BBC TO PROBE DIANA TV LIES

Mail publishes ex-BBC boss Lord Hall’s memo admitting Bashir faked claims for Panorama ++ Earl Spencer insists on independent investigation

The BBC was last night forced into a humiliating U-turn in the furious row over its historic interview with Princess Diana.

The corporation said it would hold a fresh inquiry into claims from Diana’s brother that Martin Bashir secured the sensational scoop in 1995 through ‘sheer dishonesty’. Charles Spencer says the journalist showed him forged bank statements to clinch an introduction to the princess.

And the earl has accused Bashir of peddling vile and slanderous claims about senior royals as part of a ‘web of deceit’. He rejected the

BBC’s offer, saying he had no faith in its ability to investigate the alleged wrongdoing robustly or fairly.

He has already dismissed an earlier inquiry, which the BBC failed to consult him over, as a ‘whitewash’.

The earl told the Daily Mail: ‘I have declined the DG’s offer of an internal BBC investigation, given how deeply concerning the 1996 one was to me, and I have told him I am going to seek an independent inquiry.’

The corporation had rejected calls for another investigation on the grounds that Bashir, currently BBC News religion editor, is ill with Covid complications.

But following the Mail’s revelations, a spokesman said it would now review the matter after he had recovered.

A spokesman said: ‘The BBC has apologised. We are happy to repeat that apology. And while this was a quarter of a century ago, we absolutely will investigate, robustly and fairly, substantive new information. We have asked Lord Spencer to share further information with the BBC.

‘Unfortunately, we are hampered at the moment by the simple fact that we are unable to discuss any of this with Martin Bashir, as he is seriously unwell. When he is well, we will of course hold an investigation into these new issues.’

The investigation is likely to focus on the internal and limited inquiry the corporation held into circumstances surrounding the 1995 broadcast, which was watched by 23million people. Diana sensationally admitted ‘ there were three people in the marriage’ – a reference to her husband Charles’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Within months of the programme being aired, concern had been raised by whistle-blowers that a BBC graphic artist had been asked by Bashir to fake a bank statement purporting to show that Earl Spencer’s head of security was receiving illicit payments for information about the family. Astonishingly, the investigation, which was led by the then head of news at the BBC, and later director-general, Tony Hall, found that Bashir ‘wasn’t thinking’ when he did it and described it as a ‘lapse’ by an ‘honest and an honourable man’ who was ‘contrite’.

Internal documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that the BBC found that his actions had ‘no impact’ on Diana’s decision to give the interview and Bashir was merely given a rap on the knuckles and told he had been ‘incautious and unwise’.

But, as the anniversary of the Panorama broadcast approaches, Earl Spencer has written to the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, to reject that version of events. In his letter, he alleges that he decided to introduce Bashir to his sister in September 1995 on the basis of two other faked bank statements.

The 57-year-old BBC journalist claimed these showed that two senior palace staff, Diana’s own private secretary, Patrick Jephson, and Prince Charles’s right-hand man, Commander Richard Aylard, were both receiving substantial payments from ‘the security services’. The suggestion was completely false.

Outlining the journalist’s ‘methods’, the earl, who kept meticulous notes and records of their dealings at the time, says plainly that ‘if it were not for me seeing these statements, I would not have introduced Bashir to my sister.’ He concludes: ‘That a publicly-funded media corporation with a reputation for the highest form of journalism stooped so deep in the gutter is beyond belief. And yet it is so.’

The earl decided to go to war with the corporation after receiving what he described as a ‘piecemeal’ apology from director- deneral Tim Davie last week, regretting only the first faked statement.

Tony Hall, now Lord Hall of Birkenhead, sent gushing letters of congratulations to Bashir, and other executives involved in the scoop, praising him for his ‘skill, sensitivity and excellent judgement’ the day after broadcast. He says he will co-operate with the new inquiry.

The then managing director of BBC Network Television, Will Wyatt, told the Mail he had not heard of any concerns about Bashir at the time, or about how the programme ‘had been achieved’.

Asked for his view on Earl’s Spencer’s new claims he added: ‘I will wait until I know a bit more, but no one should fake documents.’ He said the BBC should ‘get to the bottom of it quickly’.

Dickie Arbiter, who was working as a press secretary for the Queen at the time, said Earl Spencer was ‘clearly rattling a few BBC cages’. He added: ‘I find it amazing that Bashir has apparently got away with for so long.

‘The BBC’s response to this all along has been incredibly arrogant, but nothing changes. I would have thought the new director-general would want to come in and deal with this decisively.’

Experts say the individuals involved could face criminal charges under the 1981 Forgery and Counterfeiting Act. The scandal has been reopened by documentaries marking the 25th anniversary of the interview.

A Channel Four programme included evidence from Matt Wiessler, the freelancer designer tasked with making the forgeries. He was made a scapegoat and told he would get no more work with the BBC.

‘Got away with it for so long’

FOR a quarter of a century, the BBC has smugly revelled in what it regarded as its finest hour.

In November 1995, millions tuned in to watch a special episode of Panorama, in which Princess Diana sensationally laid bare Prince Charles’ intimate relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Next day, Tony Hall – later the Corporation’s director-general – wrote a thank-you letter to reporter Martin Bashir, who had secured the dynamite chat.

‘It was the interview of the decade – if not of our generation,’ he gushed. Bashir had, he added, behaved in ‘absolutely the appropriate fashion’. That, we now know, is categorically untrue.

The BBC – so quick to censure other media organisations for alleged impropriety – obtained the scoop using dirty tricks.

To wangle the historic interview, Bashir deceived Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, with a pack of lies. Perhaps most grotesquely, claiming schoolboy Prince William’s watch had been bugged to record his mother’s private conversations.

Following the Mail’s revelations yesterday, the broadcaster U-turned and pledged to hold an internal inquiry into the scandal.

Frankly, that’s not good enough. By 1996, Mr Hall knew that information on bank statements forged by the journalist to help him access the princess was false. Shamefully, he brushed this under the carpet. His chief concern was removing troublemakers from the programme.

Rightly, the earl demands an independent inquiry. This time, the BBC cannot be allowed to mark its own sullied homework.