Via Recorded Delivery

Mark Byford
Acting Director-General, BBC
BBC Media Centre
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TQ
17 May 2004
Our discussion of Monday 10 May 2004

Dear Mr. Byford,

It was satisfying to meet you on Monday last week in the Commons at the seminar organised
by the Labour group “Progress”, debating the declining trust in which British parliamentarians
are held by the electorate.

You will remember the excellent speech from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and
Sport, the Rt. Hon. Tessa Jowell MP, describing how the media has steadily become more and
more cynical of politicians over the decades since the Profumo scandal of the 1960s — a trend
which I feel perhaps most supporters of parliamentary democracy would lament. You will
surely remember my own contribution to the debate, in which I contended that the politician
whom most people in this country would be expected to associate with disreputable behaviour
— the former Conservative minister and MP Neil Hamilton — did, in fact, have his claims of
innocence supported by a seven-year-long investigation conducted by myself (supported for six
months by another freelance journalist named Malcolm Keith-Hill), but that our investigation
has yet to be discussed on national radio and television.

Accordingly, and notwithstanding the BBC’s duty to broadcast a full range of significant facts
and viewpoints relating to political controversies, airing our work would not only help restore
Neil Hamilton’s reputation but would do much to improve the standing of parliamentarians
generally — the very issue of concern that had prompted the debate.

Though I remain disappointed that it should take another personal visit to London to finally
elicit the BBC’s interest in our work, I am very grateful to you for your promise that you would
review our correspondence — especially my rejoinder of 19 April to your letter of 6 April
rejecting my complaint of 13 March — and that you would reconsider your decision whether
to instigate an official examination of the documentary evidence that Mr. Keith-Hill and I
unearthed.

For your information, as Miss Jowell departed from the seminar I handed her a copy of my
complaint of 13 March plus its appendices, plus my subsequent correspondence with the BBC,
plus a copy of my book “Trial by Conspiracy: the lies, cover-ups and injustices behind the
Neil Hamilton affair”. Today I have written to Miss Jowell and also to her minister with
responsibilities for censorship, Lord McIntosh, and asked them to take an interest.

As I made clear to you during our exchange following the seminar, the deception of a
democratic state — which, be in no doubt, is what occurred in the case of the “cash for
questions” affair — is a very serious issue indeed, and the BBC’s and other broadcasters’
enduring censorship of our investigation revealing how Britain was deceived is no less grave.
Incidentally, from their conversation following the seminar my supporter Allen Esterson
inferred that the BBC’s Political Editor Andrew Marr also appreciated the seriousness of this
issue, and Mr. Esterson was encouraged by Mr. Marr’s apparent receptiveness to his points.

Clearly, for these reasons, by informing you directly of our investigation I am placing you in a
difficult position, for you would surely not want to see the BBC’s prestige suffer any more than
it has already following Lord Hutton’s recent criticisms. Nevertheless, for the BBC to
continue with its illegal censorship of our important investigation in the belief that such course
of action is a proper option would not only compound what has transpired to date but also
confirm that the BBC is an unlawful, censorial, anti-democratic organisation that is hamstrung
by bias and self-interest.

In my view, the only realistic alternative open to you is to commission a thorough and
dispassionate examination of our evidence and the rationale that supports the conclusions that
we draw from that evidence. Then, having established the merit of our investigation and
conclusions, oversee: a) the broadcast of news about our work with appropriate coverage to
ensure that the British population is made aware of it to at least the same degree that the BBC
broadcast Martin Bell’s research-free stance against Neil Hamilton on an anti-corruption/anti-
sleaze ticket; and b) instigate a second inquiry into the BBC’s censorship of our investigation
since first being made aware of it in October 1997.

I look forward to hearing from you in a genuine spirit of good faith and co-operation, and to
taking this matter forward.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Boyd Hunt

c.c. Rt. Hon. Tessa Jowell MP

Rt. Hon. Lord McIntosh of Haringey