Letter: Birt and Hussey threaten the integrity of the BBC

Sir: Had the accountant acting for John Birt taken advantage of the small company provisions of the Companies Act 1985, the accounts filed with Companies House would, broadly speaking, have comprised an abbreviated balance sheet only. No disclosure of the profit and loss account would have been necessary, with the result that the press could not have obtained details of the individual items of expenditure.

As to the taxation question, it is worth recalling the words of Lord Clyde in 1929:

No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest shovel into his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow - and quite rightly - to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is, in like manner, entitled to be as astute to prevent, as far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Revenue.

Yours faithfully,

D. J. WARD

Market Deeping, Lincolnshire

15 March