The Political Scrapbook website and Independent newspaper report that Mayor Johnson had dinner with Rupert Murdoch on 24th January 2011,
The reports claim the event does not appear on the Mayor’s register of hospitality.
However the Guido Fawkes website quotes a City Hall spokesman as saying details have been in the public domain for “the best part of a year”.
The dinner took place days before the Met Police launched the Operation Weeting investigation into claims of widespread phone-hacking by News International.
On 25th May 2012 Johnson told Assembly Member John Biggs: “My meetings with News International have already been made public. Under my transparent administration my advisors declarations of interest, hospitality and expenses are public.”
Labour claim the Mayor may have broken City Hall rules about honesty and accountability, including a requirement that the Mayor and AMs not place themselves in situations where their “honesty and integrity may be questioned”.
Group leader Len Duvall said: “This is extremely serious, for the Mayor to not declare a meeting with Rupert Murdoch at the height of the phone-hacking crisis is truly scandalous.”
“He even stated in May this year that all his meetings had been declared. To think he could drop into dinner with Rupert Murdoch and not declare it is jaw-droppingly arrogant, especially at the height of the phone-hacking inquiry.”
Duvall has written to City Hall’s monitoring officer to formally request an investigation.
Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Group, has accused Johnson of “evasiveness”.
Ms Pidgeon commented: “Boris Johnson failed to declare the hospitality he received from Rupert Murdoch in both his monthly report to the London Assembly, and in the GLA’s Register of gifts and hospitality. In addition to this evasiveness he then provided a misleading written answer to a London Assembly Member.”
“He cannot brush this off with the excuse that details were separately provided in a freedom of information request, the publication of which was tucked away on the GLA website back in 2011.”
“The Mayor of London’s failure to be totally transparent and answer questions about all the meetings he had with Rupert Murdoch and other people from News International shows an appalling lack of respect of Londoners. If Boris Johnson won’t answer to the London Assembly, Lord Leveson should ask him to appear before his inquiry where the Mayor will have to answer questions under oath.”
