Twelve days in March
- 20 Mar 07, 10:11 AM
It’s not often at Westminster that you run up against the law. In normal times, covering politics is both important and exciting without the need to dodge bullets or jail. Which is why the Westminster team investigating cash for honours found itself swimming – or at least paddling – in uncharted waters, when the police asked the Attorney General to get an injunction to gag us from broadcasting our story.
It started on a Thursday morning – Thursday 1 March - when Reeta Chakrabarti rang me with a good story from an excellent source. It took us six days to get our full story out; and another six to broadcast the story of the gagging. So 12 busy, frustrating and challenging days. Here’s how it felt from the inside:
• Day 1. Reeta gets the story. It’s a significant new development – one of Tony Blair’s top aides (Ruth Turner) has claimed that Lord Levy, the PM’s chief fundraiser, put to her a version of events about his role in the drawing up of the honours list which she felt was untrue. With Nick Robinson on board, we go in search of a second source. Late in the day we get that, and begin discussions with our News bosses and the BBC lawyers about putting it on air. But there isn’t time to approach the various people at the centre of the story. So we put the story on hold and go to the pub, where we studiously avoid saying anything about what we’ve been working on so frantically – the walls of the Marquis of Granby have ears…
• Day 2. Start asking for reaction from the people involved. Lord Levy denies any wrongdoing. More talks with News bosses and lawyers. Police tell us they don’t want us to broadcast. We tell them we intend to broadcast. Police go to the Attorney General to seek injunction. At 2130 the news comes through that we’ve been gagged. So instead of Nick leading the Ten O'Clock News with our cash for honours story, he has to restrict himself to a brief account of the injunction, which must have been tantalising to the viewers – “We’ve got a good story but we can’t tell you what it is….”
• Day 3. Rumours grow this Saturday that the Sunday papers are on to our story. How do they know? Reeta and Carole Walker try to find out what they have. From home, I spend the evening on the phone (while my wife parties at a Fratellis concert in Brixton, and my house is wrecked by seven children - my four plus three sleepover friends.) Get the newspaper first editions in Television Centre about 9pm. Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday have parts of our story. Discuss with lawyers what we can broadcast, which ends up as another tease: ”The BBC can now reveal some details….”
• Day 4. Frustration. Lots of detail in various Sunday papers – we know more but our injunction prevents us from broadcasting that, or the detail of what’s in the papers.
• Day 5. Partial victory. Our lawyers win a “variation” of the injunction allowing us to report who’s involved in the story… Ruth Turner, Lord Levy and Jonathan Powell, the PM’s Chief of Staff…but not what it’s about. Frustration piles on frustration at ten to ten when we get sight of the splash in the Guardian which has more detail than we’re able to broadcast. The Attorney General had attempted to gag them too but a judge ruled there was no point, once it became clear the papers were already printed and in the delivery vans. Many conversations with News bosses and lawyers about what we can report, and whether we can get a judge out of bed to lift our injunction. Eventually agree we can report that the Guardian has a story… but not what’s in it.
• Day 6. Victory! Our lawyers go back to court again – with Nick Robinson in tow. We are allowed to broadcast our original story – Nick goes live on N24 from the back of a taxi on return journey to Westminster.
• Day 7. All the papers run our story. Attorney General says “je ne regrette rien” (sort of). Denies he has acted for political reasons
• Day 8. BBC lawyers back in court to argue for the right to report the original reasons for our injunction. Decision delayed till next day.
• Day 9. Judge rules against us.
• Days 10, 11. Weekend respite.
• Day 12. BBC lawyers take our case to the Appeal Court and - finally - win the right to broadcast the reasons why the injunction was sought and granted in the first place… that the police believed that broadcasting details of the document we’d learned about could hamper their inquiry. Some interesting detail of what was said in court also revealed.
So those were our 12 days in March, in which we fought for the right to broadcast an important story, and – eventually – won.
At the end of last week, Assistant Commissioner John Yates – the man running the cash for honours inquiry – told MPs it would be unrealistic for him to set a deadline for the end of his investigation. What next, I wonder….
Gary Smith is editor, political news
