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Cover-up at The Guardian

DAVID HENCKE, WESTMINSTER CORRESPONDENT: EXCLUSIVE

A WESTMINSTER lobbying company was paid tens of thousands of pounds to give to two high-flying Conservative MPs for asking parliamentary questions at £2,000 a time on behalf of Harrods during the height of the Lonrho and House of Fraser controversy.  Neil Hamilton, now minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, responsible for business probity, and Tim Smith, junior Northern Ireland minister, were both named yesterday as recipients of payments passed to Ian Greer Associates¹ by Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, on top of a £50,000 fee for a Parliamentary lobbying campaign.
      Mr Al-Fayed said yesterday: "I felt it was now my public duty to make these facts known."  Mr Hamilton subsequently requested and received a free week's holiday² for himself and his wife, Christine, at the Ritz hotel in Paris, owned by the Al-Fayed brothers, where he ran up a further bill of over £2,000 on such extras as chauffeur-driven cars³.
      The couple also went shopping free at Harrods⁴ at the invitation of Mr Al-Fayed. None of the payments⁵ or free trips were declared to Parliament⁶.  Details of the transactions -- including confidential memoranda from Ian Greer and letters from Neil Hamilton -- passed to the Guardian show that Mr Hamilton worked closely for years with the lobbying company on the campaign⁷.  One letter on Mr Hamilton's House of Commons notepaper, to be sent to Douglas Hurd, then Home Secretary, carried the phrase "Not to be released under any circumstances without the permission of Ian Greer⁸."
      Mr Al-Fayed came forward to disclose the payments yesterday as the Commons Committee of Privileges inquiring into the "£1,000 cash for questions" to two Tory backbenchers, Graham Riddick and David Tredinnick, decided to go into secret session⁹.
      Mr Al-Fayed's payments relate to the period between 1987 and 1989 when the controversy over his ownership of House of Fraser, including Harrods, had reached seismic proportions with the DTI inspectors' report into his take-over of the company.
      He told The Guardian: "I was approached by Ian Greer, who offered to run a campaign¹⁰. He came to me at my home and offered his services. You must remember that at the time we were in a desperate situation, facing a barrage of criticism from MPs run by Tiny Rowland like Edward Du Cann.
      "He told me he could deliver, but I would need to pay. A fee of about £50,000 was mentioned. But then he said he would have to pay the MPs, Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, who would ask the questions. "Mr Greer said to me: 'You need to rent an MP just like you rent a London taxi¹¹.'
      "I couldn't believe that in Britain, where Parliament has such a big reputation, you had to pay MPs¹².  I was shattered by it. I asked how much and he said it would be £2,000 a question¹²."  He went on: "Every month we got a bill for parliamentary services and it would vary from £8,000 to £10,000 depending on the number of questions¹³.  Then Mr Hamilton rang and requested to stay at the Ritz Hotel with his wife¹⁴. I agreed. I am a generous man.  But he ran up such a big bill, even coming back for afternoon tea¹⁵.
      "After he left to go on a trip around France, he even asked to stay again.  I told the manager to tell him the hotel was full.  There are limits to my generosity¹⁶.
      "He's been to Harrods with his wife shopping free¹⁷.  Yet when I wrote to him congratulating him on his appointment at the Department of Trade, he didn't even acknowledge the letter¹⁸ and complained it had sent to the DTI and opened by a civil servant¹⁹."

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Notes:

1. David Hencke's allegation is specific: he claims that Fayed had alleged that the lobbyist, Ian Greer, had paid Smith & Hamilton to table parliamentary questions.  No evidence has ever been produced to support this allegation, which Greer, Smith, and Hamilton all deny, and which The Guardian has since acknowledged is false. [return to text]


2. Hamilton denies requesting a stay at the Ritz, but claims that he and his wife had taken up Fayed's invitation to visit the Duke & Duchess of Windsor's former Paris villa, coupled to a stay at the Ritz.  Regardless, The Guardian's omission of the Hamiltons' visit to the villa Windsor creates the misleading impression that their stay at the Ritz was taken as a holiday in its own right.  (Hamilton claims that he and his wife stayed at the Ritz for a total of six days because Fayed kept delaying their visit to the Windsors'.) [return to text]


3. The £2,000 'bill' was an internal accounting document for food, wine, and other sundries, which was absorbed by the hotel, the actual cost of which would have been around £200.  There was never any 'bill' that Fayed had to pay himself.  The 'chauffeur-driven car' was actually the hotel car that took the Hamiltons to the villa Windsor. [return to text]


4. The Hamiltons' deny having free shopping at Harrods.  No evidence has ever been produced to support this charge, despite the ease with which it could be proved, if true. [return to text]


5. Hamilton denies that he had been paid for the support he gave Fayed.  This allegation remains unsupported by any evidence save for the testimony of three of Fayed's employees, who did not emerge until 27 September 1996, three days before Hamilton's & Greer's libel trial, two years after this article was printed. [return to text]


6. This is misleading.  In Dec. 1989 ( i.e. over two years after the Hamiltons visited the Windsors' & the Ritz whilst on a motoring holiday) other MPs visited the Windsors' & the Ritz, none of whom registered their trips either, despite being flown there in Fayed's jet. [return to text]


7. The insinuation is disingenuous. It is normal for lobbyists to work with MPs on matters where they have shared interests. [return to text]


8. This is misleading. This draft letter had been prepared by Ian Greer's staff for Hamilton to consider signing and sending to the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd.  Lobbyists commonly draft letters and parliamentary questions and motions for MPs to consider signing.  In the event, Hamilton did not sign the letter and it was not sent. [return to text]


9. David Hencke conspicuously fails to mention the fact that The Sunday Times had enacted its entrapment of MPs only after its attempted entrapment of  Ian Greer had failed the previous January. [return to text]


10. This is false on two counts.  It was Fayed's brother, Ali Fayed, who contacted Ian Greer. [return to text]


11. Ian Greer denies ever saying that he had to pay MPs, least of all, saying that 'you could rent an MP like a taxi.'  It would be odd if Greer had said this, especially as he was later cleared of paying MPs to ask questions.  The alternative proposition -- that The Guardian invented this 'quote' to bolster its story -- is inescapable, given that The Guardian had invented other quotations in its story and had been 'out to get' Ian Greer for some time. [return to text]


12. The idea that Fayed would be 'shocked' at the notion of bribing MPs takes incredulity to new heights, especially as (unknown to The Guardian) Fayed had himself been bribing Tim Smith.  This 'quotation' is most certainly another invention of The Guardian, designed to add weight to its false story targeting Greer. [return to text]


13. Ian Greer denies that he sent Fayed varying invoices for questions tabled by Smith & Hamilton.  No varying invoices have ever been produced by Fayed or The Guardian to support this allegation, despite the ease with which they could be produced if it was true.  Greer's invoices were fixed at £2,083 per month (£25,000 p.a.). [return to text]


14. Hamilton denies this allegation.  He claims that he had merely taken up an invitation for him and his wife to visit the villa Windsor that Fayed had made on his initiative. [return to text]


15. True. Hamilton has conceded that he and his wife did 'go over the top' when they stayed at the Ritz. [return to text]


16. Hamilton denies that he had asked to stay at the Ritz a second time whilst on his tour of France.  It was three years later when the Hamiltons received an invitation to a friend's wedding in Paris, that Hamilton made a second request to stay.  After making enquiries Fayed stated that the hotel was full and instead offered the use of his apartment off the Champs Elysées normally used by his son Dodi.  The Hamiltons accepted Fayed's offer, and a week later on 6 July they visited Paris and stayed at Dodi's apartment over the weekend. [return to text]


17. As stated in note 4, no evidence has ever been produced to support the allegation that the Hamiltons had free shopping at Harrods, or even shopped at Harrods, though it would have been easy to prove, if true. [return to text]


18. True. Hamilton didn't acknowledge Fayed's letter of congratulation on the advice of his DTI officials, who were fearful that a reply could prejudice the DTI's defence of Fayed's appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (Fayed was seeking to quash the 1990 DTI report into his acquisition of Harrods that had blackened his name.) [return to text]


19. Hamilton denies that he even spoke to Fayed after receiving his letter. [return to text]

The One That Got Away: The Guardian and the Cook Report

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