James Dyson denies he tried to ‘extract favours’ from Boris Johnson
Sir James Dyson has denied he was trying to “extract favours” from Boris Johnson when he texted him over his company’s involvement in building ventilators for the UK’s Covid effort.
The UK’s richest man also hit out at the BBC for its coverage of the affair, accusing the broadcaster of “grotesque mischaracterisation” after it incorrectly said he was a prominent Tory donor.
The BBC last week revealed Whatsapp messages between Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and the Prime Minister.
The billionaire asked Johnson for his employees to receive tax exemptions for diverting resources to build ventilators for UK hospitals during the early parts of the coronavirus crisis.
Johnson defended the text messages, saying any Prime Minister would “shift heaven and earth” to “secure ventilators for the people of this country” last March as the coronavirus crisis swept the globe.
Writing in the Telegraph today, Dyson said he had only met Boris Johnson three times and was not a prominent Tory donor despite what some publications said.
Dyson said he had only ever given donations to a Tory MP twice, with the money on both occasions going to a non-political local festival.
“I would change nothing about how Dyson reacted to this country’s Covid crisis,” he said.
“And you need only look at the UK’s vaccine programme to understand the value of independent action which can be swift, decisive and transcend global boundaries.
“Thousands of companies and millions of individuals have gone above and beyond in responding to this crisis. This should not be diminished by politically motivated mud-slinging after the event.”
The leak of the text messages to the BBC led Downing Street to launch an inquiry last week, before Downing Street then blamed it on Dominic Cummings to three major national newspapers.
Cummings denied being the source of the leak in an explosive blog post on Friday, which also made a series of other claims about Johnson and potential breaches of the ministerial code.