How often can you say a gift is truly unique? When you gift a loved one an Ancestry DNA test, you're giving them the keys to unlock their own personal journey of discovery. And with our festive sale now on, you can save on a truly meaningful gift. Help them discover their heritage, learn about their ancestors and make new family connections this Christmas. Visit ancestry.co.uk to give them a gift that is truly unique. Terms apply.
We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly, but it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients. Becky Berry is a beef farmer in the Wiltshire countryside who supplies beef to McDonald's for its iconic burgers.
I'm part of a group of farmers and we've been on a journey that McDonald's have sponsored to help us with learning more about regenerative practices and how that can benefit us, our farms, the people and the animals that we're producing.
It's a way of McDonald's giving back to the whole industry. What we're trying to do now is move the cows from where they've eaten and they're moving into a longer, luscious pasture. And part of that reason is to help the biodiversity. As you can see here in the long grass, we've got moths and butterflies that have just hatched out. We can hear in the hedge rows around the outside of the field the birdsong. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website.
Hi, this is Edward, one of the producers on the story. Back in the bleak days of the first lockdown, one man offered a glimpse of hope. Captain Tom, a 99-year-old World War II veteran walked around his garden a hundred times to raise money for charity, and captured the nation.
A fund was set up in his name to collect the donations and distribute them to good causes. This week, over four years later, a report from the charity commission concluded that Captain Sir Tom Moore's daughter and her husband had committed serious misconduct and had gained significant financial benefit from links to that charity. The report said that it had not seen evidence of a crime committed by the couple. In response, they say that there has never been any misappropriation of funds or unauthorized payments from the charity's bank account by any member of our family.
Last year, when we were stories of our times, when Veen spoke to Times Social Affairs editor James Bill about the whole affair, we thought you might be interested to hear that episode, the story of a very British scandal.
I know it's probably not a period you want to remember, but let me take you back to April 2020. The country was suddenly in lockdown. Supermarkets ran out of lu-roll, and then, just when we most needed it, a plucky new national hero was born.
An unassuming, 99-year-old man raised money for the NHS by doing 100 laps of his garden, with the aid of his walking frame. Captain Tom Moore captured the heart of the nation. He'd hoped to raise a modest 1,000 pounds, but by his 100th birthday, three weeks later, he'd raised a whopping 39 million.
Congratulations. Captain Tom, how do you feel this morning? Yes, I think it's fine. I hope you're all through. He's fine too. By then, he'd also reached the top of the charts after recording a number one hit single with Michael Ball. When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high. And don't be afraid of the dark.
He was celebrated with military fly pasts, trains and buses were named after him, and he was knighted by the late Queen. A map low overall by the fact that this is such a high award that says a good and from her majesty as well. What more can anyone wish for them that?
But since his death in February 2021, a cloud has hung over his legacy as the charity set up in his name has been engulfed in a series of scandals. What's being investigated is a charity which was set up the year before he died, the Captain Tom Foundation and the relationship between that charity and his family.
and his family's involvement with the charity has raised some difficult questions. The family applied for planning permission for a pool and a luxury spa. That was all done in the foundation's name. Now, it quite clearly had nothing to do with that, and that shouldn't have happened. Here's a front page of the sun today. Captain Tom, his family's confessed that they kept £800,000 from the three books he wrote. How did such an inspiring story unravel?
And what does this very British tale tell us about us? You're listening to stories of our times from The Times and The Sunday Times. I'm Manveen Rana. Today, a very British scandal. How Captain Tom's charity got caught up in controversy.
I'm James Beale, I'm the Social Affairs Editor at The Times. And James, a lot of people will remember the story of Captain Tom. But not everyone will know about his daughter and the saga of what's happened since. So just tell us a bit about her to begin with, Hannah Ingraham Moore.
I think many people would have seen her alongside Tom throughout his charity exploits. She's a businessman in her own rights, and she's actually credited with kick-starting the whole Captain Tom's story. It was extraordinary. It was my husband who said, Tom, we can't throw you a hundred birthday parties, so why don't you walk a hundred laps instead, and we'll give you a panda lap. She's the one who first sent his walk exploits to the local newspaper.
I did a little press release and set up a just giving page. We thought we might raise £1,000 in four weeks and it was £38.9 million in three and a half weeks.
Her website talks rather grandly about her being one of Britain's leading businesswomen, an accredited life coach, a decorated motivational speaker, and a proud supporter of female entrepreneurs nationwide. And she's done multiple interviews, and quite often she's next to her husband, Colin, who's a chartered accountant, and their two teenage children, Benji and Georgia.
Obviously, the whole family first came to attention when Captain Tom embarked on this great fundraising project in the middle of lockdown. At the time, he raised £39 million, an astonishing sum for the NHS. But there is a lot of money in this tale that we're going to have to try and follow, so let's sort of try and keep it simple. Talk to us about that original sum, the £39 million.
That £39 million, you have to think of that very separately to what we're going to spend the rest of the podcast talking about. That money went directly to NHS charities together, which is a federation of over 250 charitable organisations that support the NHS. And there are no questions over what happened to that money, and it's not being investigated.
So that's all money that's gone to the very best of causes. Absolutely. That's all in the run up to Captain Tom's 100th birthday. What happens next?
The family and Captain Tom registered the Captain Tom Foundation in June 2020, and that was to receive further donations made in his name. And it received nearly 1.1 million in its first year. Accounts showed that it spent 400,000 of that.
1.1 million, including 160,000 on good causes. But there were 240,000 spent on other expenditure. Now, that's quite surprising. If you've raised more than a million and only 160,000 has gone to good causes, and far more, 240,000 has gone just to charity costs,
Absolutely. I think when some charities set up and are perhaps being operated by people who aren't particularly experienced in the charitable sector, it can happen, but it quite quickly caught the eye of the Charity Commission. What were they looking at in particular?
In the accounts for the Captain Tom Foundation, it emerged that 54,000 was paid to two companies operated by Mr. and Mrs. Ingram more during the 2021 financial year, including more than 16,000 to Club Nook Limited, which had been registered by the couple just days before the Captain Tom Foundation was incorporated.
And there was another company called Matrix, a strategy firm run by Hannah and her husband, which received more than 27,000. And those were described as third party consultancy fees. The charity commission did conclude that the payments to the two companies were reasonable reimbursement for the expenses incurred by the companies in the formation of the charity. So basically they okayed those payments. They said that they were acceptable. Right.
after launching that initial inquiry into them. They've ended up paying companies that they're both in charge of for services like consultation. In addition to that, there seem to be separate questions about the chief executive salary. Absolutely. Hannah and her husband became trustees of the charity in February 2021. Hannah Ingrahammore, however, only stayed in post for six weeks before resigning as a trustee.
In July 2021, the charity commission stepped in to stop the foundation from employing her as chief executive on a salary of 100,000. They said the proposed salary was neither reasonable nor justifiable. And in a 75 minute interview with Piers Morgan on talk TV, Hannah stresses that she had no part in the negotiations over her salary.
I wasn't part of that discussion. Those discussions are between the trustees and the charity commission, not me. That was done by the foundation trustees. However, a month later, the charity commission okayed a deal where she repaid £85,000 a year as chief executive, but she could only be imposed for a maximum of nine months on a three month rolling contract.
And we should point out that she no longer has any position within the charity. Absolutely. In addition to a salary as a chief executive, she's also asking for appearance fees. Tell us about this.
She had a close association with the Virgin Media O2 Captain Tom Foundation Connector Awards, which is quite a mouthful. As the name suggests, they have a close association with Captain Tom and Hannah Ingrahamor appeared at the award ceremony.
But she received an appearance fee for that. She was paid £18,000. Later, in an interview with Piers Morgan, she admitted that only £2,000 had actually gone to the Captain Tom Foundation. So she'd taken £18,000 and only passed £2,000 on to the Foundation itself. That does feel disproportionate.
It does. I mean, she was questioned about that. And she suggested that she should not have appeared at the awards while she was chief executive. I was only ever there for three months at a time. So I didn't know if I would have employment to pass those three months. And I'm not in a position where I can not work. So for me,
When we were planning all those dates, they may well have fallen in a period of time when I wasn't the CEO. But that's how it landed. And I absolutely ensured that the charity got a donation. Once you knew you were CEO, when you turned up at the awards and you knew you were getting the money, wouldn't the better thing to have been to just give it all to the foundation? I think the better thing to have done would have been to push those awards to outside that period of time because I was only ever going to be there for nine months.
She shied away from saying that she shouldn't have appeared at all in taking the fee or even passed on more money to the captain on foundation. So she was quite equivocal on that point. In the meantime, whenever they've been asked about it, Hannah Ingraham or and her husband insist that they've never personally benefited financially from the work of the charity.
Indeed, they did a 75-minute interview with peers and were insistent that they haven't made money off the back of the foundation. To be clear, neither of you have ever made any money directly from the foundation for personal gain. Not a penny. There's nothing that's like that.
So James, the charity commission looks into Han Ingram, Moore's salary as CEO. They look into the money that's gone to these companies. They decide that this is all acceptable. They want to limit her time in the position of chief executive, but they don't question the payments that have already been made. And then there's another charity commission investigation.
The area that we have been concerned about is the links between the charity and a company owned by the Ingrammore family and we're concerned that that relationship hasn't been as clear as it needs to be in relation to the charity and that's why we feel we need to open the inquiry to investigate that further.
This is Club Nook. This is one of the businesses they've set up. It's one of the businesses that we know the charity ends up paying some money into. Just tell us a bit about this business and what we know about it. This business, shortly after it was set up, attempted to trademark various names associated with Captain Tom. And that appeared to allow suspicions in the charity commission. The commission said it was concerned that a failure to consider intellectual property and trademark issues
when the Captain Tom Foundation was established, provided Club Nook with an opportunity to trademark variations of the name Captain Tom without objection from the Foundation. So the Commission was clearly concerned that there was an opportunity for Club Nook to make money out of Captain Tom and the name, and that that hadn't been given appropriate consideration by the Foundation.
Do we know how much this business was making, this business that sort of trademarking products around Captain Tom? In its first year, it turned a profit of just over 800,000. Net, it was about 500,000 after costs. And the engramours were quizzed at length by Pies Morgan about where that money had come from.
I mean, Hannah, you said it to the time, club look has not profited from branded merchandise and memorabilia. Club look has not been paid by the Foundation for use of its trademarks. Club looks revenues being generated by other activities. I mean, that's just not true, is it? The club look has profited heavily from branded merchandise and memorabilia. That statement wasn't correct. Yes, it is correct, but it's not. Because the club look has profited to the tune of net 500,000 back from branded merchandise.
It's from products that hold his name. Right. But it's not. That's brandy product. Isn't it? I mean, you know, it's brandy product. They appeared to dramatically pull the plug on the interview at one stage when being asked about where that money had come from. Can we just stop? And that's not about protecting. Can we just stop for a second? Yeah. Can we just stop? Can we stop for a second? Sure.
And stop filming because this is really unfair. So what's up there? No, so let us explain off camera. I'd rather do it on camera. No, no, no, no. If it's on camera, we're not doing interview. Before finally sitting down with peers and discussing it, and they said that the money had come from three books that Captain Tom had written in his final days. Now, tell us about these books.
Captain Tom had written three books following his charity walk. One of them being tomorrow will be a good day, which was his autobiography. There was a deal with Penguin Random House, and Hannah was insistent that Tom had wanted the money from those books to go to Club Nook to sit with the family.
The deal was done. He had an agent and the agent, and he worked on that deal. They were Captain Thomas Books and his wishes, whether that money was that that money would sit in club nook. And in the end, he used a key. Yes. He said that specifically to you specifically. Do we know if that's what was intended?
She maintained during her interview, there were no mentions of the foundation in the books. Was there anything on any of the books that referred to the Captain Tom Foundation? Absolutely not. Was there anything in the contracts that referred to Captain Tom Foundation? Absolutely not. So there was never any agreement by you on behalf of your father with these book deals that any of that money would go to charity? Absolutely not.
However, the prologue to Captain Tom's memoir also included a sentence that certainly suggested some of the money would be going towards the foundation. He said, and I quote, with the offer to write this memoir, I've also been given the chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation now established in my name.
I mean, that sounds as if while writing the book he intended or certainly was saying he thought the money it raised would go towards the charity.
The marketing material surrounding Captain Tom's autobiography also suggested that a proportion of the funds would go to support his foundation. In a press release on the foundation's website, it said that both his autobiography and another book that he was releasing would support his newly formed charity, the Captain Tom Foundation. But without seeing the contracts, we cannot know for sure.
Coming up, how an unauthorized spa built in the family's back garden has turned up the heat. That's in just a moment.
How often can you say a gift is truly unique? When you gift a loved one an Ancestry DNA test, you're giving them the keys to unlock their own personal journey of discovery. And with our festive sale now on, you can save on a truly meaningful gift. Help them discover their heritage, learn about their ancestors, and make new family connections this Christmas. Visit ancestry.co.uk to give them a gift that is truly unique. Terms apply.
We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly. But it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients.
Mike Allward is a dairy farmer from Cheshire who supplies organic milk to McDonald's in the UK for its teas, coffees and porridge through Arla. We're involved in a network which has been set up by Arla to look at the possibilities for farming regeneratively. One of the things we're doing here is moving our cattle and giving them a fresh piece of grass every day to help regenerate the soil.
We're very lucky that we've had a long-term relationship with McDonald's. And I think often people don't realise how seriously McDonald's take their relationships with farmers. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website.
And James, it's already getting quite messy. We've got this charity that's been set up to raise money for good causes for question marks. There's a charity commission investigation into it. And then in July, things get even more complicated. There's a new twist in the tale. Tell us about that.
Yeah, it was the twist. No one thought they needed and no one thought would happen in this story. It emerged that the Ingraham Wars had been ordered to demolish a spa block which they built in the grounds of their home, following accusations that they built it in the name of the foundation. But it did not look like the building that had originally been planned for the site.
I think a lot of people will be wondering what does a spa block have to do with the charity? I think at that stage it was going to be an administrative building. For example, Hannah Ingraham Moore's talk before about how Captain Tom received 250,000 birthday cards. So they've got a lot of things, a lot of documents that they want to store and need space for, which is perfectly understandable.
It's about how can we present this thing? What do you want this building to be? To be a mother? Yeah, just purely that, some storage, multi-purpose, to be able to put some of his things in it, some of his memorabilia. However, at some point along the way, it suddenly ended up having a, what I can indescribe as a large jacuzzi in it, and that turned the building from an administrative building into a spa building.
That's quite the change. How do they explain it to Piers Morgan when he's going and having a look? With great difficulty I think is the answer. They squirmed a lot when they were asked by Piers about this. They did suggest that it could be used to rehabilitate the elderly.
Our whole purpose was that my father couldn't walk in that amazing resistance pool, which in the end is a five meter by two meter pool, but other people can. Part of the aging population can. We have a Pilatus teacher who's waiting for this space to be authorized so she can do Pilatus classes for our aging population.
But they did accept that they would be using this jacuzzi for themselves. I don't want to be cynical, but I don't think that was the main motivation for that book. I think the main motivation was you wanted a nice bad book as a family to use yourself. Of course. And we must stress that this was built using their own money. Anna, who's paid for this building?
We have. We have. All personal money. All personal money. So not a penny has come from any money that was raised in your father's name. Not one penny. Not one penny. That's category. There'll be no paper trail. There'll be no paper trail. But it was built in the charity's name. It was.
Our original application, the name was never intended to be the Captain Tom Foundation. It was supposed to be the Captain Tom building. It got lost in translation and we take responsibility for that completely. Because the original application does name check Captain Tom Foundation a lot. It does.
The Foundation had been very clear that at no time were they aware that the Ingram Wars had made these planning applications mentioning the Captain Tom Foundation. And indeed they say had they been aware, the independent trustees at the Foundation would not have authorized the plans. And the family, to be fair to them, did accept that was an error.
I think we absolutely didn't intend it to be the Captain Tom Foundation. And it shouldn't have been, and we should have checked it, and we should have made sure it didn't say that. So we completely accept responsibility for it. Although, interestingly, Piers Morgan gave him plenty of opportunities to say they would now scrap the jacuzzi and get rid of it. And they refused to say they would.
And if we had options, that would definitely be one of them. Well, that is always an option. You need to get rid of it. No, it's not. Why? Because when we go to appeal, it's keep it or tear it all down. Right. And even if you get allowed to keep it, I would say get rid of it. Well, if we are allowed to keep it, we will talk about what we're allowed to do. And you want to keep it? They are hanging onto it and less told to scrap it by the planning spectra who will make a decision in the coming weeks.
And James, what happens next? We know that the charity commission is coming back with a detailed report into all of this, but in the meantime, you know, is the charity still operating? Is it still raising money? It's not. And that is indeed one of the saddest things to come out of this saga. There's a statement on the foundation's website, which said it is not currently accepting donations. And there are huge questions over the future of the foundation going forward.
And do we know when it ends? Do we know when the charity commission is likely to publish it? We don't know. It could be weeks, it could be months. There really isn't a timescale at all.
And James, for Captain Tom, who, you know, really did capture the nation's emotions at a very difficult moment, you know, when lockdown happened, you know, he really became sort of this great symbol of hope. Is this his legacy tarnished forever now?
I think his legacy is certainly tarnished to a certain extent. Sunday Times columnist Hadley Freeman summed it up perfectly when she said the whole affair was bonkers Britain to a tee, every aspect of it. It obviously began during the pandemic when the UK was going through an unprecedented time. And I think it gave people back a sense of control. They just obviously lost the ability to even simply go out their homes and go to work and live their daily lives.
But with Captain Tom, they could fundraise. They could feel like they were doing a little bit to help by raising money for the NHS during the pandemic. But the subsequent rise and fall narrative of the Captain Tom story, unfortunately, will stand. We contacted the Captain Tom Foundation and Hannah Ingram more about the issues raised in this podcast, but they've not yet responded.
You've been listening to Stories of Our Times, a podcast brought to you thanks to the subscribers of The Times and the Sunday Times, with me, Mandine Rana and my guest, the social affairs editor at The Times, James Beale. You can read all the twists and turns of the Captain Tom Sargre at the times.co.uk with a subscription. The producer today was Sam Chantarasak, the executive producer was Fiona Leach, and sound design was by Tom Burchill.
If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review. It'll help others to find it. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
How often can you say a gift is truly unique? When you gift a loved one an Ancestry DNA test, you're giving them the keys to unlock their own personal journey of discovery. And with our festive sale now on, you can save on a truly meaningful gift. Help them discover their heritage, learn about their ancestors, and make new family connections this Christmas. Visit ancestry.co.uk to give them a gift that is truly unique. Terms apply.
We all want to enjoy food that tastes great and is sourced responsibly, but it's not always easy to know where your favourite foods come from. McDonald's works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source quality ingredients. Sophie Bambridge grows quality potatoes for McDonald's iconic fries in Norfolk.
I think McDonald's are one of the biggest supporters of British farming. They have a real commitment to British potatoes. The Sustainable Fries Fund is a collaborative investment by McCain and McDonald's to help us understand and try different growing techniques for potatoes so that we can understand what we can do to help reduce our impact on the environment but still produce a good quality potato. It helps enable us to try things without having the risk and cost of potentially it going
The support from McCain and McDonald's is really useful to us. Change a little, change a lot. Find out more about McDonald's plan for change on the McDonald's website.
