BBC lawyer admits Martin Bashir disaster would not have occurred if…

The BBC‘s top lawyer yesterday admitted the Martin Bashir crisis that led to the devastating Lord Dyson inquiry could have been avoided if they had only consulted Princess Diana‘s brother.

Princes William and Harry publicly castigated the corporation in 2021 after Lord Dyson exposed how Bashir had hoodwinked their mother into giving her famous Panorama interview, and how senior executives had covered up his devious tricks.

Yesterday Sarah Jones, head of legal at the BBC, said she ‘wished’ they had spoken to Earl Spencer in 2020 before the crisis erupted. 

If they had shown him documents, which laid bare the deception at the heart of the corporation, he might not have taken the actions he did which led to the bombshell inquiry.

She told a tribunal hearing: ‘I accept that there should have been some consultation with Earl Spencer. If we had, events would have unfolded very differently. I very much wish we had shown him, but we didn’t.’

Princes William and Harry publicly castigated the corporation in 2021 after Lord Dyson exposed how Bashir had hoodwinked their mother into giving her famous Panorama interview (pictured above), and how senior executives had covered up his devious tricks

Yesterday Sarah Jones, head of legal at the BBC, said she ‘wished’ they had spoken to Earl Spencer (pictured) in 2020 before the crisis erupted

Bashir (pictured) had spun a web of deceit to trick Diana and her brother with preposterous smears about senior royals to gain her trust. He used forged bank statements to back up his lies

Ms Jones, the BBC’s Group General Counsel, denied any cover-up during her evidence to a Freedom of Information tribunal.

It is being held over a dossier of internal Bashir emails which the BBC released but with many passages blotted out by a censor’s pen.

Campaigners including Earl Spencer believe the redacted passages mean the broadcaster is hiding potentially explosive revelations. The BBC insists the words behind the redactions show only ‘irrelevant’ personal information.

It has blown almost £500,000 on a legal battle to keep the dossier under wraps – fighting for three years against a Freedom of Information request from journalist and film-maker Andy Webb.

At the hearing in central London, Mr Webb accused the BBC of a ‘callous and shameful’ cover-up in 2020. 

He said executives had mounted a ‘huge effort’ to prevent the story of what happened in 1996 coming out, claiming: ‘The BBC thought, ‘We are in a hole’, and decided to throw sand in the faces of people looking into that hole.’

The tranche of internal emails are from a three-month period in autumn 2020 when the BBC under director-general Tim Davie was firefighting the Bashir crisis.

In October that year, the Mail revealed shocking details of how Bashir had lied and forged his way to clinch his 1995 Panorama interview in which the princess famously declared ‘there are three of us in this marriage’.

But Bashir had spun a web of deceit to trick Diana and her brother with preposterous smears about senior royals to gain her trust. He used forged bank statements to back up his lies.

In 2020, the BBC released files from 1996 which contained an untrue allegation that Earl Spencer was complicit in the forged statements. 

The earl was so outraged, he revealed his own files to the Mail exposing Bashir’s duplicity and triggering the Dyson Inquiry.

Monica Carss-Frisk, KC, for the BBC, told the tribunal: ‘There can be no blame attached to the BBC. What you have from Mr Webb is nothing that goes beyond speculation. He is making very serious allegations on a speculative basis.’

The case continues.