British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office denied on Monday that it had leaked information relating to an investigation into alleged corruption in the political honours system.
Blair’s official spokesperson issued the denial after Britain’s Attorney General won an injunction on Friday prohibiting the BBC from publishing details of an email exchange between two of Blair’s closest aides.
Metropolitan police are investigating allegations that honours — including seats in the House of Lords and knighthoods — were given in exchange for loans to the Labour or Conservative parties.
Lord Levy, the prime minister’s Mideast envoy and fund-raiser, and Ruth Turner, a senior adviser, are among four people arrested in connection with inquiry.
Any suggestions of the email being leaked from Blair’s Downing Street were ”just plain wrong”, said the prime minister’s official spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
The statements came in response to speculation that someone in Blair’s office leaked the document in an effort to create publicity that could undermine any potential effort to prosecute.
The metropolitan police said in a statement that there were concerns that disclosure of information would impede the investigation, and that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was acting ”completely independently of government and in his independent public-interest capacity”.
The BBC said in a statement that its report was a ”legitimate matter of public interest”.
”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 [the] reports, which mean it can’t have come from Number 10 [Downing Street],” Blair’s spokesperson said.
The spokesperson refused to say what the inaccuracies were.
Angus MacNeil, a Scottish legislator who triggered the police inquiry, said that if anyone linked to the prime minister’s office or the inquiry was found to be behind the leak to ”wreck” the police investigation, it would ”be one of the most audacious attempts to pervert the course of justice ever”. — Sapa-AP