the loss and the proceedings were in the public interest.”

It added that there was ” no evidence the trustees acted in  bad faith” and “no compelling evidence of deliberate wrongdoing.” It accepted the evidence from the trustees that they just thought they were acting lawfully and its was perfectly proper to set up a charity to pursue the political objectives of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Of course it could just be that  Professor Patrick Minford of Conservative Way Forward, Lord Astor of Hever, a hereditary Tory peer, and the lobbyist Andrew Dunlop a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, were a load of naive gits who didn’t have a clue how a charity works or an inkling of charity law. And of course their board of advisers was not stuffed with clever worldly political activists – it  was only composed of William Hague, George Osborne and Michael Gove.

And Liam Fox is so innocent he seems to have forgotten to declare some other US lobbying appointment in his ministerial interests, according to revelations in today’s Political Scrapbook.http://politicalscrapbook.net/

Curiously Dame Suzi Leather . chair of the Charity Commission, could have referred the matter up to Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, to rule on whether there was a case to answer. But conveniently for  Dominic he was not placed in such an embarrassing position.

Of course it was different for the Smith Institute – everybody knows that Gordon Brown and Ed Balls  were  through Wilf Stevenson (now Lord) manipulating charity law and unlike Liam Fox had to be taken to task in much stronger terms. 

Job not well done, Dame Suzi. But I am sure you will be up for peerage as soon as your appointment ends, as a thank you for saving the present Establishment a lot of angst.

Guido Fawkes/Harry Cole v Tom Watson/Sunny Hundal: The changing blogosphere

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Paul Staines – aka Guido Fawkes – poshed up for Leveson inquiry. Pic courtesy: intimes.co.uk

Two and a half years ago when this website was set up  blog hits were at best in hundreds worst in tens.

Now blog hits are best in thousands and worst in hundreds. But last week saw a significant turning point. Not only were they a record number of hits that week -but  more important  it is where they were coming from.

Two of the biggest hits in the past – the post on whether Labour could be go bankrupt because of interest payments to Blair’s donors- and Maude’s Madrassa- the story of Francis Maude’s letting arrangement to Tory special advisers – hit large numbers because they were mentioned on Guido Fawkes (Paul Staines) website. I admit the initial success of this ex Guardian hack’s website was boosted by the  free market Tory right.

 Last week the blog revealing  the leaked memo (first and only in full on  http://www.exaronews.com ) from Nick Chapman, chief executive of NHS Direct, admitting they couldn’t get contracts and the excessive strip searching of Afro-Caribbean women  and abusive and appalling treatment of a gay man at  Gatwick Airport were ignored by Guido.

Tom Watson MP in reflective pose.Pic courtesy: The Guardian

Yet because  the NHS Direct memo taken up on Twitter by Sunny Hundal (of Liberal Conspiracy) and Tom Watson MP ( with 25,000+ and 83,000 followers each) the NHS Direct blog – over 5000 and still rising –   is now the first blog beating the Labour Party crisis blog on 4,345. The Gatwick Airport blog -on 2120 was also boosted by appearing on Political Scrapbook and taken up by the Pink Paper and the international gay community.

To me this tells me two things. The right wing’s  dominance of the blogosphere is at an end- it is now a healthy level playing field between the right and left fighting over the political issues of the day.

 Second it raises an interesting thought. If the growth of the blogosphere  fuelled by Twitter and Facebook continues like this over the next two years – are the Leveson# hearings on media control an irrelevance?

The irony is that new formal controls over the official media be in place on a declining industry  while the  expanding blogosphere will become the place where issues are debated. Tom Watson’s followers are almost the equivalent of the number of Independent readers and Guido Fawkes at 75,000 is not far off. I have a far more modest 3142.

I suspect no politician  – Tory, Labour, UKIP or Liberal Democrat – would dare impose controls over the  blogosphere. To do so would risk a Tahrir Square style rising from both Left and Right.

Exclusive: Bye,Bye NHS Direct – chief’s leaked e-mail

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Colourful protest against the end of NHS Direct. Pic courtesy:Urban75 blog

The hugely popular NHS Direct service is facing near extinction next year. Health secretary  Andrew Lansley’s decision to replace the well-regarded national service with a piecemeal local service run by any English local provider could mean it will be running nothing by the end of next year.

So far despite providing some of the trials for new cheaper NHS 111 phone line in Luton,Nottingham and Lincolnshire, NHS Direct has failed to secure a single contract.

 This dire news is contained in a confidential e-mail from Nick Chapman, chief executive of the doomed organisation, which is on the Exaro News website ( http://www.exaronews.com).

 It shows with a third of the local areas already choosing their preferred provider for the service NHS Direct has secured the ” preferred provider ” status in just three areas, covering a mere four per cent of the population – Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Somerset and one other area. But even this guarantees nothing.

As Mr Chapman says: “No contracts have yet been signed and there is still a lot of work to be done to agree the final contracts before we start delivering the service.”

And where NHS Direct is putting through pilots, these will be up for grabs by anyone else, once the period is over.

So who is getting them? Despite publicity showing that three of the main for profit providers, Care UK, Capita and Serco have pulled out – this has left   Harmoni  grabbing the biggest share with  Hillingdon, Croydon, Wandsworth, Suffolk, parts of Kent and Sussex and Wiltshire and parts of North Somerset, all now to be run for profit. And the promise of a six month delay may merely serve to persuade more private firms to move in – rather than defend the existing state provided service.

The rest has gone to various trusts and  social enterprises ( some well run by GPs like in Devon, others not so well run) taking over. NHS Direct is being cautious -saying commercial confidentiality stops them revealing the full picture.

 Should we care? According to the BMA we should.

 As Dr Laurance Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee, said: “A potentially dangerous version of NHS 111 is set to burst forth upon an unsuspecting public from April. Patients may end up being sent to the wrong place, waiting longer, blocking A&E and using ambulances needlessly, when a little more consideration might make it all work properly.”

Of course ministers like Simon Burns say it is fine and good value for the taxpayer. But I wonder if the public will like it – particularly if it to be mainly staffed by people with just 90 days training – rather than nurses who might have a better knowledge of medical matters. One wonders whether like a recent call I made to Blackberry, the centre will be spending their time looking up articles on Google to provide the best advice . Very worrying if you are an anxious mother or have a sick child.

 If it ain’t broke, why tear it apart.

Updated Exclusive:: Home Secretary says Gatstrip scandal will be taken seriously

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The disclosures on this website and in the Tribune magazine at the weekend over the strip searching of Afro Caribbeans and the atrocious treatment of a gay man  by border staff at Gatwick Airport will be taken seriously by Theresa May, the home secretary, I was promised today.

Given the widespread interest- with 1700 hits so far and still counting and from the US, Australia and Europe – this is the least I would expect.

I took the opportunity of her appearance at the House of Commons Press Gallery lunch today (Tuesday) to question her about the findings in the report by John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency.

She seemed not to be quite au fait with the detail but did respond positively to the issue. She said that Mr Vine was meant to be the Home  Secretary’s source for what is happening on the ground at ports and airports and she always took up his recommendations.

 Given that Mr Vine has made it clear that the behaviour there could have breached the Equalities Act that is good news.

She added: ” I always take the recommendations of Mr Vine seriously and in this case I expect the findings to be taken very seriously. We will respond to his recommendations.”

I shall wait the outcome with interest. The next question is what is the position of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission on this scandal. Given that it is headed by Trevor Phillips, of Afro-Caribbean descent, I expect to see some action here very soon.