The Real Whittingdale Scandal: Cover up by the Press

David Cameron, under siege for his shifting account of the Panama Papers, is facing an imminent second front of attacks as a consequence of his decision to bring John Whittingdale into the cabinet last year
Along with other journalists at the Independent newspaper, political correspondent James Cusick spent five months investigating why other newspapers had shut down a story about the culture minister, only to see his editor shut the investigation down too. Here he lays out the anatomy of a press cover-up. In an accompanying comment piece he explains his personal reaction.
[b]THE PROMOTION of the former chair of the DCMS select committee to Culture Secretary last year means that John Whittingdale’s lengthy relationship with a professional dominatrix and fetish escort - known to leading national newspaper groups who held back from publishing any detail - left him increasingly open to potential blackmail.[/b]

Whittingdale, according to one Whitehall source, became “The culture secretary Rupert Murdoch dreamt of"   

Although there is no suggestion that Whittingdale was explicitly coerced by any of Britain’s newspaper bosses, questions inevitably arise as to whether concerns about publication of aspects of his private life about influenced his policy decisions inside the Culture department.
As culture secretary, with a brief that includes media policy, Whittingdale has a powerful influence over press regulation, the mooted privatisation of Channel 4 and above all the future finances of the BBC.
So far his key policy decisions have included:
* Serial attacks on the BBC’s independence and influence
* Backing for the Treasury’s assault on the public service broadcaster's finances
* Unilaterally blocking legislation recommended by the Leveson Inquiry into the press, passed by all three major political parties in Parliament in 2013
* Personal support for the press industry’s new non-Leveson compliant regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, IPSO.
Whittingdale, according to one Whitehall source, became “The culture secretary Rupert Murdoch dreamt of, and the cabinet insider those who fought Brian Leveson’s recommendations prayed they would get.” 
Keeping Whittingdale right where he is, rather than ousting him, perfectly suits those in Fleet Street who view Leveson as a commercial threat to business-as-usual.
John Whittingdale, MP for Maldon
Sources in Downing Street say the Prime Minister initially offered the job of Culture Secretary to Boris Johnson. But after the London mayor refused, Cameron, who initially doubted Whittingdale’s suitability, decided instead to give him the job after taking little or no counsel.
More than a year before the May 2015 election, Number 10, according to Westminster advisers, knew some of the raw detail newspapers held on Whittingdale’s private life.
This should have rung alarm bells when the prospect of a cabinet job was mooted in the immediate election aftermath. Instead the danger was dismissed.
Number 10 was asked this week if Mr Cameron knew his culture secretary had engaged in a relationship with a prostitute, or if John Whittingdale had been open about it to the Prime Minister before he was appointed to the cabinet. 
Downing Street said they would be making no comment on the matter, and as it related to Mr Whittingdale’s private life, it was up to him to comment.
The same sequence of detailed questions were put to Mr Whittingdale and his advisers. There was no response.
With Cameron’s reputation on the line over Panama and off-shore finances, and the outcome of the referendum on Europe looking far from clear, the political risk the PM took in appointing Whittingdale now looks like another serious misjudgment.
How Whittingdale reached the position he holds, and manages to sustain it, is an uncomfortable chapter that does little for the reputation of Britain’s press, supposed to have cleaned up its act in the fallout from hacking.
The reality? The last chance saloon of press self-regulation, as famously described by David Mellor, has been given a convenient make-over on Whittingdale’s supplicant watch.

Round One: Mirror Group and Phone Hacking

DURING A FIVE-MONTH LONG INVESTIGATION at The Independent last year, it was discovered that several newspapers had got wind of Whittingdale’s relationship with a dominatrix called Olivia King. There were rumours that she had connections to the criminal underworld, but they remain as yet unsubstantiated.
The paper which mounted the first serious investigation, and put what resources they had into uncovering what was regarded as a classic tabloid tale, was the Mirror Group’s Sunday People.
In November 2013, the People’s news editor, James Saville, was contacted by a woman who was a regular source of profile stories. She offered details of Ms King’s regular job at a London sex club near Earls Court, the London Retreat, where she was alleged to use the name “Mistress Kate”. The paper was told Whittingdale and King planned to attend the 2013 MTV Europe Awards together at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam that month. MTV were said to have paid all the travel and hotel costs with Whittingdale invited because he was chair of the DCMS select committee.

A Mirror Group newspaper exposing Whittingdale in 2013 therefore carried a risk that he could retaliate through his committee and start an Inquiry into Mirror Group Newspapers   

A well-known celebrity photographer is alleged to have organised a surveillance operation of the couple in Amsterdam and to have subsequently tried to sell a folio of photographs. He initially denied knowing anything about this. However, he later revised his explanation, saying the couple may have been followed, but that he had nothing to do with it.
Two weeks later the picture desk at the People used Matt Sprake, a photographer working for a daily shift-rate at the paper, to take pictures at a sports awards ceremony where Whittingdale and King were expected to attend together. The main guest at the SportsAid Ball was the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. 
Photo by Matt Sprake
Pictures of Whittingdale and King arriving and leaving together, hugging each other as they walked, travelling home on the tube, were taken. Ms King was also followed the next day, with pictures secretly taken of her outside the Earls Court club. A young reporter was told to investigate and dig up what he could.
Although Saville has subsequently downplayed the significance of Whittingdale as a tabloid target, the MP was no ordinary backbencher. He had been Margaret Thatcher’s political secretary, and a special adviser to Norman Tebbit and Leon Brittan.
Between 2011 and 2014, the Department of Culture Media and Sport committee, which Whittingdale chaired, conducted an inquiry into the future of the BBC, conducted a lengthy and high-profile investigation into phone hacking at News International. The committee brought James and Rupert Murdoch to Westminster to answer MP’s questions at a hearing which led to global news coverage. 
The furore around the phone hacking scandal led to the year long Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, which concluded in a report by Lord Justice Brian Leveson which recommended independent oversight of any new regulator which replaced the discredited Press Complaints Commission(PCC). A cross-party agreement, signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, endorsed both by a Royal charter-based system, and a set of incentives passed by Parliament. 

However by October 2013 senior press figures had begun to resist any real change, stating they would not sign up and branded the proposed independent Charter oversight of self-regulation “state interference.” Although Whittingdale initially backed the charter and its costs-incentives, his position, at the time the People were probing his private life, was changing
In the Commons that month, he warned the then culture secretary, Maria Miller, that it would be “infinitely preferable” to achieve a system of press regulation that delivered the “objectives” of Lord Justice Leveson’s report, but which also “commanded the support of as many newspapers as possible, rather than none of them”. 
Although phone hacking turned out to have been deep and widespread inside Mirror Group Newspapers, in October 2013, a year after civil claims were first launched, the company was still vehemently denying in public that there was any problem. It was only in September 2014 that MGN formally accepted liability for hacking and began paying any compensation to victims. 

Although Whittingdale initially backed the charter and its costs-incentives, his position, at the time the People were probing his private life, was changing   

A Mirror Group newspaper exposing Whittingdale in 2013 therefore carried a risk that he could retaliate through his committee and start an Inquiry into MGN activity as they had done for News Group. That could have proved damaging, embarrasing and expensive for MGN executives.
The People, as part of their investigation, did gather potential reaction to their story. One senior Labour MP says that he was approached by the paper for his views on the allegations but was “not surprised” to see nothing was published.
Saville said MGN’s lawyers did look at the evolving story. But he didn’t know how high up inside the company the consequences of the Whittingdale investigation were discussed. He also said he didn’t know for sure if the story had been explored by other MGN titles. The outcome? 
No Mirror paper published anything.
Paul Vickers 
At the top of MGN’s legal chain was Paul Vickers. In 2012 Vickers became head of thepress industry group that produced proposals to sideline Leveson and lobbied MPs and government against the new charter. He later chaired the Regulatory Funding Company, the body that went on to fund and control the Independent Press Standards Organisation(IPSO). 
Those expecting that the People’s expose would mean big bucks for their information, were left disappointed.

Round Two: the Sun and the BBC Cuts

THE PICTURES OF WHITTINGDALE AND KING were nevertheless hard currency in the tabloid village. Sprake, with Saville and his source’s permission, now had an agency, FameFlynet, which put the photographs on the market. He took them to Fleet Street’s biggest deal-maker, Max Clifford, the now-jailed former king of kiss n’ tell. Conference calls involving the Sun and the Mail on Sunday are alleged to have quickly been arranged. 
Dominic Mohan
A potential deal with the Sun was explored. The pictures were shown to Dominic Mohan, then the Sun’s editor. No money is said to have changed hands. And nothing was published.
Two - possibly three, if the People was not the first - UK national newspapers now had the Whittingdale story and access to the pictures, if they wanted them. It was suggested that £20,000 was the price tag. But still nothing was published.
In late 2013 Whittingdale was continuing his attacks on the BBC, warning the corporation that revelations about six-figure payoffs given the issue of a fresh inquiry “more urgency”.  He told the Financial Times his committee would be looking at every aspect of the BBC, its structure, the role of the BBC Trust, and how the corporation was funded . If the threats sounded familiar, that’s because they had been said before – often by James Murdoch. 

Whittingdale told Mosley: “You are a public figure and you know the British press. You know the appetite of the British press for stories of this kind. 

The implied promise that the BBC would have its authority and power cut back, was delivered soon after the Conservative victory at the general election. Cameron’s first meeting with his new culture secretary had one item on the agenda – the BBC.
A few MPs who know Whittingdale well, said he was at times relatively open about his relationship with Olivia King, but not open about what she did. He is said to have taken her to the river terrace of the Palace of Westminster to watch the 2014 New Year fireworks over the Thames.
Whittingdale had given Max Mosley a moral lecture in 2009 during a Commons hearing of his select committee. He told Mosley: “You are a public figure and you know the British press. You know the appetite of the British press for stories of this kind. Had you not always felt this was a time bomb that sooner or later was going to go off?” 
This was insight and advice he seemed incapable of using when it came to his own life.

https://www.byline.com/project/48/article/966