The three politicians filmed secretly in this joint investigation between The Sunday Times and Dispatches have all made strenuous efforts to pull strings to stop our story being published in recent weeks.
The use of “spoiling tactics” to damage public interest journalism by politicians who have unique access to the levers of power was highlighted in this newspaper’s successful libel defence against the former Conservative MP Tim Yeo.
When weighing the balance between giving time for a pre-publication right to reply against the risk that this might allow a politician to scupper the impact of a story, Mr Justice Warby concluded: “The subject of the story has a strong incentive to engage in [spoiling] tactics of that kind, and so do competitors. The risks are exacerbated if . . . the subject is someone, such as an experienced MP, well versed in the mechanisms for managing or influencing the news.
“If the impact of such a story is dissipated, the public interest is harmed. It attracts less attention and there is some waste of the resources of the media organisation that has created it.
“That represents a disincentive to investigative journalism.”
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The three politicians were contacted 10 days before our intended publication date last Sunday, as Channel 4’s duties under Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, mean it has to give people it secretly films plenty of time to reply.
Peter Lilley complained directly to senior executives at Channel 4 and to Lord Burns, chairman of Ofcom. The regulator never intervenes ahead of transmission and Ofcom says there was no attempt to influence the programme.
Andrew Mitchell used the Mail on Sunday last weekend to get his defence in first. The newspaper ran a classic spoiler using the MP’s version of events — in the hope that its story could be fleshed out in later editions by lifting copy from The Sunday Times.
Our story did not appear, however. At 4.30pm on Saturday, as this newspaper approached its deadline, Lansley’s public relations guru sent a private email from the peer’s surgeon, along with a note saying: “You may wish to show this to the editor before you finalise the article.”
This PR man’s intervention three hours before deadline raised serious questions that this newspaper had little time to consider and resolve. It was therefore decided to delay the story.
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We have now decided to publish in the public interest for a number of reasons.
Lansley was diagnosed with cancer in the summer but attended two job interviews with our Chinese company in late October. He did not mention his illness, and indeed told the reporters he was increasing his outside business interests.
He was still keenly emailing about the work, which involved travel to Hong Kong, in December, when he flew to Japan to make a speech before his operation. He gave a radio interview earlier this month after the surgery.
Cancer experts have told The Sunday Times there is no weight of scientific literature associating stress with worse outcomes in cancer cases. Cancer Research UK said there had been some general research into whether stress affected recovery but “no link was found”.