BBC chiefs have refused to release internal emails that may reveal senior executives’ behaviour when they discovered the journalist had used forged documents to help secure his interview with the royal in 1995.
The corporation has so far spent £151,830 on external legal advice over the past two and a half years attempting to resist a freedom of information request from journalist and film-maker Andrew Webb to access the material.
The BBC has spent an additional £13,556 on computer services for “document storage and handling”. But the costs of over £165,000 does not include the fee for internal lawyers and other employees, which the BBC says is impossible to quantify.
Today, the corporation is expected to hand over about 10,000 pages of data to Mr Webb after being ordered by a judge to do so in a hearing in December.
The BBC was originally given a deadline of Friday January 26 but was granted a last-minute extension after saying it had not had time to process all the data.
In 2021, Mr Webb requested all emails between BBC managers and its information office sent from September to November 2000. The BBC has fiercely resisted his request.
The film-maker believes the BBC deliberately covered-up the Bashir scandal in 1995 and then again in 2020 when Mr Webb made a documentary about the interview.
He also believes the corporation did not release all of its incriminating evidence to Lord Dyson when he led an inquiry into the Panorama interview in 2021.
The peer, a former Supreme Court Judge, concluded the BBC covered up Bashir’s “deceitful behaviour” in preying on Diana’s insecurity to obtain the interview.
The Corporation spent £1.4m on the six-month probe by Lord Dyson.
Mr Webb has previously lashed out at the BBC for a “shocking” waste of licence-fee payers’ money and questioned why it was still fighting to keep the emails under wraps.
He said: “The BBC say that all these emails I’ve asked for are ‘irrelevant’. Yet they have spent tens of thousands of pounds in public funds to keep them secret.
“This looks like a shocking waste of licence fee-payers money and of course deepens my suspicion that the BBC is still covering up. If they have nothing to hide, why on earth don’t they release these documents?”
Prince William will likely be enraged at the news, as he’s previously blamed Bashir’s Panorama interview with his mother for fuelling her “fear, paranoia and isolation” and worsening her parents’ relationship.
He issued the scathing statement about the BBC’s actions following the Dyson enquiry.
William expressed his “indescribable sadness” at the corporation’s failings, which he says “contributed significantly” to his mother’s state of mind in her final years.
Calling for the interview never to be shown again, the heir to the throne added: “It is my firm view that this Panorama programme holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again.
“It effectively established a false narrative which, for over a quarter of a century, has been commercialised by the BBC and others.”
