this is bbc news, the headlines. the british prime minister, rishi sunak, has sacked the chairman of his conservative party, nadhim zahawi. mr sunak said in a letter to mr zahawi that it was clear that there had been a serious breach of the ministerial code, in the last hour, scotland's prison service has announced an "urgent review" of all transgender cases in its prisons. it says it will pause the movement of all transgender inmates until the review is completed. a bus has crashed into a ravine in pakistan, killing at least forty of the forty—eight people aboard. in a separate incident, at least ten children died in a boat accident in tanda dam lake in the north—west of the country. tributes have been paid to the influential american singer and guitarist, tom verlaine, who's died at the age of 73.

he founded the legendary art—rock band, television, famous for their seminal debut album — marquee moon. you're watching bbc news... now its time for the media show. hello. with the conservative chairman nadhim zahawi's tax affairs dominating the headlines, we will be talking to two of the people behind the story. and later in the programme, netflix films have picked up a load of oscar nominations. closer to home, the streamer has just bought its first welsh language tv drama. llinos griffin—williams from sac is one of the people involved in the deal. congratulations, llinos. what is the show called and what it is about? it is called dal y mellt. it has been produced by vox pictures, and it has got mark lewisjones in it and newcomer gwion morris jones. it is a cheeky heist based

on the adaptation of a novel by iwan h roberts, who also wrote the script. so it is a crime drama, but with a bit of a twist. sounds great, and we will hear much more about it later. but first, if you were watching prime minister's questions on wednesday, there was more pressure on nadhim zahawi, the former chancellor and current chairman of the conservative party, over his tax affairs. last friday the guardian broke the story that mr zahawi has paid a penalty imposed by hmrc as part of an estimated £5 million tax bill, something the prime minister said on wednesday he didn't know at the time when he made nadhim zahawi tory chairman. this story has come out into the open thanks to the work ofjournalists and tax investigators, and two of them are with us today. anna isaac, the guardian city editor, broke the story last week about the penalty mr zahawi is believed to have paid, and dan neidle is a former city tax lawyer who now has his own consultancy, tax policy associates.

welcome to both of you. dan, you are not a journalist but you have been blogging and publishing stories about nadhim zahawi since last summer. take us back to why you started following the story. i retired to set up a micro think—tank, tax policy associates, and people were asking me to look at this politician, that politician, they thought they had avoided tax, and i did, and mostly it was rubbish. there was something about sunak on channel 4 saying he had avoided tax — rubbish. rees—mogg — rubbish — and i said that. and thenjust really to be mischievous, jim picard at the ft and i launched a freedom of information act request to see if any ministers had been the subject of hmrc inquiries. and to my surprise, shock, even, they came back and said yes, between one and five had, and we said, really, are you sure? they said, yes, we are sure. and then there was something of a panic inside whitehall, i believe, at this, and then we got a correction from hmrc

saying, sorry, that was a mistake, our bad, actually there are no ministers under inquiry. which made... you hardly have to be bernstein and woodward for your antennae to twing at that. then there was that amazing story in the independent claiming that mr zahawi had been under investigation at one point by hmrc, apparently they had found nothing, he denied it, but i am familiar with those investigations, normally the subject does not know they are being investigated. so what i then did is kind of what my dayjob was when i was a tax lawyer. people think tax lawyers are dreaming up tax avoidance schemes. not in the last 20 years, they're not. what they're usually doing is much less glamorous. you have got a client who is thinking of taking over a company. what are the tax skeletons in that company's closet? because if you buy it and it finds out yet they did bad tax stuff, that is going to cost you, the buyer, money. so entirely selfish capitalism incentives drive companies

acquiring other companies and the tax lawyers working for them to try and uncover tax problems, so for me to do that on zahawi's companies was not really any different from what i had been doing for many years as a tax lawyer. 0k, and this was last summer and you mentioned the independent. and i should bring in anna isaac, who is now at the guardian. but talk to me about when you got involved in this story, because you were at the independent at that point? that's right, in early july last year i worked with simon walters, who has been a long—standing lobby reporter who was working freelance for the independent at that stage on the story about hmrc investigation into zahawi and that was 9july last year, and that started to feed into a buzz around his financial affairs. i should add that lots of people have asked and done various reports over the years, going back even a decade,

to ask a few questions about where mr zahawi's wealth comes from. he has been a very successful person, by all accounts, has a lot of money, so people have naturally ta ken some public interest examinations of that money, but that was simon and i wrote about the hmrc investigation for the first time. so that was the first we heard about it. that piqued your interest, dan neidle, and you started looking up, looking at it. how much pickup at that time was there in the wider press about the story, dan? so, my initial findings, let's call it a tax anomaly, it looked to me like a naive attempt at tax avoidance. a very experienced former hmrc inspector said it looked like a man in the pub tax avoidance, here's a clever way to avoid tax, but it doesn't work, and that is what i thought. tax avoidance isn't illegal? tax avoidance is not necessarily illegal, no, that is correct. it looked to me like someone had done something thinking tax would be avoided but actually

i was really confident it would not be avoided. so when the valuable yougov shares ended up being sold, yielding perhaps as much as £27 million, maybe even more, i wondered if mr zahawi had paid tax on that or if he had assumed his old scheme worked, and didn't? so the outcome of what i wrote was really a question — did mr zahawi pay tax on this? this was covered again byjim pickard in the ft. ok, so, it is interesting that fast forward to january, it is a long time after last summer and it has taken this long for the sun, earlier this month, to break the story... this was a bit in the middle. i will get to that in a minute, but what i want to say is, it's a long time, because after the sun wrote this story that he paid millions in tax, then you followed it up, anna, with your story about how some of that potentially million pounds was a penalty. but it has been rumbling on sincejuly. anna, first of all, i'll ask you, why do you think it took so long to break through? presumably these are just very hard stories — tax stories are very hard to ge over the line? it is not like you've got

endless information and access to individual tax status? absolutely. it takes an awfully long time to get to the point where you can be confident enough to publish something in some cases, where you might have very little by way of additional information provided by the other party. you also have to make sure that you've got really sound public interest grounds for getting involved with private information, for instance, so you have to really do an assessment of, am i sure this isn't a fishing expedition? am i sure there is a justification for examining someone�*s private arrangements? and you have to go through all of those stages to make sure that you're being really sound in the way that you approach an investigation. there are also legal considerations, and while i'm not talking about this story specifically, for reporters in general, we are finding there is an increasing use of lawyers and the legal system to try and suppress public interestjournalism, and that has to be a huge consideration when we think

about how long some of these stories take to come out. we really have to weigh up a lot when it comes to putting a story like this together. it is a tricky process and very intricate. and i know dan neidle will talk a bit about the experience you had with lawyers in this. i should say the hmrc have made very clear they consider, in terms of nadhim zahawi's tax affairs, that it was a careless and not a deliberate error, which is what he has consistently maintained. but the same question to you, dan, from july to now, it is a difficult story to get over the line. what was going on in the meantime? so, i wrote that story and my question was, mrzahawi, did you pay tax on this? his response was to brief on background that the arrangements with this gibraltan company which had received the shares in yougov that i think would have been his, they were justified because his father, through this company, provided the start—up capital. and i looked at that in a lot of detail with forensic

accountants helping me and decided that what he said was not correct, and i said so. and then he moved to another, new explanation that his, not mentioning start—up capital, saying that his father had provided know—how in the start—up of yougov, and that was really valuable. now, twojournalists at the times, billy kenber and george greenwood, chased that down and couldn't find support from people who worked at yougov. they got an official denial out of yougov, and then that made me say publicly that i didn't believe the first explanation we had been given, the one about start—up capital from mr zahawi, and it was that which prompted him to get lawyers to write to me, ordering me to retract that claim. and were you keeping the story alive on social media? were you goading? what were you doing when it came to back and forward with lawyers? well, so, initially, iwas out playing with the kids, and i got a twitter message from someone i didn't know,

a partner at a law firm who i had heard were acting for zahawi and he said, "can we speak?" i am an experienced lawyer. i know how these things work. i said, "anything you want to say to me, please put "in writing, and i won't accept without prejudice "correspondence," meaning, private, confidential correspondence i can't repeat. later that day i got an e—mail from them which was headed with without prejudice, the very thing i'd asked them not to do, which ordered me to retract and said that i could not publish or even refer to this communication. if i did there would belserious consequences. i didn't mention this on social media at all. partly, some say don't interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake. partly, i thought the e—mail was so confused, i didn't really understand what their position was, and i wanted to draw them out a bit more. i'm just going to interrupt you for a second just to say, anna, mostjournalists presumably don't necessarily have the confidence to deal

with legal letters. they are quite scary. i suppose, if you're working in a company, there will be a lawyer to advise you, but even so, there are fears around it. maybe it helped that dan was a lawyer himself. he could read them, in a way? no question dan has made a really valuable contribution to illustrate some of the kinds of letters that members of the media might receive. i would pay huge tribute to the media lawyers i have both at the guardian and the independent who have to weigh things up sometimes a bit differently, but have cancelled it and allowed each stage of this reporting process to go ahead. the stories have been published. but i do think what dan is illustrating, and there is a broader point here, again not talking about this story in particular, about how the legal system in general might be used against public interest journalism. there are a lot of cases at the moment. for instance, there is one

involving the permission given by the treasury for the legal actions of someone linked to the wagner group against a journalist, eliot higgins. so what we are talking that is a broader context forjournalism in the uk and i think it's really important that we consider this as part of a bigger picture and that dan's contribution is part of this bigger picture which is very important. because these letters are off—putting. they are potentially used to scare people off. yes, and that line between using them as a signal, and i being fair, proportionate, am i doing myjob properly? and the line between trying to suppress journalism, that is what our media lawyers have to help us consider. and i should make clear that mr zahawi's lawyers have said that they sent just a polite, confidential letter through them, through the solicitors, to mr neidle, to collect a few inaccuracies. this is fairly common practice, legally. but you chose to make

the responses public, why was that? it is indeed common practice for libel lawyers to send letters which ask people to retract, then claim that they're confidential letters and can't be published. it is common practice, and it is a disgrace. and the solicitors regulation authority, i asked them, has now confirmed that solicitors may not do that. it is interesting, isn't it? do you see yourself now as a journalist, and if so, where do you think you stand in terms of being impartial? people could read your blog and get the sense that in a sense, you set nadhim zahawi in your sights and you were going to get him, that was what you were up to? i really wasn't. and if he had responded saying, for example, yes, i think there are... i think you are making some mistakes in what you say but i think you are identifying some issues that i need to look at more closely with my advisor, i will do that, and i will get back to you with the details

because it's confidential, but i will let you know and thank you, dan. if he had done something like that, then not only would i have walked away, but i would have walked and looked like an absolute idiot if i had pursued him aggressively. so, it was his denials that made me certain in my mind, and the way that he was behaving, certain, that he had something to hide, and of course he did because it turned out that at the same time that he was sending me those letters, he was engaged in discussions with hmrc to settle the tax liability that he was denying to be that he had. and anna isaac from the guardian, journalists revealing how a story is put together, showing the to—ing and fro—ing behind the scenes, is something of a trend these days and clearly, we have seen dan neidle, not a journalist but putting a lot of it out there on social media, on platforms and working with journalists as well. but 20 years ago, this was the thing thatjournalists kept quiet about to some extent and now, it feels like we reveal our workings much more? i think it is important because it can show a consideration of fairness, it can show, here are all

the factors i considered when i was working for you, the reader, the viewer, to arrive at these points. i think some of the constraints are always a little bit more sometimes, in some instances, where you have to, for instance, in general terms be very protective of your sourcing, so you have to be really considered about how you engage with some of, for instance, a legal letter butjust in general with how you show your workings — source protection has to be paramount. you also have to consider how you engaging when you publish correspondence, for instance. the independent made a decision — obviously i'm not there any more — to publish some of the e—mails that were received byjournalists while i was there between journalists and mr za hawi. that is a bit different from the legal correspondence that dan is referring to but that is something that listeners might find interesting to take a look at, but it has to be so carefully considered. i think showing your workings about showing the reader where they can trust in your processes... and is it quite unusual for a broadsheet to do that?

i think it has been known, for instance, where there has been a court case. there's been a lot of reporting of media court cases and that often allows material to go into the public domain, and court reporting is a really important part of what media has done for a very long time. i think the specific issue of media correspondence, it's a case—by—case and you have to consider all of the factors at play there when you can make that decision. and i suppose, dan has spent — presumably, dan, you have spent quite a long time being a source, many years being a source before you became more front and centre in these sorts of stories, is that right? and to you, that question... no — not a source, per se. right. for many years, i would act as a sounding board forjournalists relating to tax points, and i most certainly... because this stuff is complicated. this stuff is complicated and finding experts is hard. i was happy to help them — naturally never when i had a client involved or an interest involved.

and dan spent an awful lot of time on this, you presumably have, too, but you have got a dayjob to do as well, and those sorts of pressures in a newsroom about getting a daily story going and getting something over the line, it is harder to get these kind of stories over the line — journalists are under pressure to deliver stories much more regularly than a story about nadhim zahawi. but these are the ones we remember, of course? no, that line between the big investigations and the daily reporting that helps you think about what is worth investigating is really hard to draw. i mean, istarted my work looking at the cabinets, because this is not the only tax story i have written about a member of the cabinet — i started really closely examining the tax affairs and the finances of cabinet members early last year, so, it has been... maybe a bit less on social media but i certainly have been plugging away at it for a very long time and both the independent and the guardian have been very

generous with allowing me time to take a look at these things. well, if you get those kind of stories, they'll keep letting you do it, which is the way it goes, which is great. and dan, do you see yourself as an activist now, how do you see your role going forward? i am not an activist. most of what i do is writing about tax policy, problems in current tax policy, how it could be improved. most of what i have written is about that. i have got a couple of stories which have to be delayed because otherwise they bash into zahawi and could confuse anyone which are nothing to do with day—to—day politics — one of which involves tax avoidance in a well— known industry on a scale which makes it look like chicken feed. another involves let's call it administrative practice which has caused harm and suffering to hundreds of thousands of people. these are the kinds of things i really want to write about. i am a tax nerd. i don't have a desire to be some tax witch—finder general. both sound interesting and do please come back on the media

show if you get any of those over the line because they sound fascinating as well. we like to delve into the processes behind getting these stories out there, so thank you both for coming on the programme. anna isaac and dan neidle. that is absolutely brilliant. but now, have a listen to this... all speak welsh. that is the crime drama dal y mellt and last week netflix announced they had bought it — their first welsh language drama. the show was commissioned by the welsh language broadcaster foc. llinos griffin—williams, who you heard from at the top of the show and adrian baker is executive producer of dal y mellt and co—founder of vox productions, also based in cardiff. adrian, congratulations to you as well. we heard at the top it is a crime heist, we heard some of the people in,

but tell us a bit more about it and also about the practicalities of making a drama in welsh. well, i think it's like any other programme, frankly. you know, we have a crew and we go and shoot it. does all your crew have to speak welsh? no, no, no — i mean, the key technicians obviously do, like the directors and producer and obviously the actors — they are all very much native welsh speakers, but we interface with english crew as well, so, it doesn't have to be entirely in welsh, and in fact the name of the show, when it comes up on netflix, is going to be called rough cut, because it is going to be an easier title to follow. can you tell anything more about the story. it is a crime heist. diamonds are involved, i think. am i right? no, diamonds are involved with the welsh translation i believe is along the lines of "catch the lightning," which is to do with the diamonds.

and it's a story that takes a group of reprobates from south wales right up to north wales. it's got some fantastic countryside alongside all the capers, which takes us to soho, up to anglesey. so, i don't want to say too much because there are lots of spoilers that i could give, and i would rather not. fair enough. anglesey one of my favourite places in the uk, so i look forward to that. llinos, why do you think netflix chose it? because it's unique, i think. when you've got so much choice, and people are looking for something with a bit of a different usb, i think it is full of beautiful cinematography, a killer soundtrack, it's based all over glorious wales, it's also got that welsh sense of humour and cheekiness about it but it is a really fast—paced heist drama that will suck you in and keep you there for the whole box set that you can binge on. and for us, i think

we are hugely proud of it. our head of script has worked really closely with vox pictures and the whole talent there for such a long time to get this to air. we are thrilled that netflix have recognised how beautiful a piece of work it is and how unique it is and i think also it is because it's a really great series. how big a dealfor your channel is it that netflix have given you this accolade — and a load of cash, presumably? i think this is nothing new in terms of us selling 54c content globally — we've done that for years, and our channel strategy is to take wales and welsh talent to the world. we want people to hear it, see it, speak it, see the value in welsh language, but also recognise the talent in companies like vox and the producers, writers, actors here in wales. it's great that they are picking it up and i think to have netflix as a brand pick it up gives that the stamp of this is something worth a watch.

but it has been out on our channel back in october. boxer is available on click at the moment. and it is on bbc iplayer as well — sac click and bbc iplayer. for now. it is, and we want to make our content really accessible. whether you speak welsh or not, you can watch it with subtitles. if you are a new speaker, you can follow it. but also, it is for our welsh speaking audiences well. you've made this drama just in welsh but i have looked at your production company and you often make shows in english and welsh at the same time, which i think is called back—to—back production. how does that work? when i started, i couldn't work out how to do it at all but actually, it is relatively simple. the actors do have to be bilingual. we made a show called keeping faith, which we shot back—to—back — interestingly, actually the lead in that was not a welsh speaker at the time, she learned welsh,

brilliantly, and managed to do it in two languages. and that was picked up by bbc one and did really well. do you shoot it — do the same scene twice, if you see what i mean? pretty much. we maybe either start the scene in welsh or english, we will then do the exact replica shot in the other language, so we might go from english to welsh and then we will stay with the welsh for the next shot, and then we go to english for the next shot and then we come back to the third sequence and we start it all over again. so, we literally leapfrog languages. llinos, have you done a lot of this back—to—back production in your previous jobs? yes, we have done back—to—backs which we have to produced. before i was at in 54c, with the states as well as with european broadcasters and networks like bbc, channel 5 and channel 4, you know, keeping faith was one that we have done here at 54c before as a back—to—back production, hinterland was another one with the bbc.

so, we have got a track record of doing back—to—backs. light in the hall, that' currently on channel 4, has already gone out on 54c earlier on in the spring. so, we find — we want to be really collaborative, not competitive, network. we want to be able to back talent across the uk and across the world and we also want to be making sure that we are adding value to the viewers back at home because we can add that cash injection with back—to—back or we can take our content to a broader audience through acquisitions. and llinos, ithink you brought the welsh version of gogglebox to wales — the first time you had brought a british format, why? and how has it gone down? i think 54c is transforming. it wants to be a channel for tomorrow, that's relevant, populist, which and that our audience here, and that brings people to the welsh language, as a psb.

gogglebox for us was a way of really reflecting a modern wales and the audience in — all over wales and the way that welsh is spoken all over wales. we got a really good relationship with channel 4, so they did have exclusivity on it in the uk and were more than happy to open it up to us as partners. adrian, very briefly, do you feel there is this growing market for foreign—language generally on the streaming platforms and presumably, you spotted that this is changing the industry — very briefly, i'm afraid? the last decade we've seen the scandi noir revolution, we've seen the french revolution. these are shows which are bought off—the—shelf, so they can actually choose the very best. so what they are doing is choosing the very best stories, and they happen to have subtitles. and for technological reasons, it is really easy to access. i'm afraid that's it for today. thank to all my guests —

adrian bate, co—founder of vox productions, llinos griffin—williams, from s4c, anna isaac, the guardian city editor and dan neidle. the media show will be back next week. thanks for watching. goodbye. fairly quiet on the weather front for most of us this sunday, but in scotland it has been very windy, outbreaks of rain too. and through the course of this evening, that rain should reach the north—west of england too. northern ireland will have some rain for a time, and then eventually, when the weather front reaches the south, i think it'll fizzle away. by the end of the night, it's generally clear across much of england and wales, but in scotland i think the showers will continue and it will remain blustery after what has already been a very windy day in scotland. temperatures between around 3 and 7 degrees celsius first thing on monday.

here's monday's weather forecast — blustery to start in the north—east of scotland. the winds will ease and then eventually, actually, a pretty decent day with lighter winds will develop with temperatures up to around 10 degrees in many areas. the north—west, however, will tend to cloud over later in the day in advance of the next weather front. let's have a look at tuesday and wednesday — typically, temperatures into double figures across england and wales, not far off that in scotland, but very windy in scotland tuesday night.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm frankie mccamley. our top stories: the british prime minister, rishi sunak, has sacked the chairman of his conservative party, nadhim zahawi, after an independent adviser investigated his tax affairs. israel's security cabinet agrees new measures in response to the deadly attack on a synagogue in eastjerusalem. more than 50 people, including children, have died in two separate transport accidents in pakistan. scotland's prison service announces an "urgent review" of all transgender cases in its prisons.