Legal bid for Holyrood TV footage

LORD Fraser will this week launch a landmark legal challenge to force the makers of the controversial documentary on the making of the Scottish Parliament to finally hand over 400 hours of unbroadcast film.

New legal powers may allow the Tory peer to seek a court order forcing the makers of the film to hand over untransmitted footage, withheld during the inquiry into the 431m Holyrood building.

Lord Fraser will this week take legal advice on whether IWC Media, makers of The Gathering Place, will finally have to hand him all footage shot for the film.

Lord Fraser told Scotland on Sunday: "The change in the law means that a court order could have forced IWC Media to hand over the tapes and I will be checking whether this can now be applied to the Holyrood inquiry. Technically the inquiry is still open, but I have to make sure that the law can be used in this way."

IWC, part-owned by the BBC broadcaster Kirsty Wark, recorded more than 400 hours of material over the past six years - at a cost to the taxpayer of 1m. This was then compressed into four hour-long programmes and screened on BBC2 Scotland last month.

Lord Fraser said: "The broader Scottish public wants closure on this matter and I don’t see how that can happen without the footage being made available, which should be done as a matter of principle and public record.

"I don’t see what IWC Media has to lose by handing the tapes over. They have done an awful lot of harm to their reputation by refusing to do so. They have not won many friends."

The Inquiries Act, passed in the House of Lords last week, grants extra powers to obtain evidence that government inquiries consider essential to their investigations.

Lord Fraser’s latest request for access to untransmitted footage from the documentary was dismissed by IWC Media last week, despite the peer’s request to see it before he formally closes his inquiry.

The unedited tapes show important meetings as they happened and full interviews with leading MSPs and civil servants, recorded at the time key decisions were taken.

Margo MacDonald, the Independent MSP, said: "The passing of the Inquiries Act places a moral duty on IWC Media to make the tapes accessible to anyone who wants to make use of them.

"As long as Lord Fraser keeps his inquiry open there would appear to be no bar to him using the new act to secure the tapes that we have been unable to scrutinise."

MacDonald is also to write to Patricia Ferguson, the culture minister, asking her to consider the implications of IWC Media being sold. Industry speculation last week suggested the Glasgow-based production company was about to merge with Hat Trick, another independent television producer.

MacDonald added: "Those tapes could soon be the property of another company, so it is a matter of urgency."

Scottish Conservative party leader David McLetchie last night backed Lord Fraser’s new legal move.

He said: "Lord Fraser is quite right to explore every avenue to get this evidence for the inquiry. It is intolerable and unjustified that the broadcasters and IWC Media think they know best and feel they can thwart the Holyrood inquiry into the gross abuse of taxpayers’ money.

"If only the First Minister and the rest of the Scottish Parliament had the guts to back our motion that would have compelled the production of the tapes, then we would not have reached this ridiculous state of affairs."

Nationalist MSP Fergus Ewing said: "The position of the BBC and IWC Media displays arrogance reminiscent of the Raj. But the primary responsibility for the Holyrood cover-up lies with the civil servants and Labour politicians.

"The BBC tapes were never likely to reveal anything more than the incompetence of those who promised us a parliament building for 50m, completed by autumn 2001."

A spokesman for IWC Media said Lord Fraser had been offered access to the full interviews with the late First Minister Donald Dewar, and Holyrood architect Enric Miralles. But it would not release all 400 hours of footage because it "would fly in the face of every journalistic convention".

The spokesman confirmed, however, that there will be a press screening of all interview footage involving Dewar, who was not featured in the four-hour documentary despite being First Minister for the first two years of the parliament.

The spokesman added: "The full, unedited interviews will be available as soon as the 90-minute cinema film edit of The Gathering Place has been completed. But people should not hold their breath for any new revelations."