Labour appeal to broadcasters over stories which ‘unravel’

Exclusive: Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings briefing misleading stories to newspapers, letter claims

Traditional newsstand in 2012: print media is dying but people will need to get used to paying for online information (Getty)

Labour has written to broadcasters appealing for them not to repeat stories briefed by the government to Tory-backing newspapers until they have checked them for accuracy.

The letter accuses Boris Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings of having a strategy of “organised deception”, with the aim of getting favourable but misleading stories on the air, even if they later unravel.

It states that Jeremy Corbyn’s party is reliant on the integrity and impartiality of broadcasters to provide the scrutiny needed to ensure that voters are presented with truthful information.

The letter, from Labour’s election co-ordinators Andrew Gwynne and Ian Lavery, is understood to cite two stories which were picked up from newspapers by national broadcasters only to be questioned by impartial experts:

- A £1.8 billion “cash boost” for the NHS which was announced during the summer, only for the Nuffield Trust and other think tanks to point out that £1 billion of the money was cash already held by health trusts which the government had prevented them from spending;

- A claim during the Conservative annual conference that the government was building “40 new hospitals”, which later turned out to involve funding for six reconfigured hospitals, with a further 34 given the chance to bid for a share of £100 million in “seed funding” to pay for design and planning of potential new building projects.

Labour is understood to be asking broadcasters to consider what further steps can be taken to ensure a greater degree of fact-checking and scrutiny before newspaper headlines are repeated in TV and radio bulletins.

One Labour insider said: “This isn’t a criticism of broadcasters.

“It is obvious Johnson and Cummings are running a deliberate policy of making government departments issue announcements with little fact or basis behind them.

Labour election co-ordinator Andrew Gwynne (PA)

“It is concerning for us because the dominance of Tory newspapers to filter this stuff through places massive pressure on broadcasters to follow it up.

“By the time policy experts have rebutted, the message they wanted out is already out.”