Days after it emerged that senior BBC boss James Purnell has secretly hired an employee from the consultants Deloitte as his chief adviser, I can reveal he has spent more than £1,000 of licence fee money wining and dining a string of politicians.
Details obtained under a Freedom of Information request show that Purnell, the Corporation’s £295,000 director of strategy and digital, hosted dinners at the Labour and Conservative Party conferences.
The ex-Labour minister took eight Labour MPs and two Labour peers to The Coal Shed in Brighton at a cost of £573. He served with most of his Labour guests during his nine years in the Commons, raising questions about a conflict of interests ahead of the BBC’s charter renewal in 2016, for which Purnell is responsible.
Among them were two former BBC employees-turned politicians, Chris Bryant and Ben Bradshaw — the latter a member of the Commons media select committee. Hazel Blears and Gerry Sutcliffe were other MPs who attended the dinner.
The following week, Purnell invited six Tory MPs and a Tory peer to dinner at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel in Manchester at a cost of £532.
Guests included former BBC staffer Therese Coffey MP and Police Minister Damian Green.
The BBC has refused to name the other BBC staff members who attended these functions. It has also refused to state how much money it spent hiring exhibition stands at the conferences.
Labour Party documents show that it charged between £1,500 and £13,000 per stand.
A spokesman for Spinwatch, which campaigns for greater transparency in public life, said: ‘This information should have been published as a matter of course. The public has a right to know who from the BBC is trying to influence our MPs.’
The BBC also confirmed in the FoI response that two BBC Scotland executives, Ian Small and John Boothman, spent £384 taking two Lib Dem MPs, two Lib Dem MSPs and one Lib Dem peer out for dinner at the Lib Dem conference in Glasgow.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘It is normal practice for media organisations to host small dinners at the conferences of the three main political parties.’