Ex-BBC boss ducks Bashir questions
...but Lord Hall is ‘looking forward’ to Diana inquiry
FORMER BBC director-general Lord Hall yesterday dodged questions about Martin Bashir’s role in securing the Princess Diana interview.
But he said he was looking forward to helping an inquiry into the matter.
Speaking on camera for the first time since the controversy broke a month ago, Lord Hall avoided questions about his part in allegedly covering up for Bashir, who is accused of telling 32 lies to clinch the Panorama interview in 1995.
The following year, the former director- general conducted an inquiry into Bashir’s use of faked bank statements, but critics branded it a whitewash. Speaking to ITV News yesterday, Lord Hall was asked if he condoned Bashir’s use of forged documents.
He said: ‘I investigated at the time. I will take part in the Lord Dyson inquiry and I look forward to telling him what I think.’ Retired Supreme Court judge Lord Dyson was announced as the inquiry head by the BBC two weeks ago.
Lord Hall, who retired from the BBC in August, declined to say if he had ‘properly investigated’ Bashir.
The reporter asked a BBC graphics artist to create fake bank statements, which he allegedly used to gain the trust of Diana’s brother Earl Spencer, who then arranged for them to meet. Lord Spencer’s former head of security, Alan Waller, whom the statements falsely showed was being paid to spy on his boss, is among several parties threatening to call in Scotland Yard.
Former courtiers and others besmirched by Bashir in pursuit of his scoop are examining legal action against the BBC.
Patrick Jephson, who was Diana’s private secretary when the journalist peddled the lie that he was betraying her to MI5, has vowed to sue. He told Channel 4: ‘ It upsets me more than I can say that quite possibly the princess died thinking that I had betrayed her.’ He said it was becoming ‘easier now to see how the line from the Panorama i nterview l eads pretty much straight to the night in Paris’. The princess died in a car crash there in 1997.
The BBC said it was ‘determined to get to the truth of what happened’. Bashir, 57, who has been ill, has not responded to requests for comment.
‘Straight to the night in Paris’