Hewitt police interview.

Patricia Hewitt, Health secretary, has gained, I think, the distinction of being the first cabinet minister to be interviewed by Assistant Commissioner John Yates and his cash for honours investigation team. The Guardian report has a rather useful summary of events in the scandal so far.

Meanwhile the BBC offered a £100 bonus to the first journalist to confirm that Blair is to interviewed over the affair. Tightwads, £100 hardly covers a journalist's dinner time drink. Then the press, including the Daily Telegraph, got hold of it and the BBC's senior management went into damage limitation mode, blaming everything on a less senior manager:

...the BBC described as "wholly inappropriate" an e-mail sent to Millbank [BBC news] staff by the manager, named by Labour as Gary Smith. A spokesman said the manager had been guilty of an "error of judgement" and insisted that its journalists would continue to cover the "cash for peerages" affair in a fair and balanced way.

Tags: Cash for honours, Hewitt, BBC