Oral evidence: The work of the BBC, HC 257

Oral evidence, 15 June 2021.

Witness

Lord Hall.

Chair

This is the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and a special hearing into the work of the BBC in the light of the Bashir scandal. We are joined today by three panels and four witnesses. The first panel witness is Lord Hall, former Director-General of the BBC. In the second panel we have Lord Birt, former Director-General of the BBC. We are joined in the third panel by Tim Davie, the current Director-General, and Richard Sharp, the current Chairman. Before I start, I am going to quickly go around the Committee to see if there are any interests to declare.

Giles Watling

I am an erstwhile employee of the BBC and sometimes in receipt of royalties.

Chair

Lord Hall, welcome back.

Lord Hall

Good morning.

Chair

It is not too long since your last appearance before us. Without the benefit of hindsight, but considering what you knew at the time, why did you report to the BBC board of governors that you believed that Mr Bashir was an honest and honourable man?

Lord Hall

Let me start off, if I might, by acknowledging how hard the Lord Dyson investigation has been for the royal family and the two princes, and I am sorry for the hurt caused. But at the core here I trusted a journalist, I gave him a second chance—we, the team, gave him a second chance—and that trust was abused and misplaced. I don’t think that the words “honest” and “honourable”, 25 years on, look appropriate at all, but let me give you some context. Uppermost in our minds then was: had the interview with Princess Diana, the decision that she made to be interviewed, been done fairly or not? That was absolutely uppermost in our minds. The first investigation we did before Christmas under Tim Gardam talked to all the people concerned and produced a letter where she said very clearly that she had been shown no documents by Martin Bashir, she was not made aware of anything by Martin Bashir that she didn’t already know and she had no regrets, underlined, by the interview. It is quite interesting that Lord Dyson himself says that an interview of some sort would probably have taken place anyway. At that point in our inquiries, in our investigations with Tim Gardam, we came to an end that there was no case to answer. The second investigation was not, therefore, into whether Princess Diana had been misled into agreeing to the interview but was the second issue, which was had the producer guidelines been breached and particularly the producer guidelines on straight dealing. That investigation was under a separate team. There was continuity with Tim Suter, who was a managing editor, very excellent, and Anne Sloman had come in as acting head from a very distinguished career as head of radio current affairs, to look at all the arguments again. I took what I think is an unusual step of saying I would take part in the investigation and interview Bashir myself. Why? Because I had to establish whether I believed Bashir, whether I should therefore give him a yellow card or dismiss him, and that was what I was trying to work through. In the end we came to a judgment about his lack of experience, that he was out of his depth, that he was contrite, and we gave him a second chance. We trusted him, and it turns out we couldn’t. In that light I understand why I was using words that, when you look at them now, just seem wrong, but it was me trying to work out could I trust this man or not.

Chair

You very quickly went through the first investigation, the one by Mr Gardam. I understand that, as head of programming, he wrote in his own handwriting a description of what Mr Bashir had done, including creating fake documents. That was then sent to your office. What did you do subsequent to that? Surely that is evidence enough, is it not? Really, to be honest with you, why on earth did you need to go into a second one? You should basically have had him in the office and said, “Did you fake documents? If the answer is yes, there is the door, get out.”

Lord Hall

Tim Gardam left his report before he went off to Channel 4. At that point I set up a fresh inquiry to look into what Martin Bashir had done with the documents, why he had produced those documents, and to examine whether or not this was—

Chair

Sorry, Lord Hall, were you aware at that point that he had faked the documents? You have the documentation to say that he had faked the documents.

Lord Hall

Yes.

Chair

You were aware?

Lord Hall

We knew in December that he had faked some documents. The difference between the inquiry in December—

Chair

How many documents being faked is acceptable to the BBC? Is it just one or is it a plethora of documents? I will be frank with you, as a former BBC journalist myself back in the mists of time in Italy, I am almost speechless at the idea that anyone at the BBC could be found by a senior manager to have faked documents, that information passed on to you and then not face instant dismissal. That is absolutely crazed. It is completely against the ethos of the BBC.

Lord Hall

In the second inquiry we examined why he had faked those documents, where they had been used and his evidence for those documents. What he told us at the time was that they were a collation of information that he was gleaning. We had at least an hour and a half with him when he ended up contrite and in tears, saying that he understood he had made a mistake. We decided at that point that there was a breach of the editorial guidelines on straight dealing with people who are prospective candidates for a programme. What he had done had not gone anywhere near air. If it had gone anywhere near air, that would have been an extremely serious offence. We decided that we would give him a second chance because he was so contrite and because he understood the mistake he had made on the guidelines on straight dealing. I went on from there to ensure that the new guidelines that were being drawn up by the BBC had very clear lines on the production of fake documents. Fake documents came out in the guidelines as being forbidden from then on. They were not in the guidelines at the time when they needed to be, and I made sure that they were.

Chair

You said that your response, once you found out that he had faked documents, was to set up another inquiry into the extent of the faking of documents, which helped effectively trick a mentally vulnerable woman into giving a TV interview. We can debate whether or not that had further consequences, but that is the upshot of it. Your other response was to effectively blackball the person who faked up the documents and then said that they had done so and came clean about it, Mr Wiessler. Where is the morality in any of this?

Lord Hall

When I look back in hindsight at the—

Chair

It doesn’t have to be in hindsight. It is a simple question. You can’t blackball someone because they have undertaken work that they find out has been used for nefarious purposes and then have tea and sympathy with the person who perpetrated all this. This is not just a failure of management, it is a failure of morality.

Lord Hall

May I stress that it was not tea and sympathy with Martin Bashir. It absolutely was not. It was a very tough and hard interview. Mr Wiessler was a freelance graphic designer. We were dealing with a very difficult and unhealthy programme culture. Steve Hewlett, the editor of the programme, who I trusted, and still trust, to manage the programme made that absolutely clear. We had had two inquiries into all the evidence around Martin Bashir when everybody had been spoken to. In the heat of all that, of course I regret the language that we used about Mr Wiessler and I think we could have managed that better.

Chair

Well, not just the language, it is the action. It is not just a question of language. It is basically putting someone’s career on ice for no good reason whatsoever, in fact for doing the right thing. I have another question from Steve Brine on this particular issue before I carry on with mine.

Steve Brine

Lord Hall, very briefly on this issue, looking back and following on from what the Chair is discussing, I was once a very junior reporter for the BBC; I left before I became anything more. But immediately after this interview questions were raised about the way in which Mr Bashir had secured the interview. Did it not raise any alarm bells when the scoop of the century, which this undoubtedly was, was granted to a very junior reporter at the time? I can’t imagine that when I was working for BBC Radio Surrey as a junior reporter, as a young man, I would have scooped an interview like this and BBC management would have said, “Good for Steve.” Did it not raise any alarm bells at all that suddenly she agreed to this interview, as to how he managed to secure it? It seems incredible.

Lord Hall

I knew about the interview about a fortnight before it took place. The interview and Bashir was being managed by Steve Hewlett, the editor of the programme, who I trusted enormously. It was also being looked after by the controller of editorial policy, Richard Ayre, and it was also being looked after by Tim Gardam, the head of current affairs. News, by its very nature, is devolved, as you know. We have hours and hours of coverage each day, and your trust, therefore, in the teams that are pulling together programmes, or in this case this interview, must be very strong. I trusted Steve Hewlett, the editor of the programme, to manage Martin Bashir and the interview properly, as I did Richard Ayre, the controller of editorial policy, and Tim Gardam too. It is based on trust. I went through the questions with Martin—well, not actually with Martin but with the team of Hewlett, Ayre and so on—and I briefed the Director-General about this because there was an issue about whether or not the Chairman should be briefed, given that he was married to a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. On all of this there was a very close relationship between the Director-General right the way down to the programme editor. That trust you have in each other’s judgment and being honest with each other about what is going on is how you build programmes and, in this case, win an interview and make sure it is properly done.

Steve Brine

I think we all understand that, but you were either very close to it or it was just devolved. Which was it? Are you seriously saying that nobody questioned how an interview with the wife of the heir to the throne was granted to a junior reporter? Did that not cross your mind, Lord Hall?

Lord Hall

Yes, we asked about how it had come about, of course we did, but I go back. You trust the team of Tim Gardam as head of programmes for current affairs, the editorial policy controller and Steve Hewlett the editor—who is sadly no longer with us because he would have a lot to say about this, I am sure—to ensure that the interview was properly got and that it was also properly done, as indeed it was. One other thing I want to say on this is that Lord Dyson is very clear quite high up in his report that an interview would have happened anyway. Indeed, he mentions the fact that the princess was going to meet with Nick Witchell at the end of August. That never took place because Steve Hewlett said, “No, we are going to go down a route of Martin Bashir.” The context, now we know, was that an interview, according to Lord Dyson, was very, very likely. In this sense, Martin Bashir got it first.

Chair

Let’s turn to more recent matters and, for me personally, a little bit more concern, the rehiring of Mr Bashir under your watch. I read with interest the report about this produced by the BBC yesterday, and for me it raises more questions than it answers. If I may, I am going to put some of those questions to you as the person in charge at the time. At what point were you personally aware that Mr Bashir had been rehired by the BBC? What did you think of that, given his history in the organisation?

Lord Hall

I knew after the appointment had been made. I think Mr MacQuarrie said in his report, the BBC said it in its report, yesterday that Bashir was not rehired because of some sort of cover-up. He said that was entirely unfounded and there was absolutely no evidence of me being involved, which there wasn’t, in the appointment prior to the appointment, and that is exactly the case.

Chair

Putting aside Mr MacQuarrie’s supposition that it is entirely unfounded that Mr Bashir was rehired, effectively, to keep him quiet, could you as the man in charge comment on the process of rehiring? I find it utterly extraordinary. Three internal candidates were interviewed for the post and deemed unsuitable. The job was then advertised externally and 18 CVs were received, but only Mr Bashir’s was selected from these external candidates. I have spoken to some people at the BBC in the interim, and they have never heard of such a situation where only one candidate gets selected from a very expensive process of advertising externally. Can you shed any light for the Committee on why only one candidate from 18 was interviewed and that one candidate was Mr Bashir?

Lord Hall

I can’t shed any light on that because when you are running an organisation as big and as complex as the BBC—

Chair

Do you think it is right that that was the case, that 18 CVs were received—presumably these were not chancers; pretty serious people would be applying for this—and only one person was granted an interview?

Lord Hall

I really can’t comment on that. I think the person who was in charge of this was Jonathan Munro, the head of news gathering then, now deputy head of news. He would be able to amplify what the process was. I go back, Chair. I was running an organisation of 20,000-plus people. You can’t be across every detail.

Chair

No, but this man is a known liar and he has come back through your door. Even if you found out about it afterwards, you didn’t think about enquiring how the process actually occurred?

Lord Hall

I go back, it is not for me to second guess directors or people who are running large departments. Again I go back, you trust them to make the judgments, to do all the soundings-out that need to be done. I read in Mr MacQuarrie’s report that Jonathan Munro had spoken to Steve Hewlett, the former editor of Panorama, someone whose judgment you would trust. They came to their own decision about the rehiring of Martin Bashir and, as I say, it is also clear that if we knew then what we know now then, of course, he would not have been rehired.

Chair

Okay, we will take your word for that. Eighteen CVs were received, which is one element of this. Let’s look at a further part of the rehiring process. As I understand it, internal candidate X, who had failed to make it through, was reintroduced into the process and joined by candidate Z, another internal candidate who later withdrew. It is quite interesting that they later withdrew. After the external advertising campaign, Mr Bashir only had to beat someone who had already been deemed unsuitable for the job. It was a complete charade on your watch. I understand what you say about trusting people, but they badly let you down here by interviewing only one other person against Bashir, and that person had already been deemed unsuitable for the job.

Lord Hall

I understand that the then director of news, James Harding, did not want to see more than two people and that is his prerogative. But I go back, I am not going to second guess their judgment. He was running News, Jonathan Munro was running news gathering. Their judgment about the best person to fill that role was theirs and I—

Chair

Was it right for Mr Bashir to be given what have been termed—and this is by people within the BBC—a series of cappuccino interviews before the job was advertised internally and then externally and then during the hiring process? He was chivvied along throughout. A cynic would suggest, frankly, that the process was entirely concocted to have the resolution at the end of the day that Mr Bashir would get this job.

Lord Hall

By looking at the report yesterday, and I can only read it as you can, I can see no reason to say that I think this was a shoo-in for Mr Bashir. They were looking for the right person to do a very important job, taking over from someone who had done a stunning job as religious affairs correspondent. As a bit of context for you, we were at the time under some external pressure to improve our religious and ethics coverage, not just in News but right across the BBC in radio and television. I asked James Purnell, who was then the director of radio, to look at that and to write a report for me on how we could improve our coverage. I suppose that is a bit of context for you on how—

Chair

Against having to improve your coverage of religious affairs, your answer was to employ a known liar?

Lord Hall

That was not my answer.

Chair

The answer of your team. The answer of the BBC team was to employ a known liar?

Lord Hall

According to the report that I read yesterday, alongside you, processes were gone through and they came to that conclusion. As I said to you, I am not going to second guess my director of news on that.

Chair

How much was Mr Bashir paid, first as a correspondent and then as religion editor?

Lord Hall

I am sorry, I can’t answer that question either. I don’t know.

Chair

My information is it is likely to be between £80,000 and £120,000. He was employed for three years after his rehire. We are talking over £250,000 in salary, even by conservative estimates. Were you aware of his output at the BBC at that time? What did he do for his money is what I am asking you.

Lord Hall

Honestly, Chair, I am sorry to be unhelpful, but I think these questions are better asked of the BBC, the people who ran him at the BBC.

Chair

But you were the DG and also, frankly, you can’t be unaware that if you come before a parliamentary Select Committee you are going to be asked these questions. I will go a little bit further with this and see if you can provide any comment for me. He was employed for about three years, probably earning about £250,000. We did a trawl through the BBC News website and BBC Outlook, and we found that he appeared on air and on the website about half a dozen times during that time. That is about £40,000 a time. It is quite nice work if you can get it, isn’t it, Lord Hall?

Lord Hall

Well, that is not an effective use of a correspondent, I completely agree with you. That is not a good record, but you are telling me things that I am afraid I don’t know, Chair.

Chair

Do you know why Mr Bashir was not put on to a fixed contract, as recommended by News, and was just given the job, this known liar?

Lord Hall

I am really sorry to disappoint you in my answers on this, because I really don’t know. If you run an organisation as large as the BBC, I go back to my point, you devolve responsibility for the hiring, the terms and conditions, the rates of pay, the management of their output. You devolve that and these are questions—

Chair

One thing that you may not have devolved, which I found absolutely extraordinary as well—and I know this sort of thing goes to Director-General level—is why Mr Bashir was allowed to moonlight for ITV while working as a BBC staff editor. Freelancers are allowed to work outside, of course they are, that is the definition of a freelancer. But to have a major news editor working for a rival network in his spare time—and it seemed he had a lot of spare time, didn’t he?—isn’t that an indication that Mr Bashir was allowed to come and go as he pleased? He was given this wonderful sinecure and he was also effectively allowed to go and earn money elsewhere? As DG, would you not be across the fact that a major news editor was working for the opposition on the quiet? Not on the quiet, sorry, with permission.

Lord Hall

Not permission from me. Let me say again that these are judgments and issues you devolve to News management, and you have to ask those questions of the people who were running Martin Bashir until recently. The notion, Chair, that a decision about where Martin Bashir is deployed—

Chair

No, not deployed, that is a complete misrepresentation. It is not about deploying. You were not deploying him. He was moonlighting and he would have had to get permission to do that. As religious affairs editor, that would have come across your desk or someone very senior in the organisation, so why was he allowed to do so?

Lord Hall

Not across my desk, Chair, and I think that is a question for the then or current management of BBC News. I simply can’t answer that. I use the word “deploy” in its broadest sense, so I don’t mean in any way to suggest otherwise. How he was used, where he went to and what he did is a matter for news gathering management and not for the Director-General.

Chair

You would not imagine that, if a really fine journalist like Laura Kuenssberg, for instance, suddenly popped up on another network, it would not be a matter for the Director-General?

Lord Hall

I can’t imagine for one moment that the news gathering operation would allow Laura Kuenssberg to do that.

Chair

Exactly, so why was the religious affairs editor allowed to? It is a senior position within the BBC.

Lord Hall

I am really sorry, but you will have to ask the current news gathering management.

Chair

Okay, that is fine. We are getting absolutely nowhere.

Alex Davies-Jones

Lord Dyson has surmised that you were not entirely open-minded when you conducted your investigation into Martin Bashir in 1996. What do you make of that assertion?

Lord Hall

It is not true. The minute on which he bases that assertion, if I recall, goes on to say that I reported that the documents played no part in her decision to do the interview, that she had written to us absolutely saying that. But let me go back, the second investigation that we did under Anne Sloman, supervised by me, opened up again all the lines into Martin Bashir’s behaviour. Let me stress, this was not an investigation we would do now because it was done within the line. As I think Lord Birt would have agreed, it was done within the management line to work out what to do about Martin Bashir. None of the people involved in that investigation was either easy to fool or closed-minded. We were not like that. Tim Gardam had left by that point. Tim Suter, Anne Sloman and John Birt himself are journalists, so none of us were closed-minded, we really weren’t. One bit of context for you is that we had been brought in to reform standards at the BBC, to bring order to BBC current affairs and news. We were not the sort of people who would be closed-minded about things. John Birt, if he doesn’t mind my saying so—I know he is on next—was unpopular for ensuring that standards were being maintained. We were a group of people seeking after the truth. I came back into the BBC in the Savile crisis to sort out the BBC and its response to a real, big crisis. I was open-minded and I wanted to get to the truth. My whole time as a public servant working for the BBC—35 years—has been about integrity and ensuring getting to the truth. I was open-minded in this. We had had the letter from the princess, from which we knew that the interview itself had not been got in some deceitful way, but we were not closed-minded about the rest of what Bashir had done.

Alex Davies-Jones

Why were you so ready to accept Bashir’s unsubstantiated claims, given that you knew he had already lied at least three times?

Lord Hall

He had lied, when pressed very hard, about whether he had shown these documents to somebody else, and it was on the third time that he said he had shown them to Earl Spencer. Anne Sloman and I quizzed him really hard for an hour and a half, at which point—the thing I remember most vividly about this—he ended up in tears. We believed he had been introduced to the Princess of Wales by Earl Spencer, that the documents he had made were from information from the Princess of Wales and Earl Spencer—of course we know now that that was not the case—and that these documents were for a later programme and he saw Earl Spencer with the documents after he had already been introduced to the Princess of Wales and he was putting together a file. One of the difficulties, looking back over 25 years, is that it appeared to us at the time that he was contrite, that he was inexperienced and out of his depth. That is why in the end, rather than sacking him—and I can see the reasons for that—we gave him a second chance.

Alex Davies-Jones

Do you think the outcome would have been different if the process had been part of a formal disciplinary hearing?

Lord Hall

We took a judgment then and working really closely with the then Director-General, because we worked very closely as a team, to look at this in the line, as a management issue within the line: had the guidelines been broken or not, and then what should be the penalty for that? When you look back at how you manage these sorts of issues now—and remember that I came back into the BBC with the Savile crisis to look at a whole raft of issues around this—I think you would come to a very different way of running this 25 years on. You would take an issue like this away from line managers and have an outsider look at it. I think you would involve HR teams, who are much more used to doing these sorts of inquiries now. I think you would have a very strong role for editorial policy. The BBC has an excellent director of editorial policy, and they would have a role in this, too. Now there is a complaints procedure independent of the line, and Earl Spencer could have raised a complaint independently of management. When you look back at it, you think maybe we could have done some more of that then, but the whole problem with this is looking back from 25 years’ distance at what you did. Of course you think we could have done something better, but nothing was done without us trying to get to the truth and determined to be fair-minded about it.

Alex Davies-Jones

Do you agree with Lord Dyson and his conclusion that your investigation was woefully ineffective?

Lord Hall

I think the first investigation had established that the princess was not deceived into actually doing the interview. Lord Dyson is very careful to say in his report that he does not question that, but questions the way in which Bashir got to the princess. In the second investigation we gave Bashir a yellow card. We did not get to the bottom of the lies that Bashir had told us. We were not trying to conceal anything, I really want to stress that, but we were lied to and our trust was misplaced. Bluntly, Bashir took us all in from the Director-General down to the programme editor, Steve Hewlett, someone we trusted greatly.

Alex Davies-Jones

Is it true to say that you consciously decided not to approach Earl Spencer for fear of what he might say?

Lord Hall

No, it is not. Our records show that Earl Spencer and Steve Hewlett, the editor of Panorama, no longer with us, did speak around the weekend of The Mail on Sunday story. Earl Spencer briefed Steve on the draft statement he wanted to make to The Mail on Sunday, which seemed to say, according to Tim Gardam’s record at the time, that Bashir had come with allegations about specific journalists and that led him to introduce Bashir to the princess. In the event, Earl Spencer made no comment at all. We thought, wrongly, that sort of dealt with the issue, looking back at it. I accept Lord Dyson’s recommendation that, in the light of what Earl Spencer has said, of course one of us should have gone back to Earl Spencer to pin down exactly the facts about the fake documents. I accept that as a mistake, 25 years on, but we were trying to do our best and be as rigorous as we could with what we had then, but we were confronted with someone who I have not come across in my 35 years at the BBC. You basically trust your reporters and your editors to tell the truth, and in this case that trust was misplaced.

Alex Davies-Jones

But, Lord Hall, only seeking one side of a story would not have been acceptable for a BBC journalist, so why was it acceptable for a senior manager at the BBC?

Lord Hall

I think the focus of our second investigation was quite narrow and it was not an inquiry, as I was suggesting to your other question, of the sort that we might have into this now. It was narrowly focused on what was the breach of editorial guidelines and had Bashir knowingly breached them, did he understand that he had breached them and would he not do that again. These documents were used in front of Earl Spencer, he was shown them. That was an offence against the straight dealing guidelines, but the documents never went anywhere near air. That would have been an even more serious breach of the guidelines. Our judgment then was it is about Bashir: is he remorseful, does he understand that he has done something wrong? That is what we concentrated on. In retrospect, maybe the inquiry should have been bigger, but that is what we were trying to get an answer to.

Chair

I am sorry, my jaw just dropped when you said about whether or not he was sorry. This has been described as one of the scoops of the century, and it is found to have been obtained, let’s be honest about it, through faking documents, fraudulent means, and you are more concerned about whether or not he is sorry. That is absolutely priceless.

Clive Efford

Lord Dyson’s report states that Martin Bashir does not seem to accept that he acted in breach of BBC guidelines. In how many ways did he breach those guidelines?

Lord Hall

He breached the guidelines on straight dealing. He should not have put fake documents in front of Earl Spencer. We now know, because of Lord Dyson’s inquiry, that there were other things that he did, too. I, frankly, was astonished to read Lord Dyson’s report saying that Martin Bashir had not understood the gravity of what he had done, because certainly to me and to Anne Sloman he understood the gravity of what he had done.

Clive Efford

He produced these fake documents in a peculiar way as well. He did not take it through any of his senior management. He made a visit to Mr Wiessler’s home, which led him to be concerned about whether this was going through the proper procedure. Later on he lied to the BBC on at least three occasions, according to Lord Dyson. He breached the guidelines pretty much all the way through. How did you come to the conclusion that he was an honest individual?

Lord Hall

As I said earlier, I think to the Chair, I regret the use of those words now, but I go back to the interview that Anne Sloman and I conducted with him 25 years ago for over an hour and a half. We pushed him really hard on the guidelines and his breach of the guidelines on straight dealing, and he was contrite. We thought he was out of his depth, and that is why we did two things. One was to ensure that he was properly, carefully and closely managed going forward by Steve Hewlett, the editor of the programme, whom we trusted hugely and I still trust, and I wish he was here to talk more about this but alas he is not. The second—

Clive Efford

You are repeating yourself. In that room you could have put him under a spotlight, stabbed him with a cattle prod, but the fact is that there were all these breaches of the guidelines. There was the way he got those documents made, the lies that he repeated when he was questioned about it, the fact he used the fake documents to gain access to the Princess of Wales and get that interview. All of that surely must have added up, to you, to a serious breach. I think the Prime Minister got sacked for less when he was working for the Telegraph. How is it that you came to the conclusion that he was an honest and honourable man?

Lord Hall

It was a breach of the guidelines, there was absolutely no doubt about that. The decision we had to make—and it is a decision lots of managers have to make in all sorts of different places—is if someone breaches the guidelines and it is the first time they have done it, do you say, “That’s it, farewell, you’re sacked,” or do you say, “All right, you’re remorseful, you understand it; we’ll give you a second chance”? That is what we did and we did it, having listened to him, having talked to him 25 years ago. In the light of what I know now about Bashir, was that the wrong judgment? Well, yes, it was, but we trusted him and we clearly should not have done.

Clive Efford

You say wrong judgment. I say it was a failure to acknowledge the facts that were in front of you. Can I take you back to something you said to the Chair at the beginning of the meeting? You said that you produced guidelines on how to produce fake documents. Is that what you really meant?

Lord Hall

No, I am so sorry. If that is how it appeared, that is not really what I meant. There were two consequences to this, and I won’t repeat one of them, which was to do with management of Bashir. The second one was that we were in the middle of revising our editorial guidelines. I ensured that the then controller of editorial policy, Richard Ayre, amended the guidelines to include some paragraphs on the faking of documents to make sure it was clear that this was not acceptable. That was not in the guidelines at that time.

Clive Efford

The BBC, as an organisation, needs guidelines to tell its reporters not to produce false documents?

Lord Hall

The guidelines are there to tell reporters and producers, to act as the wisdom of how to conduct themselves across all the things that they are doing. It is an important set of documents. Before I left the BBC, nine or 10 months ago, I got a new set of guidelines that reflected where we were there on editorial policy to be published and go around to the staff.

Clive Efford

Do you think with hindsight that Mr Wiessler should have been treated as a whistleblower? I know legislation on whistleblowers may have followed on from then, but shouldn’t he have been treated more in that way by the BBC? Shouldn’t it have been grateful for him coming forward with his concerns about those documents and how they might have been used?

Lord Hall

I think that is right. Some context is that there had been two investigations when everybody had been spoken to—first, the Gardam investigation and, secondly, the Sloman investigation. There was a difficult programme culture that Steve Hewlett was dealing with. But I absolutely accept the point that Mr Wiessler should have been spoken to and listened to as what we would now see as a whistleblower. But he was listened to, that is the point. He was listened to by Tim Gardam and in the second investigation, I understand, but I have already said how I feel about the treatment of Mr Wiessler, and I regret the language we used.

Clive Efford

I don’t think there has ever been a satisfactory explanation from Martin Bashir as to why he had these false bank statements made up. Couldn’t it have been, and did it ever cross your mind, that given that Earl Spencer and the Princess of Wales were concerned that they may have been being conspired against, that these documents could be used just to feed that theory to obtain the interview? Did it ever cross your mind that that is why they were produced? It was peculiar to go so far to confirm what they believed to be facts of information that had been supplied to Martin Bashir.

Lord Hall

The timeline we were working on, which Martin Bashir told us—and remember we were talking all the time to people like Steve Hewlett, the editor of the programme, who worked closely with and supervised Martin Bashir—was that he had been introduced to the princess by Earl Spencer and that the documents he had drawn up came from information gained from the Princess of Wales, that he took those later to Earl Spencer, having been introduced to the Princess of Wales. We know now that that timeline was wrong because of the very strong evidence that Earl Spencer has come up with, but at the time we were lied to about that as well.

Clive Efford

Yes, but what amazes me is that, at the time of Martin Bashir and also the time of his reappointment to the BBC, all these top journalists have a remarkable amnesia when it comes to remembering the facts about what they did and did not know about Martin Bashir. For instance, is it likely that these journalists who interviewed Martin Bashir about being employed in the BBC knew nothing of the scandal that surrounded Martin Bashir when he was employed at the BBC previously? Seriously, is that likely?

Lord Hall

What I understand from the report from the BBC that I read yesterday is that the head of news gathering had spoken to Steve Hewlett, the former editor of Panorama, and had been briefed by him, and then the judgments about Martin Bashir’s re-employment were made by him and James Harding. In that sense, that was his due diligence.

Clive Efford

Let’s just go to the conclusion of the BBC’s report into the re-employment of Martin Bashir that was published yesterday. Right at the end it says, “I have no doubt that if any of the individuals involved in the appointment of Martin Bashir in 2016 had been aware of what is now publicly known as a result of the Dyson Report, Martin Bashir would not have been reappointed to the BBC.” But you did know. You had done the inquiry. You knew he lied to the BBC on several occasions, you knew he had produced that false document, you knew he had certainly shown the false documents to individuals, yet you allowed him to be re-employed by the BBC. Before you come back and say you didn’t know—because it is remarkable how much people in the BBC don’t know about very important decisions—is it likely that, when they were about to appoint Martin Bashir to such a sensitive position back in the BBC, no one knocked on your door and said, “We’re about to re-employ Martin Bashir” or “We are interviewing Martin Bashir”? No one did that?

Lord Hall

Well, they didn’t. To go back, my own view is exactly the view contained in the MacQuarrie report that you were reading from just then, which is that we did not know, 25 years ago, the scale of what Martin Bashir had done to gain access to the Princess of Wales through Earl Spencer. You go back to the fact that we didn’t know 25 years ago what we know now. If we knew what we now know about Martin Bashir through Lord Dyson, of course he would not have been re-employed. That is my view.

Kevin Brennan

In your view, were the allegations against Martin Bashir that were made in the press, post the interview, in the public interest? Were they of public interest?

Lord Hall

They are in the public interest, of course.

Kevin Brennan

Do you think they were of public interest at the time?

Lord Hall

I think they were of public interest.

Kevin Brennan

Why didn’t the BBC report on them at the time if they were of public interest?

Lord Hall

It is interesting, because Lord Dyson asked me about this and referred to a particular piece by Paul Donovan in The Sunday Times where Paul Donovan raised the issue of why didn’t the BBC report on this. All I can say is that there was absolutely nothing from me that said it is not to be reported upon, completely not, not least because I know in all my experience at the BBC that the best way to get a story covered about the BBC is to say, “Don’t cover it.”

Kevin Brennan

Were you relieved it was not reported at the time?

Lord Hall

I can’t recall at all. I don’t think I would be relieved or not relieved. I can’t remember anything about that.

Kevin Brennan

Were you surprised that it was not reported at the time, given that you say you believed it was of public interest?

Lord Hall

Again, I can’t recall 25 years ago whether I was surprised or not surprised.

Kevin Brennan

Can you recall the feelings that you had at the time about it not being reported after you had done your investigation? Can you recall any reaction to that or thinking anything about it at the time, or is it all a blank?

Lord Hall

All I can say to you is it is very difficult looking back over 25 years, but I have never, ever in all my years in the BBC, 35 years in the BBC, tried to stop a story about the BBC.

Kevin Brennan

I am sure that is true, Lord Hall. That is not what I am asking. I am asking whether you can recall any feelings, thoughts about the fact that this story was not being reported by the BBC despite it appearing in The Sunday Times and other publications at the time?

Lord Hall

I want to answer honestly, and I can’t remember what I felt 25 years ago. My apologies.

Kevin Brennan

In his report Lord Dyson does not believe the BBC’s story on this that all the news editors individually decided autonomously that the Bashir story was not newsworthy, and he believes that The Sunday Times story about there being an official line not to report it is true. Is he wrong?

Lord Hall

I think he is wrong. I know how I would have behaved then, because this is what I believe profoundly. The way in which BBC editors report on the BBC and the independence within which they report on the BBC is an important part of our contract with the public. I don’t understand quite how it was not reported at the time but I would put it down to judgments by individual editors. That is the only way I can understand it.

Kevin Brennan

How do you feel about Prince William’s statement that his mother was “failed not just by a rogue reporter but by leaders at the BBC who looked the other way rather than asking the tough questions”?

Lord Hall

I regret deeply that we did not get to the bottom of Martin Bashir and what happened 25 years ago.

Kevin Brennan

You have said that. I am asking you about Prince William’s quote. When he says “not just by a rogue reporter but by leaders at the BBC”, he is talking about you there, isn’t he?

Lord Hall

We did what we thought was right at the time, investigating Martin Bashir not once but twice. I have a huge amount of respect for the prince. I have worked with him on various things in the past, and I am deeply sorry for the hurt this has caused him. I really do want to make that clear.

Kevin Brennan

Have you spoken to him to express your deep sorrow and regret about it?

Lord Hall

No, I haven’t. I wanted to have this session with you all before I think of what I do next.

Kevin Brennan

On the reappointment of Martin Bashir, it is quite surprising to me, as someone who has a degree of respect for the BBC, that its recruitment and hiring policy seems to be less rigorous than the policies that I would deploy to employ a parliamentary researcher. When I appoint a parliamentary researcher, I advertise the job externally, often get more than 200 applications, always go through all the CVs, throw out the ones that can’t spell my name and keep the rest, and then create a long list and a short list and work with some of the people at interview, have some little practical exercises to see if they are suitable for the job, and appoint the best person for the job. It really surprises me, as someone who regards themselves as a supporter of the BBC, that this kind of chumocracy approach was taken to an appointment of somebody who was a proven liar, with a very dodgy background. You have made it clear that you were not involved, but what was your reaction when you heard that he had been reappointed?

Lord Hall

I didn’t know then what I know now. I remember thinking and, I think, saying to James Harding that I hoped he delivered against his brief. But I go back to you, it was not for me to second guess James’s procedures for finding the right people, for finding the talent that he wanted to come and join News. That was for News to run through and do.

Kevin Brennan

Did you sort of kick the cat when you heard he was appointed, or turn the air blue with frustration that this could have happened, knowing what you knew about his record? Even if you didn’t know everything you know now, you knew enough to be perhaps concerned about his reappointment. Would that be fair, or did you just shrug your shoulders about it?

Lord Hall

No. I go back, you have to say in the end that this is an appointment made by James Harding and Jonathan Munro in news gathering. I support them in their decision. I go back to the point that this is a highly devolved organisation and you trust the people to find the right talented people to come and—

Kevin Brennan

All right, you have said that. Do you personally believe now, having been apprised of further information through all these inquiries, that Martin Bashir never actually showed those forged documents to Princess Diana?

Lord Hall

We had a letter from Princess Diana.

Kevin Brennan

I know that, and we have that on the record. Do you personally believe, though, that it is true? Given that we know Princess Diana was in a vulnerable position and that Martin Bashir was a deceiving, manipulative liar, isn’t it entirely credible and possible, or do you think this is not true, that he might have manipulated Princess Diana into writing that letter to cover his own tracks?

Lord Hall

I can’t say, but 25 years ago a letter in her own handwriting from the princess saying what she said, that she was not manipulated, that Martin Bashir told her nothing that she didn’t already know, that she had no regrets at all, was very powerful. When Lord Dyson also says that it was very likely she was going to do an interview somewhere, I take that seriously, too.

Clive Efford

I want to follow up on that, because this goes back to the point I was trying to make earlier: what was the conceivable purpose of those documents being created in the first place? Isn’t it likely that if he showed those documents to the Princess of Wales—she says she was shown no documents that told her anything of which she was not previously aware. If she already thought that that sort of coercion and bribery to gain information on her was happening, she would be able to write that. It doesn’t actually say that she was not shown those statements.

Lord Hall

Our understanding back then of why Bashir had produced those documents was as part of a file to do a story that he never pursued—and Steve Hewlett said this at the time—looking at a whole raft of allegations around the royal family to do with bugging and all sorts of things like that. That was the reason he produced them, and that is a reason that seemed credible to us at the time.

Clive Efford

An acceptable explanation also?

Lord Hall

Well, credible.

John Nicolson

Lord Hall, have you any idea how utterly implausible it is that you were not closely involved in the monitoring of the rehiring of Martin Bashir, someone that you knew to be a serial liar? This wasn’t any old rehiring; this was the talk of the newsroom of the BBC. People were wandering around saying to one another, “Can you believe it, Martin Bashir is back and as religion correspondent?” and you knew nothing about this. Come on.

Lord Hall

Mr Nicolson, I ask you just to consider the number of things that come across the desk of any Director-General.

John Nicolson

Yes, but this is on a different scale, level and importance. This is Martin Bashir. He had been sacked twice in America for wrongdoing. You knew he was a serial liar and he pops up at the BBC. The idea that you were unaware of this and not closely involved with it is just implausible.

Lord Hall

I was not involved in the rehiring of Martin Bashir, Mr Nicolson, as yesterday’s report makes clear.

John Nicolson

Yes. Well, the report is a whitewash.

Lord Hall

I don’t think it is because it is reporting what I know to be the case as well, and it has been produced by a very independently minded person, namely Kenny MacQuarrie.

John Nicolson

A long-term BBC staffer.

Lord Hall

No, I was not constantly asking for briefings about one correspondent in one part of the news operation, neither would I expect to be. Running the BBC, you have a whole raft of things to do, negotiating a charter, running new services like BBC Sounds, moving more of the BBC out of London.

John Nicolson

We know what the job involves. Let’s examine what you knew and when you knew it. Martin Bashir produced forged bank documents intended to make it look as if Diana’s closest aides were corrupt and working against her. He showed these forgeries to groom Earl Spencer to secure an introduction to Diana. He lied about the way in which these documents had been used. Why didn’t you pick up the phone and call Earl Spencer yourself and ask for his side of the story?

Lord Hall

I think I have said it already, but I will repeat that I accept Lord Dyson’s conclusion that we should have picked up the phone to Earl Spencer.

John Nicolson

But why didn’t you?

Lord Hall

At the time we were doing two things. One is that Steve Hewlett had spoken to Earl Spencer. As I said before, he had spoken to Earl Spencer when The Mail on Sunday story came out.

John Nicolson

What about you? I want to know why you didn’t pick up the phone. This is basic rookie journalist stuff. There is a controversy. There is obviously two sides to the story. You ask one person their view and then you pick up the phone and you ask the other person their view. You are a disciple of Birtism. This is the very basis of Birtism; you do some research. You did not do any research at all, did you?

Lord Hall

Well, Anne Sloman and Tim Suter did the research.

John Nicolson

So it was all their fault?

Lord Hall

No, they did the research. Anne and I then interviewed Martin Bashir. The point is that we were looking at something narrower and in retrospect, in terms of Dyson, that was a mistake. The narrow point we were trying to make was had Bashir breached these guidelines and then what do we do about that.

John Nicolson

You should not have set such narrow parameters. You should have gone where the story led you. Of course, worse, you painted Earl Spencer as a co-conspirator with Bashir, involved in falsifying the content of forged bank statements. You will understand Earl Spencer’s outrage at this. I have in front of me here the document that you wrote. You said that Earl Spencer had shown some documents to Martin Bashir, including a bank statement. Earl Spencer did no such thing. Martin Bashir showed the forged documents. You wrote this and gave it to the board, and it was false and it has your name on it.

Lord Hall

I accept that it is false because we were lied to by Martin Bashir.

John Nicolson

You did no research. You met Martin Bashir and reported back to John Birt that he is an honest and honourable man, but you knew he was not. Let’s look back at the Tim Gardam memo. He was the head of weekly programmes and he had given you this memo. It had told you that Martin Bashir had lied three times. What happened to the memo that he gave to you?

Lord Hall

I acted upon it. Tim Gardam made it very clear in his memo, which you have in front of you, that we should look into this all over again. We did exactly that with Tim Suter and Anne Sloman. We looked at—

John Nicolson

Where is the memo?

Lord Hall

I presume you are reading the memo given by Tim Gardam to Lord Dyson.

John Nicolson

Yes, but where is the original copy that was given to you?

Lord Hall

I am sorry, I don’t know, but I am reading—

John Nicolson

This is a very important document. Did you place it in the BBC’s files with the other Bashir notes?

Lord Hall

I cannot tell you. This is 25 years ago, Mr Nicolson, and I cannot tell you what happened to the various documents that—

John Nicolson

It has gone missing. Did you destroy it?

Lord Hall

Absolutely not. Can I just go back to my position and the way that I looked at all these things? I approached this in an open-minded way, trying to get to the truth. We, not just me but others, were lied to by Martin Bashir, and that is at the root of it. We were in no way trying to cover up something.

John Nicolson

You knew he had lied to you, so you are not telling us something that is new. You knew that at the time. Fortunately, this missing document, which is so key to the Dyson inquiry, found its way to Lord Dyson. You will understand why this document is so important. It predates all your assurances to the board about Bashir’s honesty. It shows that you knew he had lied to secure the interview, because a senior colleague had told you that. This document has disappeared. Fortunately, its original author had kept a copy of it, which is why Lord Dyson got it. Lord Dyson called you “woefully ineffective” and, even more damningly, Prince William said that you chose to look the other way. Do you know how much the Dyson inquiry cost?

Lord Hall

No, you will have to ask the BBC that.

John Nicolson

I can tell you. It cost £1.4 million—that is 9,000 licence fees—directly as a result of your negligence. Lord Hall, it is very hard to believe that you were once thought of as a safe pair of hands. Having presided over the BBC equal pay cover-up, the pensioners’ TV licence fiasco and now this scandal, don’t you think perhaps that a forfeit of some of your lavish BBC pension would be appropriate?

Lord Hall

Let me just say that I have been a public servant for 35 years at the BBC running news. I then left and did public service running the Royal Opera House, which at that time was in crisis. I rescued the Cultural Olympiad for the Olympics in 2012 and I came back to the BBC, which I never thought I ever would do or wanted to, in 2013 to rescue the BBC from the crisis involving Savile. Twenty-five years ago, myself and everybody believed Bashir. We made a mistake, but please don’t let that colour the other things that I have done, and which I can enumerate but obviously will not, in my record of public service over 35 years. I have done a hell of a lot for the BBC and, I think, for the arts, and I regret this one thing that we all got wrong because we were lied to by Martin Bashir 25 years ago.

John Nicolson

Some rescue, Lord Hall. It was clear that you were negligent in the way you carried out this investigation. You say that you believed Martin Bashir but, in fact, you knew he was a liar. The key witness in all of this, Earl Spencer, you did not bother to pick up the phone to ask him some questions, something a rookie journalist would have done. There has been a BBC cover-up, which is why you and the other witnesses are now here. Back to you, Chair.

Lord Hall

Can I just make a comment on that, Mr Nicolson? First, I accept we should have spoken to Earl Spencer. I accept that conclusion from Lord Dyson’s report. One of us should have gone back to Earl Spencer on this issue of the documents. I accept that. Can I also say that we have not tried to conceal from the public or anyone any of the conclusions we came to around this 25 years ago? The notion that there has been some consistent line that we have drawn under this, trying to conceal something from the public, is not true. We thought we had come to a conclusion 25 years ago, an honest conclusion based on somebody who was contrite and was prepared to see he had made a big mistake, someone we thought was inexperienced and out of his depth. We got that wrong. We believed him, and I am sorry for that.

Giles Watling

Lord Hall, there is one thing I do not quite understand. You have repeatedly said to the Chair, Kevin Brennan and, just now, Mr Nicolson that there is a great deal that the Director-General has to devolve, and that is understandable with 20,000 employees and so on. As you just said, you were brought in to deal with the fallout from the appalling Savile affair. Coming in on the back of that, I do not understand why you were not more on your mettle and put mechanisms in place to ensure the honesty, openness and truthfulness that we all expect from the BBC, because damage has been done. I would have thought you would have been all over that on your arrival, and then the Bashir thing happened.

Lord Hall

Yes, when I came back into the BBC to deal with the Savile crisis, and it was a real crisis, there were three investigations going on into what should be done. I accepted all three. When it came to the final report by an eminent judge on how this had happened, I spoke to survivors and I then ensured that we had the policies in place to ensure that such a thing could not happen again. The same thing happened with bullying and harassment. The same thing happened with equal pay, which again was an issue that we were dealing with. When I came back to the BBC I brought in changes to the way that people were employed, terms and conditions and so on, that had not been done for a generation. We were reforming the culture of the BBC to make it a better place to work, a place where people could say what they felt and did not feel they would be bullied or cowed in some way into submission. That is because, fundamentally, I believe in teams and I believe in people giving of their best in the workforce, I really do. When I came back to the BBC, that is what I wanted to achieve.

Giles Watling

I appreciate all that, and it is all very worthy. It is just that having come in on the back of such an enormous crisis, with such far-reaching effect, you did not put into place mechanisms whereby the Bashir affair could never have happened.

Lord Hall

I don’t think the Bashir affair, as I said to one of your colleagues earlier, would happen in the same way now, or rather the way that we would investigate it, had it happened, would be very different. I did bring in policies around whistleblowing, which were very clear. If you want to whistle blow now, and if you are still not satisfied, it goes right up to the board level. There is a board member who is responsible for whistleblowing. We had whistleblowing policies. We had ways in which you could complain about behaviours and so on. Editorial policy is now much stronger within the BBC and is much more powerfully felt within the BBC and people use it properly, so there is that, too. I think we have, all in all, better controls. You would know that when you are dealing with thousands of decisions being made each day, which are difficult editorial decisions being made from a local radio station through to the World Service, you need people to understand the guidelines. You need people to understand what is good and what is bad, what is good journalism and what is bad journalism. I think we did a huge amount in my time with James Harding and latterly with Fran Unsworth to ensure that those guidelines and what we wanted from our journalists was understood.

Giles Watling

I just think that perhaps there was too much devolution, but thank you very much.

Chair

I know that time is running short, Lord Hall, and we appreciate the fact that you volunteered today. Not everyone wishes to volunteer to come in front of our Select Committee, I have to say. I am wondering whether or not, first of all, you received any other complaints regarding Martin Bashir’s journalism during his time at the BBC, perhaps in relation to Terry Venables and the faking of documents in that case.

Lord Hall

Yes, there was an issue around the Terry Venables Panorama, which was dealt with at the time. I cannot remember the details now, but I think I mentioned it in my report to the governors.

Chair

That was two years before the Princess Diana faked documents, so he was a faker of documents of long standing then?

Lord Hall

I cannot remember the details of the Terry Venables case—

Chair

The details are in the public domain. What happened was that there was a payment and loan to Terry Venables and this was graphicised, or graphics were brought up in order to show this loan, but those graphics were fake. Effectively, it showed a bank statement that was fake, and that was broadcast on Newsnight two years prior to Princess Diana being shown or having been involved with fake documents by the same reporter.

Lord Hall

Yes, and that is why I was clear about bringing in guidelines to make sure that these fake documents—that hit air, from what you are saying, this document or these documents—

Chair

It was 30 years ago when that happened, nearly 30 years ago, when he was faking documents at the BBC, and two years prior to Princess Diana.

Lord Hall

Sorry, the question is, Chair?

Chair

The question is that you then say you introduced new editorial guidelines, at a much later date, obviously, with Mr Ayre, I think it was, the gentleman you mentioned.

Lord Hall

That is right, that was after this faking of documents and the Princess Diana issue.

Chair

Okay, but were you aware that he had also faked documents for Terry Venables?

Lord Hall

I cannot recall. This is going back a very long time, but obviously the Terry Venables Panorama is something that myself and Mr Gardam would have known about at the time.

Chair

Okay, fine. If you had been DG at the time that Lord Dyson revealed his report, would you have resigned?

Lord Hall

Well, I wasn’t Director-General. I had left long before it so—

Chair

Well, not so long ago. You could say that it was actually very timely, your leaving. You obviously resigned from the National Gallery, but do you think it would have been the morally right thing for you to have resigned at that point?

Lord Hall

I really cannot answer that question. I left the BBC some nine or 10 months before to take up the chair of the National Gallery. I obviously did not know that this was about to emerge on to the scene.

Chair

You were not aware that it was going to emerge on to the scene?

Lord Hall

No, of course not.

Chair

Finally, I have one question for you. Do you think that what Mr Bashir did was criminal?

Lord Hall

I don’t know. I am not a lawyer, and it would not be for me to say whether what he did was criminal or not.

Chair

The definition of fraud is financial gain through false pretences. He gained financially.

Lord Hall

I do not think he gained from this financially at all, but lawyers better—

Chair

In terms of his career? He got the biggest interview in British TV history almost. That is a big thing to gain, is it not? It therefore has a financial consequence down the line.

Lord Hall

Martin Bashir did not gain from that financially. The BBC might have done, and I think some of the moneys went to charity as I recall, but I do not think Martin Bashir gained from it.

Chair

Okay, we will leave it there. Thank you very much, Lord Hall. That concludes our first panel. We will take a short adjournment of two minutes while we prepare our second panel. Examination of Witness

Witness

Lord Birt.

Chair

This is the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and our special hearing into the work of the BBC in light of the Bashir scandal. On panel 2 we have Lord Birt, former Director-General of the BBC. Good morning, Lord Birt.

Lord Birt

Good morning.

Steve Brine

Good morning, Lord Birt. Thank you very much for joining us. For those watching, you were obviously Director-General of the BBC from 1992 to 2000. The interview with Princess Diana took place in November 1995, so that was during your tenure, just to be clear. Lord Birt, at what point did the BBC management board develop awareness of the allegations against Martin Bashir?

Lord Birt

That, of course, depends on what allegations you mean. The report from Lord Hall, which has already been discussed, went to the board of management and the board of governors, and it was on the basis of those reports that an understanding was reached.

Steve Brine

The allegations that I refer to are that the interview was secured under false pretences. There were questions being asked pretty soon after it was broadcast, and obviously it led to a number of investigations. What were your personal feelings, as the leader of the organisation, when that report from Lord Hall landed on your desk?

Lord Birt

I obviously followed the proceedings with Lord Hall. If I may, I think a little context might be helpful to the Committee to try to understand these events, because I do not think a clear understanding has emerged from the discussion so far. It is a very difficult story to understand, and I might say that I have only understood some of the most important aspects of this story in recent weeks. The backdrop is of a reporter who deceived on a very significant scale, and I do not think the scale of his deception has remotely been understood in the public discourse. There were two completely different deceptions, and you cannot understand what happened unless you understand what those two deceptions were. The first deception, which was cunning and callous, was the one that he meted out to, first, Earl Spencer and to Princess Diana to persuade them that she was a victim of betrayal and espionage. If you read a very important document, Richard Kay’s interview with Earl Spencer, you will see that Martin Bashir came to the table with literally scores of examples and allegations. He alleged to her and to Earl Spencer that her phones were tapped, her letters were opened, she had a tracker on her car, a driver and her friends were leaking and, most importantly, that Prince Charles’s private secretary was marshalling a campaign against her. Over and beyond that are very large numbers of stories about the press and about Prince Charles’s private life. The documents were obviously the only tangible evidence that Bashir offered Earl Spencer. We all know now that they were fakes and we know what that is, but you have to understand the second deception if you are to understand how events then played out. If it were not for the fact that Matt Wiessler came forward, I suspect we would never have known any of this. After he came forward, Martin Bashir had a problem. He had to ensure that he escaped detection for his wrongdoing by his bosses. He promptly created another long, complex narrative. If you look at the document in Lord Dyson’s appendices you will see it there, the document being Lord Hall’s long-form report of his interview with Martin Bashir. He named individual officers of the security services and GCHQ whom he said alleged a concerted campaign, again of surveillance and interception, marshalled by Prince Charles’s private secretary. He alleged that a friend of Princess Diana’s had driven him around and shown him the junction box. If you watch John Ware’s Panorama, you will find that that friend says she never met Martin Bashir. This is absolutely critical. Unless you understand this point, you cannot understand what then happened. He said that when he met Earl Spencer, Earl Spencer gave him copies of the bank statements of his head of security, Alan Waller. That was the prime basis for the documents. That information from Earl Spencer was supplemented by information that he then said he got from Princess Diana about the two payments on the documents, one from News International, the other from—and here he made a big mistake. He made up a name but said it was a front for the security services and that Waller was in their pay. This was extensive, cunning, considered and deeply callous because of the impact it had on many of the individuals concerned. He was utterly oblivious to the harm he was causing. That was the backdrop he presented, and the essence of the story from my point of view. By the way, I have only understood the story I just recounted over recent weeks and months. The essence of the story is that he fooled the BBC executives concerned. You have just given Lord Hall a very hard time. You have to remember that there were five extremely seasoned BBC executives, none of them faceless bureaucrats: Steve Hewlett, whom you probably all know, Tim Suter, Tim Gardam, Anne Sloman and Tony Hall himself. The sad fact is that they believed his story. Unless you understand that, you cannot understand what subsequently happened. When it was presented at the board of management and board of governors, the so-called document was presented as something that was essentially authored by Earl Spencer himself. That helps you to understand the answer to why nobody thought it right to go back to Earl Spencer because they thought he was the prime author, which we now know is complete nonsense. But unless you understand all of that, you cannot understand how events played out.

Steve Brine

Yes, thank you. What a guy you had in your team. I am glad you mentioned the board of governors. There was a lot of tension at the time between yourself and Duke Hussey, wasn’t there, as chairman of the board? They were quite strained, those relations?

Lord Birt

Yes.

Steve Brine

Obviously, he had very close relationships with senior members of the royal family. The allegation was that the board was kept out of the loop about the planning of the interview and in the aftermath of it. How did the relationship between the chair of the board of governors and the royal family influence how you, as DG, dealt with the allegations at the time? You see, the reason we ask this is because we are interested in getting to the truth of decision making and how decisions were made, and scrutinising that. This seems to me to be a rather interesting part of the plot, Lord Birt.

Lord Birt

It had no impact whatsoever. Tony Hall reported up his best understanding, we now know a completely flawed understanding, of what exactly had happened, and we all believed that was an honest account. That was one that was shared by the board of management, the board of governors and, by the way, one that I believed for the best part of 25 years. It came as a great shock to me when I read Tim Suter’s account well after Lord Dyson’s inquiry started, in which I learned for the first time that Martin Bashir had lied. It simply is not the case that anybody set out to deceive, other than Martin Bashir himself; as you say, quite a guy. Unless you understand that this was a serial liar on an industrial scale, you simply cannot understand the story. Moreover, in fairness to some of the people involved, in 100 years of BBC journalism can we think of anybody else who behaved in that kind of way? Yes, they all believed him, hardened and experienced though they were, and we know they were wrong to believe him, but we also can see some of the reasons why: the aura of Princess Diana, her letter. You only have to look at the interview itself and other work that Martin Bashir has done to see that he is a very skilled confidence trickster. He uses emotion. He is very persuasive. He cried in his interview with Tony Hall and Anne Sloman and fessed up to the fact that he had shown the documents to Earl Spencer. He did not fess up to the fact that he had created those documents from his own information, and he continued to argue, as I think he still does, that Earl Spencer as well as Princess Diana were the prime suppliers of the information to those fakes.

Steve Brine

Lord Birt, I am just going to interrupt because, as always, time is pressing. This is your chance to give your version of events and the world is watching, and you are giving a very compelling argument that you were all naively deceived by a clever man. It reminds me of the people who appear on the radio to talk about a fraudster who phoned them up and tricked them into giving their bank details. Of course, two years previously the Venables case came up, which our Chair was raising with Lord Hall, who for the record we did not give a hard time to at all—that was us being very benign. Were you not aware of the Venables debacle two years previously, when this same confidence trickster had seemingly used the same MO?

Lord Birt

I simply don’t know. I cannot overstate enough the difficulty of trying to remember things. You are a young man. In 25 years’ time, you will find that you struggle to remember the detail of lots of things in your life. I have almost no memory whatsoever of the things we are talking about. Everything I have learned is from a close study of the documents. From my understanding from the documents, not from my memory at the time, the Venables document is not a parallel. I can stand corrected on it, but my best understanding is that it was not just Martin Bashir; there was a Panorama producer involved. My best understanding, possibly not true, was that that document was compiled on the back of somebody reading into a tape recorder a document that actually existed that they had seen and that they had then created. It was a facsimile of a real document. If you look at the evidence that is now available, the producer and, I presume, Martin Bashir himself were scolded for not making it clear on air that the viewers were not seeing an original document. They were seeing something that was created. My understanding—and, as I say, it may be imperfect—was that that was a facsimile of a document that really existed.

Steve Brine

Okay. I have a couple more, and then I will close and hand back. We will come on to that in more detail. I just want to return to the question that I asked Lord Hall at the very start. You were the DG at the time. The fact that a very junior reporter landed the scoop of the century, I know your memory is vague but presumably you remember thinking that that was an incredible feat that he achieved, don’t you? Did it ring any alarm bells at all, Lord Birt?

Lord Birt

No, absolutely none. I think you can overstate the “junior.” He was in his early 30s. He had worked in the BBC for a number of years. He had worked on other current affairs programmes. He had risen up the ranks to Panorama. What I did understand and is embedded in my memory is that he did not—I think he probably did set out to get an interview with Princess Diana, but that is not the story we were being told. What he set out to do was to make a Panorama on the surveillance of Princess Diana and the royal family, not an unreasonable thing to do because, remember, in the previous couple of years two private phone calls, one from Princess Diana, one from Prince Charles, had been intercepted and published. It was not fanciful to assume that there were difficulties around surveillance and bugging of members of the royal family. My understanding is that that was the journey he set out on. Now, given what we now know about how he thinks and how he calculates, and given the skill with which he assembled the yarn that he took to Earl Spencer, I think we can be reasonably suspicious that he had that as his objective all along.

Steve Brine

You did not think, “Why has Nick Witchell not got this?”

Lord Birt

No, absolutely not. Why would one? You would not stare a gift horse in the mouth. Just as Lord Hall said, he only knew a couple of weeks before. I knew even later.

Steve Brine

You said something very interesting there: you would not look a gift horse in the mouth. I have a funny feeling that my Chairman might return to that. Finally, can I just ask you this, Lord Birt? I am interested in your personal feelings about this now, given the recollection that you have learned in recent months about this—

Lord Birt

Not recollection, new knowledge.

Steve Brine

Yes, your new knowledge. With your new knowledge, you were the boss, you were the DG when this went on. An interview with one of the most famous people on the planet was attained under false pretences. Reputations were trashed—Matt Wiessler as an example—and in the words of the Duke of Cambridge, this, “made lurid and false claims about the royal family which played on her fears”—his mother—“and fuelled paranoia”. So, her fears and paranoia, which it is not a great stretch to say sparked a train of events that less than two years later would see the events in that underpass in Paris. Reflecting now, with the passing of time and your learned knowledge, the many things that you have done since, remember you were strategy adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair for five years, is this your Iraq war, Mr Birt?

Lord Birt

It is a tragic occurrence. It is an absolute horror story and it should never have happened, and it is a complete embarrassment that it did happen. None of us can speculate. My heart goes out to the sons of Princess Diana, but none of us can truly speculate and understand what the consequences were. What we can understand is that this was a plane crash. It should not have happened, and you will probably want to discuss how it might have been avoided and what the BBC might do to ensure it never happens again.

Steve Brine

At that point I will hand back to the Chair.

Julie Elliott

Good morning, Lord Birt. You have answered, in some part, what I was about to ask you, about the board of governors meeting on 15 April 1996 and about Lord Hall’s update to that meeting. I wanted to know what you made of it. You have expressed what you think of that and a reflection of what else you said. Can you actually remember the board meeting and know what you thought at the time?

Lord Birt

No, absolutely not. I don’t remember it. The Committee may find that surprising, but I have not met anybody who does remember it. There may be people who do, but Lord Dyson does not appear to have surfaced them. However hard it is to understand, it is because of the nature of the report that Lord Hall made, which we have exhaustively discussed so far, about what the origin of those documents was, a recognition that those documents should not have been created, the reprimanding of the reporter concerned, and the letter from Princess Diana. All of these things were reported to the board, and it is embarrassing to say it now but it did not have the consequence at the time because of that very limited and wrong understanding of events. It did not have the impact that, in hindsight, you might think it would have done. There were some very weighty people around that board table, as there were around the board of management table, and there was no record of anybody seriously challenging it because it was a completely wrong but convincing yarn at the time.

Julie Elliott

There are two things there. I accept that it is 25 years ago. I remember some things I did that year; I do not remember everything. Most people remember things of personal significance. However, the Princess of Wales interview was such a huge thing, probably one of the most memorable things that I can remember watching on television in my life, so it was not that it was an insignificant thing that you were talking about. That is why I am very surprised that you have no recollection of the event.

Lord Birt

I did not say I had no recollection of events surrounding the interview because, you are quite right, this was an extremely important event in my life and that of everybody else concerned. I have a reasonable recollection of those things where I myself was, so to speak, in the lead. For instance, in discussion of the interview itself, I led the discussion about whether it was legitimate to do it and, if we did do it, what it was reasonable to ask Princess Diana and what we should not ask Princess Diana. I do not have a detailed understanding of that meeting but I can remember the occasion and I can remember some of the things we said. I can clearly remember what I thought at the time. I had to make a decision. Princess Diana only imposed one condition, which was that she and only she should inform the Queen when the interview was done. I had to think about that and agree it. I can clearly remember because my main problem was, as has already been alluded to, I had had an excellent relationship with the Chairman of the BBC over the best part of 10 years but it had deteriorated over the previous year. I do not particularly want to go into what had happened to him as the years went on, and so on, but he became more and more difficult and unreasonable. He had, and everybody knew it, very strong views about the royal family and—things I would not repeat—about Princess Diana. The hardest thing for me, and which I clearly remember, was having to decide what to do about that. In the end, I decided that he would be told essentially seven days before transmission but not before the interview, because I judged that if he were told he would frustrate it and that would have been wrong for the BBC. That was a very difficult decision for me, and in making it one that I said to my wife at the time I expected I would lose my job on the back of, but I thought it was the right decision. I can remember clearly the events that followed, because he made a great fuss at the board and I had further meetings with members of the board. In the end, they supported me. All those things I remember but, self-evidently from Lord Hall’s account, this investigation was conducted not just by Lord Hall but by all the other people we have mentioned in line. That was reported up to me and I have a very limited memory of that.

Julie Elliott

You had no reason to question Lord Hall’s evidence to the board of governors?

Lord Birt

Absolutely not, the same as everybody else. Lord Hall has talked about trust. I knew all five people in that line. They are all people of real integrity, ability and experience. If somebody tells me that those five people are standing behind it, believe me, I am going to believe it and I did.

Julie Elliott

If we move on to the BBC’s internal investigations into the allegations around Martin Bashir. Without being approached by the BBC, how could Earl Spencer have presented himself for questioning in that process?

Lord Birt

I think Earl Spencer has been asked why he did not come forward, and I respect his answer, which was he was very concerned for the welfare of his sister and, after the interview went out, he did not want to undermine her by revealing all his doubts about the process that he had been involved in. I think that when he did talk to people—as Lord Hall has already mentioned, he talked to some members of the BBC—he raised other issues, not the documents. My best understanding is that Earl Spencer himself did not understand the documents were fake. I discussed this at length with Lord Dyson. If we had gone to Earl Spencer, we would have understood—and I think there were very good reasons why it did not occur to people—the complete incompatibility between Martin Bashir’s narrative and Earl Spencer’s. What Earl Spencer says is, “Martin Bashir showed me these documents at the beginning of the process in late August, early September.” What Martin Bashir told his colleagues in the BBC is that these documents were created, as I have said, on the basis of information from Earl Spencer and Princess Diana just very briefly in October, not long before the interview was conducted. It is that disparity in the evidence that finally, when Earl Spencer did come forward, started to unravel Martin Bashir’s story because it was not unravelled until then. Indeed, for reasons you will not want to go into because there were subplots, it was not even then unravelled satisfactorily because there were some difficulties in reconciling the two accounts.

Julie Elliott

You would accept, I think, that if Earl Spencer had been interviewed at that point by the BBC’s internal investigations, this would have come to light long before it has done?

Lord Birt

Without a doubt, and I discussed this with Lord Dyson, of course. If Earl Spencer had come forward with the account that he finally came forward with last November, in the interview he gave Richard Kay, it would have blown Martin Bashir’s account apart immediately, and the history would have been different. I am very sorry that it took 25 years for this terrible story to emerge.

Julie Elliott

Finally, you obviously would have been aware of Martin Bashir at the time. You, I am sure, would have met him.

Lord Birt

No, absolutely not. No, I did not meet him at the time and, as far as I know, I never met him since. I doubt that I was even aware of him.

Julie Elliott

You were not aware of him?

Lord Birt

I doubt I was aware of him. As Lord Hall keeps saying, the BBC is a very big organisation.

Julie Elliott

The person who did the biggest interview—

Lord Birt

No, sorry, I thought you were asking whether I was aware of it in advance, was I aware of him before this interview. I do not accept I was.

Julie Elliott

In the time that you were Director-General, which was after this interview as well, you will have been aware of Martin Bashir. Was there anything, just a gut feeling or anything, that rang alarm bells about this man at the time—before, after, during that period?

Lord Birt

I am not sure I entirely understand the question. Absolutely no alarm bells at all, for all the reasons I talked about earlier: his quiet, gentle, emotionally sympathetic manner that you see in the interview itself. No, there were no alarm bells. Frankly, alarm bells rang subsequently big time with me when he got into trouble in America and the appalling things he said about Sarah Palin and his ill-judged comments about “Asian babes.” To be honest, and nobody else has mentioned this, I felt very uneasy about what he did with Michael Jackson. That was the first time that my doubts started to kick in. Indeed, you cannot be definitive about what he did with Michael Jackson, but I never liked the smell of that and the failure to reach proper conclusions in that. I did subsequently think, “Goodness me, I am not sure about this person.”

Clive Efford

Lord Birt, you have read Lord Dyson’s report and you have listened to Lord Hall’s evidence this morning. Is there anything, looking back on that period, that you feel let down by?

Lord Birt

If you have read Lord Dyson’s report, you will see—because he and I met at the very end of his deliberations—that he and I had a very good conversation about all of this and he fairly reports it in his report. He also reveals that he and I disagreed. I think he judges my former colleagues too harshly, given the circumstances that I shared with the Committee earlier. If you say, “Do you have regrets?” then I don’t know how many of these people you have met, but Steve Hewlett had a “take no prisoners” personality. He was not a man you got on the wrong side of. He was extremely forthright. Tim Gardam has one of the sharpest minds of anybody I have ever met. Tim Suter went on to very important jobs. Anne Sloman, as has already been mentioned, was a significant figure in radio. None of them spotted it. Maybe another person might have spotted the discrepancies in his testimony, and there is a mystery about why Tim Gardam’s report never informed subsequent deliberations. Yes, it would have been terrific if one of them had spotted flaws, had dug deeper and so on, but I have to say as the Director-General at the time that this was my team and these were people who I respected and were and are people of real integrity. Of course, we can all completely agree that what happened is deeply regrettable, but it is better to understand how it happened and then to work out what you would do to make sure that it never happens again, recognising that this is probably a one in 100-year occurrence of having a rogue reporter who is willing to be deceitful on this scale.

Clive Efford

It is not the first time the BBC has been deceived on a massive scale, but it is probably best if we do not go down that rabbit hole.

Lord Birt

Well, perhaps you would remind me of those other occasions, because I cannot recall any.

Clive Efford

Jimmy Savile would be a big one that would jump out at me.

Lord Birt

We are talking about—

Clive Efford

I know there is massive amnesia at the BBC, but I am sure you have not forgotten that. You have said that this was a very devious individual who misled everybody and that the BBC and all its officials and all its hot, top reporters were all just bamboozled by this individual over a long period of time. Mr Wiessler came forward after the broadcast. What happened then? Was that brought to your attention?

Lord Birt

Only in the context of Lord Hall’s report, and you have already talked to Lord Hall about that. He reports and, indeed, the documentation, which we can all study, is completely clear about what happened when Matt Wiessler came forward. He was respected as a whistleblower by Tim Gardam. Tim Gardam acted with real despatch and vigour and immediately confronted Martin Bashir about it. He got the story. Tim Gardam got the letter from Princess Diana, and he was reassured by that letter. He went back to Matt Wiessler to say, “Don’t worry.” It was perfectly legitimate for Matt Wiessler to come forward, and he was given the assurance, I see from the documentation—I knew nothing of this at the time—by Tim Gardam that they had checked that the documents were not shown to Princess Diana and he should feel reassured.

Clive Efford

Let’s get this straight. We have a fairly junior reporter at Panorama who Lord Hall has just told us faked these documents and, when interviewed about it, disclosed that he was investigating all sorts of things around the royal family and the Princess of Wales. It goes beyond just those fake documents and you have said that yourself, that he gave a litany of evidence.

Lord Birt

That was the journey he was on, and his editor had followed that journey with him. It may have in Martin Bashir’s mind, but in everybody else’s mind it started off as a Panorama about surveillance of the royal family.

Clive Efford

Lord Dyson said there was an irregularity in the fact that he did not have his hand held by a producer, which was quite strange for somebody who was as junior as that. He discloses to the head of news, Lord Hall, that he has not only produced fake documents but he is also investigating lots of things around the royal family. Given the sensitivities of that information, shouldn’t someone have come and knocked on your door?

Lord Birt

No, honestly, I think you fail to appreciate the sequence here. He is under the stewardship of his editor, Steve Hewlett, and Steve Hewlett, as far as I understand it, does understand that Martin Bashir over many months is doing a programme about surveillance of the royal family. If that had turned into a Panorama, somebody would have knocked at my door because, as everybody will be aware, it was my practice when there was a really difficult Panorama that raised either severe legal or public policy issues. From the moment I arrived at the BBC, first as deputy Director-General in charge of news and in charge of actually forming BBC News for the first time—it had previously been five separate divisions—I am sorry, I have lost my way. Please remind me of your question.

Clive Efford

Let me take you back. You just said—

Lord Birt

Oh, sorry, do forgive me, I do understand, I remember the question. If that had turned into a Panorama about the surveillance of the royal family, a red flag would have gone up and it would have come to me. As with other difficult Panoramas I would have reviewed it personally. I would have seen the programme. Very often, I would be accompanied in that process by a leading QC.

Clive Efford

Sorry, I missed the beginning of what you said. Could you repeat that? What did you say right at the start of that sentence? If it had been what?

Lord Birt

Sorry, if the programme that he set out to make about surveillance of the royal family had turned into a real programme, then there would have been a red flag. As was my practice, any programme that raised significant legal or public policy issues—and there were only a handful of Panoramas a year that would do that—would come to me and I would personally review it. I would often do it accompanied by a leading QC to sign it off. Why did I do this? Because when I arrived at the BBC, the reason I was invited into the BBC, the first person at that level since the second world war, is because an awful lot of things had gone wrong. In particular, a Panorama had gone wrong, where the BBC had lost a major legal action in court. To be honest, the BBC’s processes for managing difficult programmes were terrible, and I changed those processes. It would have come to me, but it would not have come to me until it was a real programming prospect.

Clive Efford

I am a little bemused by that. So, if it had been about security surveillance of the royal family, that would have come across your desk, but the scoop of the century, this one-to-one interview with the Princess of Wales with all of the international news interest, no one bothered to come and tell you, “We are about to secure this interview” and later on saying that there may be some issues about how that was obtained? No one came to you as Director-General and said any of that?

Lord Birt

They are two different issues. I have already said that people did come to me; it was seen as a highly sensitive programme. I was involved, as I have already said, in the discussions about that programme, its legitimacy, its purpose and what it should contain. Your second question is completely different. When I became aware that there was a problem is when the Mail published the false documents in the following year. That launched Tony Hall and Anne Sloman’s investigation and, to the best of my knowledge and memory, that was the first time I was aware of it. Then Tony properly reported that up to myself, the board of management and the board of governors.

Clive Efford

Given your rigorous approach to news and making sure people check all sides of stories, did you question anyone about why no one, particularly Anne Sloman and Lord Hall, contacted Earl Spencer?

Lord Birt

I have already said. I think I have answered that question.

Clive Efford

I do not think you have.

Lord Birt

We are talking about five people I trusted, who had dealt with this issue, and I believed what they told me. I not only believed what they told me, I believed in their integrity, which I still do.

Clive Efford

You maintain that this is all the fault of Martin Bashir, who is a very believable individual but a liar none the less, and that you from the top of the BBC, through the head of news, all those investigative journalists at Panorama, in spite of the fact that Mr Wiessler had come forward stating that they faked the documents, that there was evidence that Martin Bashir had lied, all of that, you were all just innocents abroad, completely deceived by it?

Lord Birt

I have already said that, on the one hand, he was beguiling and persuasive; on the other, of course, we would wish in a better world that somebody or other had smelled a rat, but they did not. Remember the importance of the letter from Diana and the impact that would have had not on me but on the people concerned. I am not suggesting for a minute it is not highly regrettable. It is an appalling event and, yes, of course, it would have been terrific if people had spotted the flaw at the time, but they did not. It is important now to understand the lessons, 25 years on, and how we could avoid it happening again.

Clive Efford

Anne Sloman and Lord Hall were conducting this investigation in March 1996. Lord Hall was aware of the Tim Gardam email. They were also aware of the fact that Mr Wiessler had come forward and made clear the dates on which he had produced the statements on behalf of Martin Bashir. The question has to be asked why that did not come across your desk and how it was that you accepted a report that said that he was honest and honourable. How can you do that?

Lord Birt

Honestly, forgive me, you do not understand how a very large organisation works if you say that.

Clive Efford

That is easy for you to—

Lord Birt

You delegate things to the right level. By the way, it is not the case that Matt Wiessler was clear about the date. Indeed, I referred earlier to complex subplots. If you read the Mail of March 1996, you will see that Matt Wiessler says in that that he created the documents in October. Twenty-five years later, in the very same edition that Richard Kay writes the long-form and hugely valuable report of Earl Spencer’s experience, Matt Wiessler is still saying he created the documents in October, which is consistent with what Martin Bashir told us. That was obviously a lie, and was inconsistent with Earl Spencer’s own account. I am sure that was a completely innocent mistake on Matt Wiessler’s part, but it was a mistake and that did confuse matters for quite some time.

Chair

I have heard victim blaming before, but my word.

Lord Birt

Will you expand on that? Will you say what you mean by that?

Chair

That is what I am going to do. You stated before that Mr Wiessler was respected as a whistleblower. That is what your statement was before. Lord Hall’s report to you, Lord Birt, stated the following, “The final point concerns the actions of those who leaked material to the press. We are taking steps to ensure that the graphic designer involved, Matthew Wiessler, will not work for the BBC again (when the current contract expires in the next few weeks). In addition, between now and the summer we will work to deal with leakers and remove persistent troublemakers from the programme.” That is instituting a witch hunt. Secondly, when it comes to Mr Wiessler, you stated to this Committee before that he was respected as a whistleblower. No, he was not. Under your watch he was blackballed and did not work for the BBC again. Do you owe Mr Wiessler an apology?

Lord Birt

Let me explain the circumstances.

Chair

No. Do you owe Mr Wiessler an apology?

Lord Birt

I am going to explain the circumstances. The circumstances, as I have already said, are that, and I have to repeat that my understanding comes from a forensic reading of the documents, no memory whatsoever of what happened at the time. When I talk about him being respected as a whistleblower, you can see from the documentation that Tim Gardam did respect him as a whistleblower and that is the reason for my reference. You will have to ask Lord Hall why he used the language he did. My reading of that—

Chair

Why did you allow the language to be used?

Lord Birt

Hang on. Please let me—

Chair

I am really sorry. Order, order. You are not answering the question at all, and the point is—

Lord Birt

I am answering the question.

Chair

You stated he was respected as a whistleblower. You say that is with Mr Gardam, et cetera. We can accept that. However, you received a document. You have read this document. You say yourself it is a forensic document. You have read it. You have no personal recollection at the time. You have read that document. What do you think as an individual who was in charge of the BBC at this point, when your subordinate comes to you and basically says, “I tell you what; the person who leaked that story, we are going to fire them. We are going to get rid of them.” You think it is acceptable for you to have green-lighted that, or at least to have stood idly by. Is that acceptable?

Lord Birt

You put your finger on the issue but, honestly, this is a matter you should discuss with Lord Hall because, as I keep saying, I was not involved in the detail of this. If you read the document, it is clear that everybody involved, starting with Steve Hewlett, believed that there was a massive problem of leaking on the Panorama team, which Steve Hewlett addressed, the documents tell you Steve Hewlett addresses it to the team. Anne Sloman is obviously very concerned about it. Tony Hall was indignant about it. I am not in a position to tell you why exactly they included Matt Wiessler in that, but plainly they were thinking about him as the leaker, not as a whistleblower, because the record is clear that he was respected as a whistleblower.

Chair

The organisation respected him as a whistleblower. However, the person who conducted this inquiry referred to him as a leaker and wanted to get rid of him. I return to my first question to you, Lord Birt. Do you owe Mr Wiessler an apology, as you were Director-General when it came across your desk that he should lose his job for, as you say, being a whistleblower? Do you owe him an apology?

Lord Birt

I am not in a position to. I do not understand enough of what happened and of what Tony Hall and Anne Sloman knew to be sure about that. I completely recognise his value as a whistleblower. If he had not come forward, as I said earlier, I doubt very much we would know anything about this matter.

Chair

You would not have been able to deal with the matter, would you?

Lord Birt

He was a whistleblower. I am not qualified to know why Anne Sloman and Tony Hall took a different view.

Chair

So, you are not going to say, “I am sorry, Mr Wiessler. We were wrong all those years ago to effectively blackball you”?

Lord Birt

I do not know enough about it.

Chair

It is there in black and white. You said you read the documents. It is there in black and white. The recommendation is that he is fired.

Lord Birt

There is nothing in the document that tells you about who Steve Hewlett, Anne Sloman and Tony Hall thought was leaking improperly.

Chair

The final point concerns the actions of those who leaked material to the press. “We are taking steps to ensure that the graphic designer involved, Matthew Wiessler, will not work for the BBC again.” Those sentences ae concurrent. Is it just by accident that they are together? Is that what you are saying? The truth is that they are pointing the finger at him as the leaker, and then they are saying he is going to be fired. You saw that document, and you effectively approved that course of action, either by saying it was the right thing to do or by just sitting on your hands. What is it?

Lord Birt

As did everybody else who saw it.

Chair

But you were the Director-General and you instituted a report.

Lord Birt

Please let me finish. The whole of the board of governors saw it. The whole of the board of management saw it and they trusted Tony Hall and Anne Sloman to have made a measured judgment. I do not know what that measured judgment was, but it has come up over and over again in this affair. You have to respect and trust the people that work for you.

Chair

Does that include firing them? Does that include firing, like Mr Wiessler? Or is it only the people who are nearest to you?

Lord Birt

I do not think we can usefully go round this circuit again, Chair. I have said all that I could possibly say on this.

Chair

Perhaps in this dark episode, just have the guts to say sorry to someone who has basically had their career ruined because they chose to do the right thing. Forgive me for saying so, but maybe that is what you want to do.

Lord Birt

I do not know how many times I can say it. I do not have enough evidence on why Tony Hall and Anne Sloman said that.

John Nicolson

Lord Birt, your hallmark, if you will forgive the expression, was and always has been rigorous, fact-based, analytical journalism of the Brian Walden school. It must therefore be gutting for you that the biggest scoop of your period as editor-in-chief was secured through deception.

Lord Birt

It is.

John Nicolson

It shows a failure of the editorial processes that you established.

Lord Birt

It shows a weakness in them. As I am sure you are aware, I established a whole set of processes that had not previously existed in the BBC.

John Nicolson

I was there. I remember.

Lord Birt

You were, and I am sure you were highly compliant with them. Of course, the processes did not capture a rogue reporter and a serial cunning, callous liar operating on this scale.

John Nicolson

Which is precisely why, of course, we have to rely on senior management to be astute enough to see past scoundrels because, as journalists—you shake your head.

Lord Birt

I am agreeing with you.

John Nicolson

Let me finish the question, Lord Birt. All of us as journalists have come across people who are dishonest. It is part of the process of journalism to ask the right questions to establish the truth. We know you were kept closely in touch with the Diana interview preparation. So, when Tim Gardam wrote his March 1996 memo to Tony Hall saying that Martin Bashir had lied, were you shocked?

Lord Birt

As I have already made clear, I was shocked when I read Tim Gardam’s report but that was only a matter of a few weeks or months ago. It came as a complete surprise to me.

John Nicolson

Tony Hall did not run that vitally important report past you?

Lord Birt

I cannot find enough ways to say no.

John Nicolson

Presumably, that is the reason you wrote to a Member of Parliament, John Garrett MP. I have the letter here in front of me, and you said to Mr Garrett, “These allegations were immediately and thoroughly investigated by the BBC … promptly and thoroughly looked into and the BBC has been able independently to verify that the documents were put to no use which had any bearing, direct or indirect, on the ‘Panorama’ interview”. Of course, that was false.

Lord Birt

It was false, but it was believed, and I cannot say enough times, that the simple conclusions of Lord Hall’s report were accepted as the truth. They were accepted, by the way, by the corporate centre of the BBC. I signed that letter, but you will understand how large organisations work. Hundreds of letters a day came into the Director-General’s office, so that letter would have been, and indeed you will see it was copied to the BBC’s legal adviser, drafted by a unit at the BBC and it was their honest understanding of the conclusions of Lord Hall’s report. There is absolutely no way in which anybody was trying to cover up or mislead. That was their best understanding of the situation.

John Nicolson

Did you make any independent effort yourself to try to establish the truth about Martin Bashir when Tony Hall had told you that he was an honourable man or did you simply accept what Tony Hall had told you?

Lord Birt

I did accept what he told me, and for all the reasons I keep saying. It was not just Tony; it was Anne Sloman, Tim Gardam, Tim Suter and Steve Hewlett.

John Nicolson

Both you and Lord Hall keep talking about how the BBC is a large organisation and how it is very decentralised, but you reversed a lot of that when it came to journalism because you and your team micro-managed. I remember standing in the BBC corridors with my editor’s boss asking me to keep a close eye on my editor to make sure my editor upheld journalistic standards. There was a whole process that went up, and you reversed what you saw as the woolly procedures that went before.

Lord Birt

I did.