BBC in Row over Billionaire Lord Ashcroft doco

[David Guyatt]

Oh dear...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopi...croft.html

BBC in row with the Conservative party over plans for Panorama film on Lord Ashcroft
The BBC is at loggerheads with the Conservative Party over plans to screen a documentary about Lord Ashcroft, a key member of David Cameron’s election team.




By Andrew Porter, Political Editor
Published: 8:00AM GMT 13 Feb 2010

The corporation filmed a series of interviews for a special edition of Panorama which will focus on the billionaire Tory peer.
The Conservatives fear the BBC wants to broadcast it in the critical weeks running up to the general election, although last night the corporation said no transmission date had been set.

With the election campaign already – in effect – under way, the timing is sensitive and senior party figures reacted with anger to the plan.
Panorama reporters went to Belize to interview senior politicians and businessmen about Lord Ashcroft. They also sent questions to the peer, who was partly brought up in the Caribbean country and has business interests there. It is understood that Lord Ashcroft does not object to the television programme, but is concerned about the timing.

A source said: “We are basically 12 weeks away from an election and this smacks of Left-wing BBC bias. They have been using licence-fee payers’ money to interview a succession of people over a period of several months that will turn up nothing new.

“Election purdah is no longer just those few weeks of a campaign, it should be now really. The election has as good as begun.”

The Daily Telegraph understands that letters of protest were sent from senior Tory ranks to Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general and Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust.

William Hague, Mr Cameron’s deputy and a close friend of Lord Ashcroft, defended the peer and said he expected the BBC to be “even-handed”. He said “the real scandal” was the Labour Party’s funding by the trade unions. Labour has questioned the peer’s tax status for years and encouraged rumours about his business dealings.

Lord Ashcroft declined to comment.

A spokesman for the BBC confirmed that it had received some correspondence from Lord Ashcroft. He said: “The subject of the correspondence relates to a programme that is currently in production and which has not been scheduled and, as is our usual practice, we are not going to comment further on a programme that hasn’t been aired.”