How the Times exposed Westminster's ‘cash for access’ breakfasts
The Story
The Times
4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
A Times investigation has found companies have been offered sponsorship deals involving private meetings with an ‘influential Labour figure’. The reporters spent months working undercover, speaking to dozens of sources and combing through leaked documents.
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Guest: Paul Morgan-Bentley, Head of Investigations, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Edward Drummond.
Read more:
- Revealed: Labour group’s £9,500 ‘cash for access’ breakfasts
- How we exposed Labour’s cosy links to lobbyists
Photo: Times illustration/Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:35.2 | Learn more at freshworks.com. So you might want to speak to special advisors of the Treasury, the Exchequer, the Secretary to Treasury, |
| 0:59.0 | James Murray, I think. |
| 1:01.0 | Then you look to speak to like Johnny Reynolds in the Department of International Trade, |
| 1:05.0 | around Chandra, number 10, the Office of Investment, James Carroll, number two, the office for investment, |
| 1:12.1 | those type of people, and Johnny Reynolds is special advisors. |
| 1:17.8 | You're listening to a phone call that was recorded by our investigations team when they went |
| 1:23.3 | undercover. |
| 1:25.3 | This investigation has been going on for at least six months, and what that has |
| 1:29.8 | involved is slowly building up trust with sources in Westminster who might have been able to help us. |
| 1:35.6 | This is a world that can be quite secretive, the lobbying world in Westminster. |
| 1:42.9 | It's a world that can seem very opaque. |
| 1:46.4 | So Paul Morgan Bentley, head of investigations at the Times, was shocked when one of the |
| 1:51.9 | people he approached was quite so forthcoming. |
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