§ Mr. BurnsTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he has taken to detect fraudulent applications for a five-year set-aside scheme; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Gummer[pursuant to his reply, 4 December 1991, Official Report, col. 166]: Yesterday's Sunday Times (8 December) claims that I misled the House in my earlier reply. This is a most serious allegation and quite untrue.
The points raised by The Sunday Times in defence of its story were rebutted in a letter from me to the paper's deputy editor on Friday evening. The newspaper chose not to publish this.
In elaborating yesterday on its misleading claims of the previous week, The Sunday Times has introduced no new evidence of substance. It has placed great stress on the existence of one taped telephone conversation between a MAFF inspector and the Insight team journalist who posed as a landowner. In its selective use of events the newspaper has chosen not to disclose other telephone conversations as a result of which the journalist was left in no doubt as to the true position.
The Sunday Times knows and knew at the time that there could have been no justification for it to claim that Dr. Rufford's application had been approved. The central point remains that no formal approval letter was issued or would have been issued until a satisfactory site inspection had been carried out. It also remains true that its journalist signed false declarations, and that the Insight team fabricated a MAFF letterhead in order to give credence to what they knew was not a final letter of approval.