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(Continued from overleaf)
Then-Prime Minister John Major reveals he ordered Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler to conduct an internal inquiry into the claims when they were put to him privately three weeks earlier.
Analysis:
This is accurate. However, it would have been informative to state that Sir Robin Butler's inquiry had by this time already been conducted (by Sir Peter Gregson, Permanent Secretary at the DTI, and Sir Gerald Hosker, Treasury Solicitor) and that they had found no evidence to substantiate Fayed's allegations, which they termed 'wild'.
October 21: More details emerge of Hamilton and his wife Christine's six-day stay at the Paris Ritz, owned by Al Fayed, where the couple ran up a bill totalling thousands of pounds that was met by the Egyptian.
Analysis:
The statement is pejorative and factually wrong. The item implies that Fayed had to discharge personally a bill that had cost him thousands of pounds, which is not so. No official hotel bill was ever generated. The only 'bill' was an internal bill for accounting purposes for food, drink and sundry items showing their full retail prices. No bill of any description was produced for the six nights' stay. The actual cost to Fayed was almost certainly less than two hundred pounds, which was absorbed by the hotel, which Fayed owned, and no bill was paid by Fayed personally (or anyone else).
It would also have been fairer to state that the Hamiltons' stay had been taken as part of a package to supplement a historical private tour of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor's former Paris villa, of which Fayed was the custodian. The failure to mention the historical tour of the villa Windsor creates the false impression that the Hamiltons' stay at the Ritz was an end in itself. It would also have been more balanced if the bulletin had also mentioned the fact that, in December 1989, two years after the Hamiltons' tour and stay, other MPs, VIPs and journalists had enjoyed exactly the same tour of the Windsors' and stay at the Ritz -- except that Fayed had flown them out to Paris in his private jet from Heathrow, unlike the Hamiltons, who were touring France on a motoring holiday and who had journeyed to Paris at their own expense.
(Hamilton claims he only accepted the invitation to stay at the Ritz after Fayed assured him that the hotel was not full and consequently that no paying guests would be displaced.)
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 23 October 1994 the News of the World carries a story of new allegations that Fayed claimed to have given Hamilton £15,000 of Harrods gift vouchers in £1,000 denominations.]
October 25: John Major announces to the Commons that Hamilton has resigned and sets up an inquiry, headed by Appeal Court judge Lord Nolan, to consider "standards in public life". The former minister's anger at being forced out spills over into his resignation letter, accusing Major of bowing to a "witch-hunt".
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 26 November 1994,
The Guardian states for the first time that Tim Smith had taken money from Fayed himself, as distinct from its previous stories which had all alleged that Smith had taken money from the lobbyist Ian Greer. However, this new acknowledgement was buried in the detail of a story by political staff David Pallister and phrased so as to lead the reader to infer falsely that this had been
The Guardian's original charge against Smith.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 5 December 1994 Mohamed Fayed alleges for the first time that he had paid Hamilton directly, as distinct from the allegations published previously by
The Guardian which alleged that Hamilton had been paid by the lobbyist Ian Greer.
Fayed states that none of his employees had witnessed these payments, which he claims were made only when he and Hamilton were alone. Hamilton denied these new allegations passionately, and suggested that Fayed had fabricated them to capitalise on Smith's guilt, using his corrupt payments to Smith as a template.]
1995
June 7: Labour MPs boycott the final session of the powerful Committee on Members' Interests in protest when Hamilton's failure to declare his free stay at the Paris Ritz goes unpunished.
Analysis:
The phraseology -- that the Labour contingent had 'boycotted' the Members' Interests Committee's hearing because Hamilton's failure to declare his free stay went 'unpunished' -- is pejorative and leaves the reader to infer wrongly that Hamilton's failure to register his stay was contrary to the existing parliamentary rules and standards at that time, thus implying that Hamilton should have been punished. But when Hamilton stayed at the Ritz in September 1987, MPs were not even required to register their remunerated outside business interests -- still less private hospitality. Though it is true that MPs were encouraged to register their paid directorships and consultancies, this was entirely voluntary and left up to each individual MP, whilst private hospitality was not even an issue (none of the MPs who visited the Windsors' and the Ritz in December 1989 registered their trips either).
If Hamilton had registered his stay, it would have been the first registration of private hospitality since the Register was set up in the early 1970s. However, following the negative Press coverage about the matter, so many MPs rushed to register hospitality that the Registrar had to publish an extra issue (the late Labour MP Bernie Grant, for example, registered seven previously-unregistered overseas trips, but this did not attract any great adverse press comment even though the hospitality he had received involved expensive flights to the West Indies).
The fact that registration was voluntary was acknowledged by
The Guardian
itself in an article written by hard-left journalist Mark Hollingsworth published on 11 January 1990 -- i.e. three years after Hamilton's stay -- in which Hollingsworth stated, correctly: 'The Register for Members' Interest is voluntary and there are numerous loopholes'.
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 26 June 1995 Neil Hamilton & Ian Greer exchanged witness statements with Mohamed Fayed and
The Guardian. In their witness statements Fayed and The Guardian
state that Hamilton was paid in two ways only: via Ian Greer, as alleged originally on 20 October 1994, and directly by Fayed behind closed doors, as alleged for the first time six weeks later on 5 December. In his statement Fayed reasserts that none of his staff would have known about the payments.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 18 July 1995
The Guardian applied to the High Court to have Hamilton's libel action ruled unconstitutional. The newspaper cited the Bill of Rights of 1689 which states: "The freedome of speech and debates or proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parlyament".]
July 21: High Court ruling blocks Hamilton's libel action against The Guardian with Mr Justice May saying the protection of Parliamentary privilege effected too much of the story for the paper to be able to fairly defend itself. However, the former minister, who had been cleared in the meantime by Sir Robin Butler's internal inquiry, continues to deny the allegations and later succeeds in getting the ruling overturned.
Analysis:
The phraseology does not convey that it was actually
The Guardian
who had taken out the High Court action, and therefore The Guardian
who had succeeded in blocking Hamilton's attempts to take the matter to court.
Furthermore, to get the ruling overturned Hamilton first had to get the law changed so that he could waive his Parliamentary privilege. By failing to mention this the reader is led to infer that Hamilton retained his parliamentary privilege and that the paper's inability 'to fairly defend itself' continued after Hamilton succeeded in overturning the ruling.
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