Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,

BBC Newsnight Presenter Emily Maitlis has said she has received text messages from Dominic Cummings.

How much correspondence has Emily Maitlis sent and received from Ministers, Special Advisers, back bench and front bench MPs, members of the Lords, lobbyists, EU officials, MEPs, and foreign lobbyists and politicians in the years since she started at Newsnight in 2006?

By that I mean meetings, gifts, telephone calls, text messages, Signal, WhatsApp, Email, post, facebook, twitter, instagram, and on other platforms.

Must BBC presenters, who are officially all impartial, declare such correspondence on a register so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety?

What is the name of this register?

Who is responsible for auditing the register?

Is there an anti-corruption unit at the BBC?

Yours faithfully,

Ranjan Kumaran

Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of British Broadcasting Corporation's handling of my FOI request 'Emily Maitlis' register of correspondence and potential conflicts of interest'.

This reply is unsatisfactory. Corruption and conflicts of interest at the BBC are no laughing matter.

Disclosing whether there is a register of interests and an anti corruption unit at the BBC does not infringe European Convention on Human Rights.

Nor is it in the public interest for the BBC to be in the habit of covering up potential corruption.

Government officials should not be informally messaging BBC staff without full declarations.

If not the BBC presenters become too close to the Government and we become a banana republic.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

Yours faithfully,

Ranjan Kumaran