Stephen Byers is in a bind. Desperate to salvage some credibility following the Channel 4 Dispatches sting in which he claimed to be a “cab for hire” by lobbyists who were prepared to pay between £3,000 and £5,000 for his Westminster contacts, he referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards at the start of this week. Mr. Byers is sure that his comments, broadcast on Monday, will not constitute a breach of Parliamentary rules. And, I suspect, some of his defence will come in the form of the clutch of retractions he sent to the production company posing as lobbyists before broadcast. He should not be too sure. Coffee House has now seen Mr. Byers correspondence and there are a number of problems with it.
In total he sent four emails to the production company and made one phone call. The first email, sent from his blackberry just a few hours after the meeting on the 23rd February, was some distance from a retraction:
“Good to meet you today.
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