How was Panorama infiltrated by the Left? BBC interviewed five medics with Labour links over PPE

When Panorama turned its gunson the PPE crisis, five medics savaged the Tories’ approach. Yet they ALL had Labour links.

The deadly shortage of PPE in our hospitals and care homes is a national tragedy that the Mail — and its readers — are working tirelessly to fix through the charity Mail Force.

We have brought the failure adequately to protect NHS staff to the top of the news agenda, frequently asking tough questions of ministers and officials.

But our duty to hold the Government to account is tempered by realism. Mistakes have been made, of course — but we are all working it out as we go along. And the Mail’s criticism has been levelled fairly.

A different attitude seems to prevail at the BBC Panorama programme, which on Monday aired an investigation into the PPE crisis entitled ‘Has the Government failed the NHS?’.

The five doctors and nurses that Panorama chose to interview had familiar tales to tell. One, Abhi Mantgani, said: ‘People in healthcare losing their lives and being put at risk is something that keeps me awake at night.’

Viewers were told that another, Irial Eno, was a ‘doctor working with Covid patients’ who has ‘decided to speak out’. She said ‘I feel really angry at the Government’.

A third interviewee, Dr Sonia Adesara, said: ‘It doesn’t seem fair to me that healthcare professionals who feel they are at risk — who may be at risk — are not being given full PPE equipment because the Government failed to prepare.’

Their take on the PPE problem heaped almost all the blame on Boris Johnson’s Government and was, naturally, leapt on by leading figures in Labour.

John McDonnell said it ought to persuade Matt Hancock to consider his position as Health Secretary. Diane Abbott said the ‘damning’ programme proved ‘the Government is a deadly shambles’.

Fallout from its overnight broadcast led the BBC’s Tuesday morning bulletins.

But it has since emerged that all five of the doctors and nurses Panorama chose to interview were longstanding Labour Party activists or supporters.

This was not shared with viewers, in what appears to be a flagrant breach of BBC guidelines.

Dr Sonia Adesara is an outspoken supporter of Jeremy Corbyn who has stood (without success) as a Labour council and parliamentary candidate.

She has also acted as a spokeswoman for the hard-Left lobby group Keep Our NHS Public, attended anti-Trump protests outside Buckingham Palace last year and has spoken at a string of Labour Party rallies. She also starred in a party political broadcast for Labour last year.

Then there is Irial Eno. The daughter of hard-Left musician Brian Eno, she is a key figure in Docs Not Cops, a Left-wing lobby group that campaigns against billing migrants for NHS care.

It is a similar story with Abhi Mantgani. He turns out to be a Merseyside-based friend of the former Labour MP Frank Field, who on Twitter has called Jacob Rees-Mogg a ‘pompous fool’ and complained about ‘Boris lies’.

In September he urged MPs to ‘bring this government down’.

A fourth interviewee was Asif Munaf, described by Panorama as an A&E doctor from Nottingham.

He is also a fervent Labour supporter who, on the eve of the last election, said on social media: ‘If there’s a Conservative majority later this week, then we can wave bye to the NHS by this time next year. It’s as stark as that #votelabour’.

Panorama viewers were given the impression these were all unbiased healthcare workers.

That appears to be a breach of the BBC’s own editorial guidelines on contributors to news programmes, which state: ‘Appropriate information about their affiliation, funding and particular viewpoints should be made available to the audience, when relevant to the context.’

A gesture to this effect was made when Panorama introduced the fifth of its frontline interviewees, a nurse from Swansea called Libby Nolan, who was described as a local trade union rep.

In fact, on Twitter she calls herself a ‘nurse and constant agitator’, while on Instagram, she once shared pictures of badges she planned to wear for a Corbyn rally that read: ‘Proud to be everything the Conservatives hate’.

The sixth major interviewee on the programme was Professor John Ashton, a former director of public health for Cumbria who once described himself on social media as a ‘broad Left, radical, non-Trot, baby boomer, green, gender-inclusive, feminist Labour Party member for 53 years’. Panorama introduced him as ‘a public health expert and longstanding critic of the Government’.

Why couldn’t the BBC find a doctor or nurse to speak to who didn’t have a long track record of Labour activism?

Yesterday, the Guido Fawkes website, which has led criticism of the show, revealed that a man called Nigel Flanagan, a Unison activist on Merseyside, claims to have been ‘one of those who spoke to Panorama and put them in touch with health workers’.

But the Corporation has insisted none of its interviewees was sourced via a trade union.

In a statement last night, it said: ‘Some of those interviewed are members of a political party and some are not. We believe that if the doctors featured in Panorama feel their lives are at risk due to lack of proper PPE, it is valid, and indeed in the public interest, for them to reflect on that experience, regardless of the political views they may or may not hold.’

The statement did not explain why their affiliations were kept hidden from viewers.

Tory MPs are calling for the matter to be considered by Parliament. One, Andrew Griffith, said: ‘The taxpayer-funded BBC has real questions to answer about its role here.’ Another, Richard Holden, added: ‘The level of bias being allowed at a time of national crisis is shameful.’