Breaking News on Downingstreetgate

Cash for honours: key document names Levy


Memo from Blair aide says peer tried to influence her evidence

Patrick Wintour
Tuesday March 6, 2007
The Guardian

Detectives are investigating whether Lord Levy, Labour's chief fundraiser, urged one of Tony Blair's most senior aides to shape the evidence she gave to Scotland Yard, the Guardian has learned.

Police have been investigating whether Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, was being asked by Lord Levy to modify information that might have been of interest to the inquiry. Officers have been trying to piece together details of a meeting they had last year. Ms Turner gave an account of it to her lawyers and this has been passed to police.

Article continues
It is this legal document and the exchange between Ms Turner and Lord Levy that has been at the heart of the inquiry in recent months, and which prompted the focus to shift from whether there was an effort to sell peerages to whether there has been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

A spokesman for Lord Levy said he was unable to comment. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Ms Turner has also protested her innocence and her conduct has been defended by Downing Street.

During the inquiry both have been arrested and interviewed on suspicion of trying to pervert the course of justice, which is an imprisonable offence.

Their meeting is understood to have taken place in the summer, at the start of the police inquiry.

Sources have said the two had a difficult conversation. The police are attempting to establish whether this could be interpreted as Lord Levy having asked Ms Turner to adjust the evidence she was preparing to give the Metropolitan Police, whose inquiry has led to senior members of Downing Street staff - including the prime minister, Tony Blair - being questioned by detectives.

The Guardian does not know in what way evidence was to be adjusted, or indeed if he asked her to do so in any significant way.

The BBC said yesterday that Ms Turner sent an email to the chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, but other sources available to the Guardian suggest there was no such email. Lord Levy and Ms Turner are central to Labour's system of fundraising, with Ms Turner liaising with the Lords appointments commission and party donors.

At the request of the police the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, was granted a blanket injunction on Friday evening by the courts stopping the BBC making any reference to its story, the alleged email, its sender, recipient or its contents. The contents of the injunction were not relayed to the rest of the media. The injunction was partially lifted yesterday to allow the BBC to claim the email concerned Lord Levy, and was sent to Mr Powell by Ms Turner.

The attorney general's office said: "The BBC and the attorney general today agreed to a variation of the injunction obtained on Friday concerning a particular document relating to the 'cash for honours' police investigation. In agreeing to this variation, the attorney general was not intending to indicate or confirm that any particular document was in fact sent or received."

Over the weekend Downing Street was accused of being responsible for the leak, something No 10 denied yesterday.

The Crown Prosecution Service issued its own robust statement that it was not involved in the leak.

The police have continued to deny responsibility for the various leaks that have marked the inquiry, a claim that is treated with extreme scepticism in parts of Downing Street.

The prime minister's official spokesman said: "Suggestions that we leaked or were trying to leak this information are just plain wrong - and that's not based on my personal hunch. It's because there are inaccuracies in reports which mean it can't have come from No 10."

Mr Blair's spokesman went on: "I can't get into what those [inaccuracies] are because our approach all the way through is we are against all leaks and speculation. Leaking in the past has been unhelpful, just as this leak has been unhelpful."

Ms Turner has been the subject of two interviews under caution, and is still on bail. One of her interviews led to a dawn raid of her house where she was forced to dress in front of a policewoman.

The mood in Downing Street remains that Ms Turner has done nothing wrong.