BBC yet to hand over £1.5m Bashir ‘guilt’ money to Diana charities

The BBC has not yet paid the £1.5 million “guilt” money promised to a charity chosen by the Royal family in the wake of the Martin Bashir scandal.

Sources insist that the corporation is poised to donate the money to several charities of its own choice, despite dragging its heels for more than a year.

The payments will be made without the involvement of Prince William or

Prince Harry, despite previous suggestions that the brothers would have a say.

It is thought likely that the donations will be made to causes supported by Diana, Princess of Wales, potentially including homelessness or cancer charities.

They will include the £1.15 million the corporation made from selling the global rights to Bashir’s Panorama interview with the late Princess, plus reparations.

The money will come from BBC Studios, the corporation’s trading arm – a commercial operation not funded by the licence fee.

The idea was said to have come from Earl Spencer, the Princess’s brother, who said some of the profits made by the BBC should go to her charities.

Communication between the BBC and Kensington Palace has been scarce since Lord Dyson’s report about the scandal was published in May last year.

The former Master of the Rolls concluded that Bashir had deployed “deceitful behaviour” to secure his explosive 1995 interview and that the BBC had covered it up in a “woefully ineffective” internal investigation led by former director-general Lord Hall.

At the time, the Duke of Cambridge described his “indescribable sadness” that Bashir’s interview with his mother had “contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation” in the final years of her life and criticised the “failures” of BBC bosses.

But he is understood to remain “deeply irked” that the senior BBC figures held responsible for the cover up of Bashir’s “deceitful behaviour” had largely escaped unscathed.

He is said to have been convinced that there was further evidence to uncover, and expressed interest in continuing private conversations with the BBC “to see what comes out”.

However, such conversations barely got off the ground. And although Lord Hall resigned as chairman of the National Gallery last May, he remains a crossbench peer and faced little further in the way of retribution.

Senior government sources have since warned of a shake-up during the ongoing mid-term review of the BBC’s royal charter unless it can demonstrate that it will not repeat the mistakes exposed in the report.