Russia

Spying claims against top British diplomat threaten Anglo-Russian détente


As William Hague and Philip Hammond prepare to meet their Russian counterparts in London this week, Jason Lewis reveals how a very suspicious spying slur is threatening to derail the reconciliation.


Denis Keefe, right, in the Caucasus, at Black Cliff Lake



By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor
9:00PM GMT 09 Mar 2013

To the outside world he is the epitome of diplomatic decorum: polite, softly spoken, with razor-sharp intellect. He has friends all over eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where he has a record of distinguished service on behalf of Britain, and is known for his keen ear for choral music and love of sailing.
Having joined the Foreign Office 30 years ago, straight out of Cambridge, he has earned a reputation for his brilliant mind and as an unfailingly safe pair of hands.
And yet to the astonishment of those who know him, Denis Keefe, the respected deputy ambassador to Russia, has for the past few months been trailed by a bizarre cloud of rumours and intrigue straight out of a Jason Bourne film.
Wherever Mr Keefe goes outside Moscow, he runs the risk of being accosted by Russian journalists and accused of being a spy.
Regional news reports froth with insinuations that he is something far more subversive than a diplomat, and has been sent by Britain to ferret out information and undermine the government of President Vladimir Putin.
British officials have tried to play down official anger at the hounding of Mr Keefe, which The Sunday Telegraph is reporting for the first time in Britain.
But the accusations, described by diplomatic sources as “an unprecedented attack on a very senior diplomat”, threaten to cast a shadow over a meeting this week in London designed to “reset” the thorny relationship between Britain and Russia.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, will meet their Russian counterparts for a “strategic dialogue” intended to look beyond a series of angry rows that have hampered cooperation between the two countries.
They include the recent decision to grant asylum in Britain to Andrei Borodin, a billionaire former Russian banker accused by Moscow of fraud, Russia’s attempts to hinder investigations into the poisoning in London of the former spy Alexander Litvinenko, and the beginning this week of the posthumous “show trial” of the late Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who worked for a London-based hedge fund, uncovered what is thought to be the largest tax fraud ever committed in Russia, but on reporting it was himself imprisoned, and later died in custody, aged 37.
The allegations against Mr Keefe are being seen in some circles as a deliberate attempt to discredit British officials in Moscow and to undermine efforts to improve relations with Russia.
Last month, the career diplomat, who speaks six languages including fluent Russian, was confronted by a Russian journalist, who demanded: “They say you are a spy for MI6 – tell us, does James Bond exist?”
Evidently irritated, Mr Keefe, 54, replied: “I don’t think this is a serious matter or that it has anything to do with me.”
Another reporter pressed him on his alleged MI6 status: “Can you give a straightforward answer to this question? Do you confirm or deny it?” He was quoted as replying: “Please. This is not a serious question. Please …”
Mr Keefe, a father of six who lists his interests as singing, sailing, walking and learning languages, was also questioned about his links to Russian opposition figures.
One of his first diplomatic postings, on joining the Foreign Office in 1982, was to Prague. Before the 1989 Velvet Revolution, he made friends with opponents of the one-party state, including Vaclav Havel. He later returned to help the newly democratic Czech Republic prepare to join Nato and the European Union.
He was also ambassador to Georgia during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and several reports used that against him – accusing him of becoming involved in the dispute over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. One report said he “actively advocated Georgia’s accession to Nato and urged speedy modernisation of its army, presenting Russia as a direct threat to the former Soviet republic”.
Neither episode endeared him to hardliners in the Putin regime and the incidents appear calculated to undermine him. A Siberian television channel, NTN-4, devoted a two-and-a-half minute slot to alleging that a former spy had listed Mr Keefe “as an officer of the secret intelligence service”. It stated that “in MI6, like in our intelligence services, there is no such thing as a former officer”.
The presenter questioned whether it was wise to invite Mr Keefe — “an intelligence service officer of a foreign country” — to Akademgorodok, a university town which is the hub of Russia’s cutting edge science and nuclear research.
In December, Mr Keefe faced a similar attack on a visit to the Ural Mountains to award diplomas to Open University graduates. One report bluntly stated: “Denis Keefe can be described as an undercover spy with his diplomatic position serving as a smoke screen.”
A news website warned students, officials and teachers to be wary in case Mr Keefe tried to “recruit” them. “A person well-versed in recruiting agents like Denis Keefe, bearing in mind his serious diplomatic experience, could easily catch in his net the immature soul of a graduate or a participant in Britain’s Open University programme,” it said.
“And you don’t need a codebreaker to work out what that could lead to.”
Diplomatic sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that the continuing allegations, which appeared to stem from a discredited list of MI6 agents posted online in 2005, were “ridiculous”.
They come after painstaking efforts to rebuild Anglo-Russian relations, following the Litvinenko poisoning in London in 2006.
An inquest into his death will open on May 1, but his murder led to a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions. The then British ambassador, Anthony Brenton, was subjected to a four-month campaign of harassment, with members of a pro-Kremlin youth group interrupting his speeches, stalking him at weekends and banging fists on his diplomatic Jaguar.
In an embarrassing revelation, British agents were caught red-handed using a transmitter hidden inside a fake rock, planted on a Moscow street, so spies could pass them secrets.
At the same time, Russian police raided offices of the British Council, claiming that the body – which promotes British culture abroad – had violated Russian laws, including tax regulation.
“It is a cultural, not a political institution and we strongly reject any attempt to link it to Russia’s failure to cooperate with our efforts to bring the murderer of Alexander Litvinenko to justice,” said a Foreign Office spokesman at the time.
Leading British companies, including BP, faced problems operating in Russia, which had a negative effect on trade for both countries. More than 600 UK companies are active in Russia and Russian firms account for about a quarter of foreign share flotations on the London Stock Exchange.
Two years ago, David Cameron signed a series of trade deals and a symbolic memorandum on cooperation, and this week’s meeting in London was seen as an important “incremental step” towards restoring relations with the Russians.
But the timing of the attacks on Mr Keefe, coupled with continuing pressure to extradite the main suspects in the murder of Mr Litvinenko, a British citizen, provide an uncomfortable backdrop. On Saturday night Whitehall sources insisted that difficult issues, including the murder, would “not be left outside the room” at this week’s meeting.
But MI6 was again accused last week of being at the centre of another anti-Russian conspiracy – this time in connection with Monday’s opening of the trial of Magnitsky.
He is charged with defrauding the Russian state, along with the British-based millionaire businessman Bill Browder, the head of Hermitage Capital Management, which employed Magnitsky. Mr Browder has declined to go to Moscow for the trial.
A widely viewed television documentary in Russia last week accused the two men of being part of an MI6 conspiracy to undermine the Russian government.
An investment fund auditor, Magnitsky said he had uncovered a £150 million tax fraud involving Russian government officials, but was then arrested himself on accusations of fraud.
He died in prison in 2009, having been denied visits from his family, forced into increasingly squalid cells, and ultimately contracting pancreatitis. Despite repeated requests, he was refused medical assistance and died, having been put in a straitjacket and showing signs of beatings. The case has become a rallying call for critics of Mr Putin’s regime, who accuse the state of a campaign of intimidation against political opponents.


German Gorbuntsov was gunned down, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, Andrei Borodin was granted asylum

 The meeting equally comes against the background of a “lack of will” by the Russian authorities to help solve the attempted murder of the Russian banker German Gorbuntsov, who was shot six times outside his flat near Canary Wharf in March last year.
Mr Gorbuntsov claimed that the attempt on his life was linked to people close to Mr Putin, and his decision to help the police investigate the attempted murder of his business partner in Moscow in 2009.
Initially, Russian police offered to cooperate, but Scotland Yard later said it was having trouble getting permission to send investigators to Moscow.
A senior Brtitish source said: “The Russians do not understand that our officials and judiciary take independent decisions, that our media asks tough questions and that the British Government insists that British citizens’ rights and lives should be protected.
“It is a major cultural difference. It continues to make our relationship with Russia tricky.”

Silent Calls

Named: British Gas and other major firms making billions of unwanted calls every year


The companies responsible for inundating British homes with nuisance calls can be named.


British Gas alone is making marketing calls to about 4.1million homes each year Photo: PA



By Jason Lewis, Investigations editor
8:00AM GMT 03 Mar 2013

A string of firms, including major household names, are making millions of unsolicited calls to landlines each year in the hope of gaining business.
Some of the calls are silent, causing irritation, fear and confusion, particularly for the elderly and vulnerable.
Until now the scale of the problem, and the companies behind it, have been unclear. However a Sunday Telegraph investigation can disclose:
* British homes are receiving up to 3.2billion nuisance calls every year;
* Companies making the calls include British Gas; TalkTalk, a broadband provider; Homeserve, a plumbing and heating firm; and a series of companies selling everything from double glazing to financial services;
* British Gas alone is making marketing calls to about 4.1million homes each year;
* Ofcom, the communications regulator, allows silent calls as long as they exceed no more than three in every hundred calls made, opening the way for large companies to hang up on people hundreds of thousands times without breaking the law.
Marketing calls are hugely profitable for those involved in making them and their use has increased dramatically because of computer equipment which allows hundreds of numbers to be dialled at once.
These computerised diallers ring a householder’s number and are then designed to connect a member of staff in the call centre when the equipment registers that it has been answered by a person.
However, if no operator is available no one answers, causing silence at the other end of the line. Some play a message apologising for the call, others simply hang up.
MPs are increasingly concerned about the problem.
Alun Cairns, a Conservative backbencher, said: “Certain groups of people, particularly the elderly who may be at home all day, will not answer their telephone unless they recognise the number because they are so concerned about nuisance calls. Some people tell me that they are getting five or six of these sorts of calls every day.
“And when these calls are silent that causes real concern for the elderly whose first thought may be that it is someone they know who is in trouble and can’t speak or that it is someone out to frighten and intimidate them. This simply cannot be allowed to continue.”
The Sunday Telegraph can provide the most detailed analysis yet of the leading firms behind these calls.
Calls received by 20,000 households with a special answering unit attached to their telephones called trueCall, which allows people to block unwanted incoming numbers, provide a snapshot of which companies are making the most unsolicited calls.
In the past 12 months 5,000 trueCall machines were connected to the internet to send an electronic record of all calls they received to a central database, including the telephone number of the firm behind the calls and how many times it dialled individual customers.
The trueCall users were also invited to comment on who was calling them, providing further evidence of which company was involved and, over 12 months, built a “top ten” list of nuisance callers.
Our analysis highlights how British Gas, the energy company, made almost 7,000 calls to 900 of the homes using a trueCall device – more than seven calls a year to each of them. If that pattern is repeated to all UK homes, it represents 28million unsolicited calls each year.
A British Gas spokesman said: “This is a highly regulated area and we take our obligations extremely seriously. When we do call customers it is always with their permission or when we have undertaken all relevant checks to confirm consent.
“We uphold the highest standards of customer service and when calling it is to offer people information on products and services that may save them money or offer peace-of-mind, such as boiler care.”
British Gas registered the highest calls rate from a single 0800 number. But evidence suggests that other well-known firms are calling British homes as much, if not more than, the energy firm. Homeserve, TalkTalk and Npower used a series of numbers, possibly related to different call centres.
Our surveyed homes received 892 calls from Npower, 1,038 from Homeserve and 10,396 calls from TalkTalk. Although it was not possible to analyse these calls in the same way as those coming from a single number to see how many individual homes were called by the companies, it would suggest that they are calling millions every year as part of marketing campaigns.
However, most of the firms that appear to be making the greatest number of calls to consumers in our survey are not household names.
The firms included Curved Air, a telemarketing firm in Blackburn and Nationwide Energy Services, a Swansea-based firm offering ways to save on household bills. Between them, our survey suggested they called about six million homes last year.
Other companies identified included Ismart, a firm offering to pursue claims for mis-sold payment protection insurance; and DLG Surveys, which carries out consumer lifestyle surveys.
All of the firms that responded to our questions insisted that they did not break Ofcom rules and that consumers benefited from their calls.
The regulator last year imposed fines of £750,000 on Homeserve and £60,000 on Npower, for making “an excessive number of silent and abandoned calls”.
Ofcom’s investigation found that Homeserve exceeded the “abandoned call rate” on 42 occasions during the period between February 1 and March 21, 2011, resulting in an estimated 14,756 calls.
Ofcom rules forbid companies from making repeat calls within 24 hours, but Homeserve was found to have made 36,218 of these calls.
However our investigation raises significant questions over the role of Ofcom. It allows operators to “drop” 3per cent of all calls made, which can run into hundreds if not thousands of silent or incomplete calls every day.
Ofcom levied fines on the companies whose marketing campaigns involved silent calls, but refused to disclose the names of the companies which made the calls, because in both cases they had been subcontracted by household names. It means firms that hire the outsourced call centres would not know they have infringed the rules before.
Ofcom said that because it was up to the company on whose behalf the calls were made to stay within the rules it would not name them, adding that it would be “prejudicial” to the call centre firms.
A spokesman said: “It is a company’s responsibility to ensure that if a third party makes calls on its behalf, it complies with Ofcom’s rules on silent and abandoned calls. We may of course, in future, decide to investigate outsourced call centres and, if we do so, this information would be published subject to the legal restrictions on disclosure.”
TalkTalk, one of the firms under investigation by Ofcom for making excessive silent calls to consumers, has named the call centre operator that it used in the marketing campaign which is under scrutiny.
Ofcom said that it has “reasonable” proof that TalkTalk persistently broke the rules between February and March 2011 at two call centres, one in the UK and one in South Africa.
TalkTalk said that the calls were made by workers at Teleperformance in Cape Town, South Africa, after it ended a contract with the French-owned call centre operator.
Alistair Niederer, chief executive of Teleperformance UK, said: “This was a very regrettable, extremely rare incident which was the result of human error by 14 employees in South Africa, a tiny fraction of our global workforce of 135,000.”
Last night MPs called for Ofcom to change its approach. Mr Cairns said: “It is about time that the regulators remembered they are there to protect consumers rather than the commercial interests of the firms involved.”
He said that he hoped to persuade the Government to tackle the issue of nuisance calls in legislation.
Mr Cairns said that current regulations were too weak, with responsibilities divided between Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Mike Crockart, a Liberal Democrat MP who is setting up a House of Commons all-party committee on nuisance calls, said: “For these people the phone might be the only real contact they have with the outside world. If, every time they answer a call, they find themselves asked to answer a survey or persuaded to sign up for a service they don’t need, it makes them reluctant to answer – cutting them off from the outside world.”
Steve Smith, director of trueCall, who carried out the research, said “Older people are particularly vulnerable; they may be confused by telemarketing calls, agree to order products they don’t need, or may be taken advantage of by persistent and unscrupulous callers.”
David Hickson, of the pressure group Fair Telecoms Campaign, said: “The regulatory approach taken by Ofcom is not working. Taking years over imposing sizeable penalties on a handful of big name offenders is ineffective.
“Ofcom should take action whenever it has reasonable grounds for believing that someone is habitually engaged in activity likely to cause annoyance.”
Ofcom said that it had commissioned further research into the problem.



Top 10 numbers most blocked by trueCall users
Company. Extrapolated figure for UK calls

1. British Gas 4.1m

2. Curved Air 3.7m

3. I-smart 2.2m

4. Unknown telemarketing firm using number registered in Leeds 2 m

5. National Moneysavers 1.7m

6. Still active number previously attributed to defunct marketing firm 1st Call Connect 1.63m

7. Nationwide Energy Services 1.6m

8. DLG Surveys, known as 'Consumer lifestyles’ 1.1m

9. Loft Insulation 0.9m

10. Moorcroft debt recovery 0.3m



* Sunday Telegraph analysis based on calls made to 5,407 trueCall homes between February 15th 2012 and February 14th 2013.

Silent calls

Silent calls: how the marketing firms deliver potential customers



Marketing calls are hugely profitable for those involved in making them Photo: Alamy


By Jason Lewis, Investigations editor
8:00AM GMT 03 Mar 2013


Curved Air Marketing Solutions Limited, is a market research company based in Blackburn. It claims it get 20,000 people a week to complete one of its telephone marketing surveys.
Around 800 trueCall users were called 1,176 times by the firm during the last year. If the pattern were repeated across Britain this would represent 3.7 million calls to home phones a year from the firm. The company began trading two years ago and is yet to post a profit.
It is run by William Taylor, a Northwich-based businessman who is also the chairman of a finance company, a Blackburn roofing firm and was previously a director of a series of kitchen design businesses.
According to Curved Air’s website it creates a “database of potential customers that continually grows leads for you, our client” through the people it calls completing 20,000 surveys a week. The company did not respond to requests for comment.



National Energy Services Limited, based in Swansea, telephoned 339 members of trueCall panel 2,135 times in the last 12 months. This would represent 1.6 million calls to British homes during the year.
According to its website, the firm is the “UK’s largest provider of energy efficiency surveys” and, it says, is “dedicated to helping home-owners and businesses claim the government grants available to make energy efficient upgrades to their properties”.
The firm had a turnover of £16 million last year and is part of the Save Britain Money group run by Neville Wilshire, who runs a series of other firms including Fuelswitch.co.uk and Debts Reduced Limited.
The company has gone from six to 600 employees in four years, expanded to have a call centre in Cardiff which was opened by Craig Bellamy, the footballer, and is to feature in a fly-on-the-wall documentary on BBC3 later this year.
Mr Wilshire says that his firm offers energy efficiency surveys, reclaiming payment protection insurance, fuel efficiency advice and debt management.
A spokesman for the firm said: “To help people access the funding available we call potential customers in their homes from our UK contact centre. At NES we have strict processes and procedures. Our technology is Ofcom compliant. Even with all the technology that is available and our very successful quality control methods; it is inevitable that a small percentage of people contacted will not be fully satisfied with the call.”

Ismart Consumer Solutions calls were intercepted 1,284 times by 483 trueCall machines in our survey, representing 2.2 million calls a year across the country.
It says it is “a leading payment protection insurance (PPI) claims company, having helped thousands of customers reclaim mis-sold PPI cover”.
It claims that “customers find us through carefully selected partnerships” or “ purely through word of mouth” but in fact makes large numbers of “cold” calls to canvas for business.
Founded by David Haycock, 33, Ryan Horne, 32, and Dylan Pritchett, 33, its most recent accounts show it had a turnover of £6.5million, and paid the three directors £515,000 in salaries and shares.
Last year it was accused of demanding huge fees for its help with one customer who was reportedly awarded £2,365 compensation ending up getting nothing and receiving a £890 bill for commission from the firm.
Paul Fakley, its marketing director, said: “We take great pride in the fact that many of the calls we make ultimately result in significant financial benefits to consumers who make claims through us. Without our marketing activity many consumers would likely miss out on the opportunity to get back what is rightfully theirs. We abide by all Ofcom regulations that apply to us.”

Horse Meat

British food safety officials were warned of horse meat fraud a year ago

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor

British officials ignored three official warnings that fraudulently labelled horse meat was in circulation in Europe and may have been passed off as beef.


The Europe wide confidential alerts were put out by the Italian and Danish food safety authorities as long ago as February last year - 11 months before horse meat was found in beef products on sale in British supermarkets.

The alerts now appears to be the first official evidence of fraud involving cheap horse meat being passed off as more expensive beef. But there is no evidence the warning was ever acted on by British food safety officials who dismissed the reports because the incidents did not involve the UK.

At the same time UK officials failed to notify their EU partners for up to nine months that horse meat destined for the tables of Europe had been exported from Britain containing “bute”, the veterinary drug which is banned from entering the food chain because it is a potential threat to human health.

The Sunday Telegraph can also disclose:

* How official ignored warnings from the Government’s own independent scientists that the “life threatening” drug “bute” was finding its way into meat exports.

* That senior officials from the food safety regulator lobbied for an end to daily inspections at meat cutting plants in favour of giving producers advanced warning of its visits.

* How senior officials from the Government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) accepted hospitality from some of the food companies at the centre of the horse meat scandal.

The new details underline how the FSA and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) failed to act before the full scale of the horse meat scandal became apparent.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that the first warnings on horse meat fraud were sent to senior UK officials on February 1, February 15 and March 7 last year.

They warned of a “suspicion of fraud in relation to horse carcasses and horse meat” from Hungary and Denmark, some of which was processed in Italy.

Categorised in the EU database as “adulteration/fraud”, much of the meat is believed to have been seized but some is reported to have been distributed probably to Belgium, Denmark and France for human consumption.

The confidential alerts, seen by this newspaper, were emailed to a special mail box at the Food Standards Agency, to UK health officials, environmental health officers, customs officers at Britain’s ports and two senior Foreign Office representatives at the European Parliament.

Two of the horse meat fraud alerts, known as “information for follow up”, were a formal Europe-wide “notification of risk” about “a product that is or may be placed on the market”.

The third alert, known as “information for attention”, was designed to warn all European countries about a fraud involving horse meat after the illegally labelled goods were seized by officials in Italy.

The notifications, backed by European legislation, were sent via Europe’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) set up to alert EU countries to imminent threats to public health. The network is run by the European Commission and managed in the UK by the FSA.

Last night it was unclear what, if any action, was taken by the FSA or any other British food safety officials in response to the specific warning before routine tests by Irish authorities last month discovered horse meat in beefburgers sold in supermarket chains including Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer.

An FSA spokeswoman said it was aware of the earlier European warnings on horse meat fraud but that it had not been connected to the UK. She said: “The FSA is aware of these alerts through the RASFF system.

“The country entering the alert is required to give full details of where the product has been distributed. None of this meat entered the UK.”

At the same time, it can be disclosed, British officials have confirmed that they failed to notify their counterparts in France and Holland that horse meat exported from the UK contained phenylbutazone, known as bute, which is a risk to human health.

On one occasion it took Britain nine months to alert officials in Holland that chilled horse meat exported for food from the UK for Dutch consumers contained the banned substance.

FSA officials took a sample of horse meat in May 2012 but they only alerted the Dutch to the “unauthorised substance” in the meat early this month. The chilled meat is sold as “fresh” and is not stored for more than a few days, meaning the contaminated meat would almost certainly have been eaten.

The alerts are supposed to be urgent warnings. According to the European Commission RASFF “Alert notifications are sent when a food or feed presenting a serious health risk is on the market and when rapid action is required.”

It says it is up SFA and other British officials to identify the problem and take the relevant actions. It says: “The goal of the notification is to give all RASFF members the information to confirm whether the product in question is on their market, so that they can also take the necessary measures.”

In four other cases the FSA took between two and four months to alert French officials that samples of British chilled horse meat they had tested before it was exported for French consumption was also contaminated with the veterinary drug. Again it is unlikely, given the shelf life of chilled meat, that the contaminated product had not already been consumed.

Last night the FSA spokeswoman confirmed that five of the horses containing bute had ended up in the food chain. She said: “We are working with the French and Dutch authorities to identify where this meat was consumed.”

She said that in the passed tests for but had taken three weeks to complete and were done at the same time that the meat was exported. She added that since the end of January all British horse meat was being tested and cleared for human consumption before it was allowed to leave the UK.

A senior official from the Direction General de L’Alimentation, part of the French Ministry of Agriculture, told the Sunday Telegraph: “What you have to ask is whether this meat in which the phenylbutazone was allegedly found was then exported to France.

“Under normal circumstances, it would not have left the abattoir after being found to contain the phenylbutazone. If it was exported then this is not a health issue, it is fraud.

“In short. It should have been destroyed, if it wasn’t this is fraud. If meat arrives for human consumption from the UK here in France, we assume it is fit for human consumption. We don’t test it all over again.”

He added: “I don’t believe we should be pointing the finger at the food health authorities in France or in the UK. From experience when they know something they do something about it straight away and any doubt means precaution. It’s when they don’t know that is the problem.”

Britain exports between 8,000 and 9,000 horses for consumption in Europe every year. But until this month, when officials introduced new rules that meant all horse meat had to be tested for bute before it was exported, the FSA only tested a small per cent of the carcasses every year.

According to a report by Defra’s Veterinary Residues Committee last July only 68 horses were tested for bute before they were exported in the whole of 2011.The independent scientific advisory committee said it had “repeatedly expressed concern over residues of ‘bute’ entering the food chain.”

It warned bute had “potential for serious adverse effects in consumers” including the “rare but very serious, life threatening, condition” blood discrasia which is similar to leukaemia or haemophilia.

But its report warned that Defra’s “follow up investigations in recent years have found that some vets are still prescribing phenybutazone (bute) without...ensuring that the horse is subsequently signed out of the food chain.

“Phenylbutazone residues have also been found in horse that have changed owners prior to going to slaughter (which have not) been signed out of the food chain.

“Other residues have occurred because feeding containing “bute” intended for one horse has allegedly been eaten by another horse.”

The report revealed that in cases where bute was found in a horse which had not been declared unfit for consumption the owner and the vet have been “advised about food chain requirements”.

The Crown Prosecution Service said they believe there have been no prosecutions regarding fraudulent trading of horse, or any other meat. However it added that there are no central records of these sort of offences.

Katrice Lee

I just want to know what happened to my Katrice

When Sharon Lee’s daughter vanished from an army base, she expected help and sympathy – not to feel that she was at fault. Thirty years on, the Military Police has finally apologised and is to reopen the case

Sharon Lee: 'I remember that morning. It was the last time I ever held her' 

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor, Sunday Telegraph

7:00AM GMT 20 Jan 2013

Every parent knows the feeling. The moment when you turn to look for your child and they are not there. The fear and panic, followed by an intense wave of relief when you find them again.

But for one mother, Sharon Lee, that feeling of relief has never come.

It is now more than 30 years since her two-year-old daughter Katrice vanished without trace during a shopping trip on a military base in Germany. All Sharon has left today are a few yellowing photographs of a happy little girl playing on a swing and smiling alongside her older sister.

As well as dealing with the guilt and heartbreak over the loss of her child, Mrs Lee has also faced a battle with the British Army which, she believes, was intent on blaming her for the little girl’s disappearance while denying that they could have done more to find her.

The Ministry of Defence has now reopened the case, finally acknowledging that its original investigation was “flawed”. It has also apologised for its appalling treatment of Mrs Lee and her family, and promised an independent review by a civilian police force.
Katrice disappeared from a military shopping centre in Paderborn, Germany, on November 28 1981 – her second birthday. Mother and daughter had gone to the NAAFI store to buy items for a party while her father, Richard Lee, a sergeant in the King’s Royal Hussars, waited in the car outside.

“I remember that morning. It was the last time I ever held my daughter,” says Mrs Lee. “Katrice was excited. It was her second birthday. She didn’t really quite understand what that meant, but she’d had her presents and she knew something special was going on.
“My husband drove us. We couldn’t find a parking space, so he waited in the car while my sister Wendy, Katrice and I went inside. It was packed with people as it was the last Army pay day before Christmas. Katrice didn’t want to sit in the trolley – she demanded to be carried, and I held her while we did the shopping.”
Then she disappeared. “We had reached the checkout,” recalls Mrs Lee. “We had started putting our shopping on to the conveyor belt. As I was getting the items out I realised I had forgotten to get crisps for the party. I put Katrice down and said to my sister, 'Just watch her while I nip back and get them.’ ”
“The shop was jam-packed full. Wendy was putting stuff out on the conveyor belt. I didn’t want to push back through the crowds carrying Katrice, so I just asked Wendy to watch her for two minutes. It was as simple as that.

Together: Katrice Lee with her older sister Natasha

“I don’t blame Wendy,” she adds. “How could you blame her? Why would you think that your daughter was going to disappear that morning when you were just out on a family shop for her birthday? It should have been a joyous occasion.
“Wendy didn’t deliberately let her run off. It is just one of those things that children do. Even when they are standing with their parents, children still run off to look at something. When I left Katrice with Wendy she may have seen me run down the aisle and may have followed me. I don’t know. Who knows what’s in the mind of a two-year-old? Maybe she thought Mummy was having a game with her and she followed me. I don’t know. All I know is that after I put her down, I never saw her again. That was the last time I ever saw my daughter.”
When she came back, Katrice wasn’t there. “The panic hit me. I ran around, calling her name. She was gone. Vanished.”
The rest of the day was a blur. A military policewoman was at one of the other checkouts and radioed for assistance. Soon a full-scale search was under way.
“I remember very little else about that day. My life was changed forever; it was the beginning of a waking nightmare.”
From the start, the military were convinced that Katrice had simply wandered off. “They thought I hadn’t kept a proper eye on her. I remember soon after she disappeared, the Royal Military Police came to our married quarters. They were friendly but I’ve come to wish I’d said nothing. They asked me whether Katrice liked ducks and I quite innocently said, 'Yes, of course, don’t all children like ducks?’
“Looking back, that seems to have sealed my daughter’s fate. The Royal Military Police and the local German police decided that she had walked out of the shop and wandered to the nearby river and fallen in and drowned.”
Yet that explanation would have involved Katrice walking out of the shop on her own, down a ramp, across a busy car park, through a hedge, and along the river. “No one had seen her do this,” says Sharon. “But that is the only explanation they would allow. They searched the river, they couldn’t find her, but days and days were lost. They would not acknowledge that there could be any other explanation. Nothing we said would shake them from their conviction that she was a lost child.
“It was six weeks until they interviewed the cashiers in the shop. One of the cashiers came forward 20 years later and said she had never even been spoken to.”
The original investigation never considered the possibility that Katrice might have been abducted. The NAAFI was not inside a military compound, and there was no security surrounding it. It was on a civilian street. But the case has never been classified as a crime by the local German police.
When the theory that Katrice had wandered off produced no leads, Mrs Lee believes the military closed ranks to ensure that there was no suggestion that it failed to investigate the case thoroughly.
“We attempted to raise awareness of Katrice’s disappearance,” says Sharon. “We tried to arrange a collection to put money up for a reward for information. We intended to launch the collection to coincide with a planned visit by Princess Margaret. But at the last minute, the royal visit was cancelled and all the men, who had intended to help us raise the money, were confined to barracks.”
She claims that she has also seen an internal military assessment of the family, written by an Army psychologist, which dismisses Mrs Lee as a “woman of low intelligence”.
“We were treated without empathy or humanity. It was like we were an irritation, interrupting the strict discipline of the military. We had lost our daughter but we were in the way. They thought we should move on. Forget it. Not ask too many questions.”
Sharon, 59, a former HR manager from Gosport, Hampshire, and retired Sgt Major Richard Lee, 63, from Hartlepool – who has described his daughter’s disappearance as an “open wound” – divorced 20 years ago but remain united in their fight for the truth about what happened to Katrice.
They are also heavily involved in a support group for the families of other missing children, which includes Madeleine McCann’s parents Kate and Gerry.

Broken family: Sharon Lee pictured with her former husband Richard and daughters Katrice and Natasha 

Last year they succeeded in getting the case re‑opened. The new investigation is, finally, focused on the theory that Katrice may have been abducted. Officers are interviewing witnesses ignored for three decades. They have produced an aged image of Katrice, who would now be 33, and have taken DNA samples from the family. They are also searching medical records. Katrice had a squint in one eye and would have required an operation. Officers are searching records for a child of the right age with the same eye condition.

Last week, defence minister Mark Francois wrote to the family acknowledging the failings in the case. In a statement, Mr Francois said: “The Royal Military Police have now acknowledged that the previous investigations were flawed, and have sincerely apologised to Katrice’s family for these failings.”
A letter to Iain Wright, her father’s MP and a former children’s minister, goes further. Mr Francois wrote: “As you know, I met with Mrs Sharon Lee on 13 December… At that meeting, Brigadier Bill Warren, the Provost Marshal (Army) acknowledged that the previous investigations were flawed.”
He added: “During the meeting, the Royal Military Police also discussed the current state of play on the work under way to better understand the actions taken by the police in 1981, and provided the family an opportunity to feed in their own thoughts and recollections from this period to the Senior Investigating Officer.”
“Mark Francois has been brilliant,” says Mrs Lee. “He is coming at it as a family man rather than as someone from the Ministry of Defence. He seems to have great sympathy for us as a family and what we have been through. He is the first person from the MoD in 30 years who was prepared to sit and meet with us and listen to what we had to say.”
She adds: “After so long, it is nice to finally hear that I am believed, that I am no longer being dismissed as a crazy woman who won’t go away, won’t move on.
“We still have had no explanation as to why we were not taken seriously, and why the Army tried to put the blame on us. We were dismissed as a family who failed to look after their daughter. From the beginning, there was a lack of humanity, a lack of care. One senior officer, just after Katrice disappeared, actually accused me of a lack of care of my daughter and said I had a 'terrible cross to bear’.
“At our meeting with the minister, we learnt that an investigator who came to our house the day Katrice disappeared to collect her pyjamas – to give her scent to the dogs – claimed that the only person in our quarters was our daughter Tasha. It was officially recorded that we had left our other daughter alone. But it was totally wrong. Our daughter was not alone. We wouldn’t have let her out of our sight. I was there, her best friend was there, other members of the family were there. But by recording this, it was as if someone was trying to emphasise the idea that we were negligent parents. That I was a bad mum, and the whole thing was my fault. That we didn’t care properly for our children.”
Natasha Lee, 38, was just seven when her sister disappeared. “But I still have vivid memories of my sister. I remember she was bright and bubbly. Cheeky. She used to follow me around. We shared a room most of the time. I was very proud of her. I was proud of being a big sister. Then she was gone.
“I remember my mother that day. After Katrice disappeared, I remember how she cried. The terrible sound she made. It haunts me.”
Natasha had stayed at home with her uncle that morning. Not being with them, there to look after her little sister, has left Natasha with an irrational feeling of guilt.
“I have terrible feelings about not going with them. No matter how much I tell myself it’s not my fault, I still feel guilty. That day robbed me of a normal childhood and of my sister, and the chance to grow up with her. She was only just two. Her personality was just starting to come through. Her disappearance has left a hole in my life. I look in the mirror and wonder if she looks like me. If I look like her.”
Both Mrs Lee and Natasha believe that Katrice was abducted. They live in hope that some day they will find out what happened.
“I believe she’s alive somewhere and that one day we might find her,” says Natasha. “She might not want to know me. I’d be OK with that. I just want to know she’s OK.”
“I hope that she was taken by someone who couldn’t have children,” says Mrs Lee. “I hope that whoever took her, loved her like I do, and brought her up and that she is happy somewhere.”
Last night, Iain Wright MP called on the Prime Minister to intervene in the case. He said: “This is not a political question. The answers to what happened to Katrice are almost certainly in Germany. I want David Cameron to talk to the German government and to get their help.
“After 30 years, the family deserve to know what happened to their daughter.” 

Archbishop's family tree

Archbishop

Jews who fled the Nazis: secrets of Justin Welby's family tree


The German Jewish ancestors of Justin Welby, the next Archbishop of Canterbury, were forced to flee the Nazis and then faced internment in Britain during the war as “enemy aliens”.



Justin Welby, the next Archbishop of Canterbury Photo: Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor7:20AM GMT 02 Dec 201221 Comments

The full story of Justin Welby’s family, which provides a snapshot of a family caught in the dramas and tragedies of 20th century Europe, can be told for the first time today.

It is a story which his own father concealed from him and it was only last weekend that Bishop Welby learned from The Telegraph of his German Jewish roots and how his family, the Weilers, came to Britain.

But while his father, Gavin, was making his fortune in New York, posing as an aristocrat and selling whisky, his close relations faced persecution in Germany and were forced to flee for their lives.

Gavin Welby’s cousin was Dr Gerhard Weiler, a leading German chemist who ran a Berlin forensics laboratory pioneering techniques in microscopic analysis.

Before Hitler came to power in 1933 and introduced laws banning Jews from many jobs, including scientific work, Dr Weiler analysed samples for police murder investigations and Berlin hospitals.

His wife Dr Grita Thoemke worked with him and was an expert in anaesthetics.

His father, Dr Julius Weiler, brother of the Bishop of Durham’s grandfather Bernard, had founded the Westend Sanatorium, a leading psychiatric centre.

The family lived in a villa in the clinic’s grounds filled with Louis XV furniture, French tapestries, bronzes by Andrea Riccio, and paintings by Old Masters including Francisco Goya, Francesco Guardi and Jan van Goyen.

Martha Weiler, wife of Max Weiler, taken in 1919 with her sisters Emma, left and Louise, right

Julius was one of six sons of a wealthy merchant, Herman Weiler, and Amalie Hermbach. The family had thrived under the enlightened laws of the Kingdom of Hanover and, in the bustling market town of Osterode am Harz, they ran “S.J Weiler”, a small department store, started by their grandfather, Simon.

Herman Weiler sent his sons to the local Latin school and, while his siblings went to work in the family store, Julius went to University in Gottingen and studied medicine, before moving to Berlin to practise as a doctor.

The Weiler family shop taken in the late 1800's

In 1884, following their father’s death, the Weilers sold the store and four of the brothers, Siegfried, Max, Ernest and the Bishop of Durham’s grandfather, Bernard, travelled to London and set up “Weiler Brothers”, importing “ostrich and osprey feathers.

Their mother Amalie, Bishop Welby’s great grandmother, also moved to London, living in a flat in Hampstead with her unmarried youngest son Ernest. She died of pneumonia in 1914 and was buried the Jewish cemetery in Golders Green.

Back in 1920s Germany, Gerhard and his wife Grita had opened Dr Weiler’s Diagnostic Institute. Documents in the Jewish Archive in Berlin show that the family had “renounced” the faith as long ago as 1905.

As a 15-year-old Gerhard had been confirmed, but their conversion to Christianity did not save the family from Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws.

As Gerhard wrote later in his self-published memoirs: “We heard Hitler on the radio, screaming and ranting that the blame for all German ills lay with the Jews.

“It was the Jews’ fault entirely that Germany had lost the war...The Jews were also responsible for Germany’s supposed moral decline. There must only be one course of action to be taken: the Jews must be exterminated like vermin.”

The Weilers’ laboratory was in the basement of a large German villa which they rented to another family.

One of their staff, who cleaned the laboratory, was Communist. Working upstairs was a manservant who turned out to be a Nazi sympathiser.

When Hitler came to power in 1933 the manservant informed on the laboratory cleaner. He was imprisoned and executed.

“Adolf Hitler became Chancellor and the Reichstag (the German parliament) went up in flames’, wrote Gerhard. 'When we heard the news...Grita and I both agreed that we must leave the country’.

Offered a job at a laboratory at Oxford University, Gerhard headed to England and stayed with his uncle Siegfried, the last surviving Weiler brother who had set out from Germany in 1890.

“I stayed with my uncle in his luxurious flat, complete with cook, maid footman and chauffeur...(his) chauffeur drove me to Bedford College in a huge Humber limousine, where I was given a warm reception.

"I left in high spirits with the comforting thought that Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich would never harm either me or my family.”

But, travelling back to Germany to arrange their departure, he had a narrow escape at the border. Secretly carrying cigarettes in his fur coat, he was stopped by a Nazi official but claimed he had nothing to declare.

“Miraculously, they didn’t discover the cigarettes in the lining, otherwise I would probably not be here to tell the tale!”

The whole family, Gerhard, his wife Grita, her sister Kaete, a ballerina, and his father, Julius, left Germany. When war broke out, Gerhard was registered as an “enemy alien” under laws designed to stop Nazi spies and spent several months in an internment camp near Liverpool.

“All exits were guarded by soldiers with bayonets,” he recalled and several Jewish inmates committed suicide.

After the war he lived in Oxford, where he ran a private forensic laboratory, and did not return to Germany for 31 years. Grita died in 1983 and Gerhard in 1995.

He left much of his art collection, including a series of Renaissance drawings, to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and a language prize, funded by a bequest, which bears his name at Roehampton University.

The Hanovarian town of Osterode am Harz where Justin Welby's forebares can be traced back to

Other members of the Weiler family, however, did not survive. The Holocaust records at Yad Vashem in Israel record the death of a young boy, Nathan Sommer, from Kassel, close to the Weilers’ hometown of Osterode am Harz. His mother was Gertrud Weiler, in all probability a cousin of the nearby merchant family.

A picture in the memorial archive shows a tiny boy holding a dog and clutching his sister’s arm.

Nathan, who was born in 1934, was “murdered” on an unknown date after being transported by the SS to the Riga ghetto, in Latvia, where most of the 24,000 Jewish inhabitants were massacred in late 1941.

Meanwhile, the Bishop of Durham’s father, Gavin, returned to London from New York after the war and established “Gavin Distillers”, based in Oxford Street. He exported whisky to America and even had his own blend, “Gavin’s Gold Label”.

As a 19-year-old Alison Wilkinson, then Cowie, began working for Welby as his personal, business and social secretary shortly after he had stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate in the 1951 election.

Gavin Welby

Mr Welby had a reputation as a ladies’ man. Briefly married before the war to factory owner’s daughter, Doris Sturzenegger — a fact which he later kept secret from his son — his second wife, Jane Portal, who is Bishop Welby’s mother, divorced him on the grounds of adultery. He also had affairs with actress Vanessa Redgrave and President Kennedy’s sister, Pat.

“I remember one time he had got this great stack of letters from a girlfriend and he said he wanted me to just tear them all up and throw them all away,’ recalls Mrs Wilkinson. 'There were girlfriends in the background but I never met any of them or knew who they were’.

Gavin Welby, who died in 1977, took many of his secrets to his grave, and his son desperately wants to know whether, unbeknown to him, he has a half-bother or half-sister.

However, The Telegraph has learnt that there were no children from his short-lived 1934 marriage to Miss Sturzenegger.

She later re-married, to Alfred Henry, a corporate accounting executive, and the couple moved to Los Angeles, where they had two children, but the family confirmed her first marriage was childless.

Archbishop

The Archbishop’s father, his secret wife, an affair with a Kennedy and defaming a Labour Cabinet Minister

The new Archbishop of Canterbury's father, Gavin Welby, was a man of mystery, with a flair for reinvention and a story to rival that of the Great Gatsby.

Gavin Welby, left, and Bishop Welby Photo: REUTERS

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor

8:00AM GMT 25 Nov 2012

GAVIN WELBY was a man of mystery, with a flair for reinvention and a story to rival that of the Great Gatsby.

He worked his way into the upper echelons of society on both sides of the Atlantic, using a series of adopted personas. But when he died of a heart attack in 1977, alone in a flat in Kensington, his only son - the person closest to him at the end of his life - did not even know his real name or birth date.

Justin Welby, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, was only 21 at the time and studying law and history at Trinity College, Cambridge. He knew his father as an erratic and alcohol-dependent but "really, really brilliant" man who had lived an extraordinary life. But the details were unclear.

"I lived with him, but I didn't know him very well," he said yesterday. Summoned down to London to complete the formalities after the death, the heartbroken son recorded the name of his father as Gavin Bramhal Welby, born on November 28, 1914. Neither detail was correct.

The mistake was understandable, as Mr Welby Sr had hidden his identity many times. A chancer, draft dodger and adulterer, he had been sued for libel by a Cabinet minister. There was even a secret first wife that he never spoke of. But he had carefully constructed a respectable persona which allowed him to survive and to flourish, and without which his son would not have had a public school education or possibly a chance of high office.

Gavin Welby claimed a connection to the aristocratic Welbys of Lincolnshire and in particular Sir Charles Welby, the fifth baronet. He also suggested that his family owned a Scottish distillery.

These untruths helped him befriend John F Kennedy in America, becoming so close that he even dated the future president's sister Pat.

In this country, he won over senior members of the Conservative Party and the family of the deputy prime minister, Rab Butler. He married Butler's favourite niece, Jane Portal, who had been Winston Churchill's personal secretary and who would become Justin's mother.

His powerful connections helped him towards a career in politics and two failed attempts to win a seat in the House of Commons. Gavin Welbyearned enough money to send his son to Eton - although perhaps not enough for Justin to pay his way on a daily basis, leaving him the poorest child in a school house that included two Rothschilds.

The present Bishop of Durham said: "He moved quite often. I know I didn't have much money, but I don't ever remember thinking everyone else has got so much more. It was clear other people were wealthier than we were. I probably was at the bottom end. But you know, school is school, you just get on with life."

Whatever else he did in his life, Gavin Welby tried to give his son a good start. His care was returned towards the end, with the alcoholic and unwell father nursed by a loving teenage son. The Sunday Telegraph was able to share remarkable new details with Bishop Welby about the life of a man who was actually born Bernard Gavin Weiler on November 28, 1910, in Ruislip, on the outskirts of west London.

His father was a "Hebrew" German émigré also called Bernard Weiler, who had moved to Britain from Germany some 20 years earlier. Mr Weiler Sr had an elder brother called Herrman who had refused call-up papers for the army and had been stripped of German citizenship.

Much later the synagogue in the village where they came from would be burnt to the ground by the SS, and Jews sent to Nazi death camps. Several people called Weiler from the area appear on the list of victims of the Holocaust. The senior Bernard Weiler became a successful ostrich feather merchant with premises in the Barbican and in Cape Town, South Africa. He lived in a large house with his Englishborn wife Edith, who was two decades younger, as well as a cook, a maid and a nurse for the children.

But the family fortunes were hit by the First World War in 1914, and the so-called "feather crash" which saw changing fashions kill off the demand for expensive feather-adorned garments and hats.

Anti-German sentiment was strong, so the family name was changed by deed poll to Welby and Gavin's father took an agency job selling worthless "snake oil" drugs on sales trips to America. He sold an art collection, but in spite of failing health he was forced to continue making week-long voyages across the Atlantic, cramped in steerage.

Gavin took over this dubious business shortly before his father died. He was 19. As he began to spend increasing amounts of time in New York, the young man set about reinventing himself. This part of the story did enter family history and Bishop Welby said recently that he believed his father had been a bootlegger during the Prohibition era.

"I remember my father telling me [his mother] gave him £5 and put him on a boat. He said he went to New York in 1929 and traded whisky. When I was studying history, the penny dropped that Prohibition ended in 1933 ... so he was bootlegging. He was illegally trading whisky." After being told on Friday of the details of his father's life, Bishop Welby said: "He would tell me how he ran alcohol with his 'Italian friends' as he liked to call them. But he kept so much to himself."

When Prohibition ended, the inventive young man - now calling himself Gavin Bramhall James Welby - was the New York import manager for the National Distillers Production Corporation.

His job was to supply Manhattan's newly booming hotels and cocktail bars with the ingredients for their latest frozen, shaken and stirred alcoholic creations. Aged 23, with a clipped English accent, and dark, debonair good looks, he modelled himself on the Hollywood star Cary Grant. Gavin Welbyquickly became the man to know if you wanted to hold a party in one of Manhat-tan's upmarket hotels. He arranged balls for the sons and debutante daughters of New York's wealthy élite, befriending businessmen and their wives. By 1940 he was earning $7,000 (£4,300) a year, the equivalent of $116,000 (£72,000) today, and had rooms at the five-star Hotel Pierre overlooking Central Park. He could also afford to rent an apartment on the Upper East Side, where he held parties for high society.

Rather than admit to being a mere employee, Welby began hinting that his family owned one of the distilleries supplying the liquor.

The society columns of The New York Times from this period are filled with his exploits. They also reveal details of Welby's first marriage: to Doris Sturzenegger, the daughter of a wealthy factory owner, in January 1934.

Hailing from Chester, New Jersey, she was of German descent just like her new husband. "Doe" as she was known had been a student at Boston University, whose yearbook for 1930 says: "Effervescent, always with a smile, Doe's a cheerful girl, sans guile."

The marriage appears to have been very short lived. Before the year was out, she had left him. After returning first to Boston, she used her maiden name and a newlyminted American passport to sail to Britain, identifying herself as a dance teacher. There is no trace of the couple getting divorced.

After the outbreak of war in 1939, Welby remained in New York, organising parties. But when America entered the conflict he had no choice but to join up, either there or at home. In December 1942, he held a farewell party to mark his departure.

The New York Times reported: "Several hundred persons, including many prominent English men and women living here, attended a farewell reception given in the small ballroom of the Pierre by Gavin Welby, son of Mrs E James Welby of London and Surrey, who is about to join the British Army as a commissioned officer."

He received a field promotion to First Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps, in charge of transport and supplies. However, when demobbed three years after the end of the war, he placed an announcement in The Times as "Captain" Gavin Welby, announcing that he would now be taking up residence at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York.

He also applied to Conservative Central Office, asking to be considered as a candidate for Parliament. His application forms to the party are sealed, but it is understood that he gave false details about his background, shaved several years off his age and overstated his position with the American firms that had employed him before the war.

Nevertheless, his easy manner and direct-speaking style apparently impressed the Conservative hierarchy. In 1950, he was selected to fight for Coventry East against an up-and-coming politician, Richard Crossman, who was later to become a Labour Cabinet minister.

The local Conservative party activists seem to have taken against their candidate, who continued to be based in London. A report to the constituency in January 1951 complained: "Adopted last October (Welby) has made a few visits to the Constituency, but has by no means got around the Division. I should say that he is not particularly well suited to this type of Division."

The Coventry Telegraph reported that he was heckled at the hustings. During one debate, Welby referred to the Stone Age, saying: "It was not uncommon for a man to beat his wife with a cudgel." Someone shouted: "That's private enterprise!" His brief visits to Coventry were dubbed "jetpropelled canvassing" as he took to driving around the constituency in a car with a loudspeaker, accompanied by his mother. It was reported that she had delayed an operation to join him.

Days before the poll, disaster struck. The Welby campaign team published a pamphlet entitled "Good Advice" which misquoted his opponent as saying: "Labour is not fit to govern the country ...". Crossman sued and Welby was forced to publish a grovelling apology on the eve of the election.

He had apparently approved the pamphlet but now accused his election agent of inserting the quote "entirely on your own initiative".

Crossman won a massive majority and Welby headed back across the Atlantic. Then in 1952 Walter Winchell, the king of American gossip columnists, revealed that the Englishman was dating the daughter of Joseph Kennedy, former US ambassador to Britain. Patricia was also the sister of John F Kennedy.

Alongside snippets on the love affair between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, the columnist wrote: "JP Kennedy's daughter Pat and Gavin Welby (of the Scotch whisky clan) are intoxicated about each other." However, Patricia later married the British actor Peter Lawford. Welby returned to Britain.

During the election campaign he had met and befriended Adam Butler, the son of Rab, who would go on to be an MP, a minister and aide to Margaret Thatcher and a knight. They became so close that Welby later added a clause to his will, making Adam Butler the legal guardian of his son. He added: "I express the wish that (he) take my son to live with him ... during his infancy."

It was Adam Butler who introduced Gavin Welby to his cousin Jane Portal, the private secretary to Winston Churchill. She later said that she had been hired by Churchill as a "donkey" and "dogsbody" to do late night work, as well as taking dictation of his war memoirs. Being a niece of Rab Butler had helped her get the job. After meeting her in 1940, Churchill had said: "You'll do."

She went on to work for Churchill as he led a government after the war, helping to keep his stroke and failing health hidden from the wider world.

Gavin Welby and Jane Portal married on Monday, April 4, 1955, in Baltimore, Maryland, without their family and friends in attendance. They had apparently eloped because of disapproval from her parents. Later that month, however, the marriage was announced in The Times. A reception was held at 11Downing Street, arranged by Rab Butler.

When details of the wedding reached America, John F Kennedy wrote to his 21-yearold Swedish mistress Gunilla von Post: "Did you see in the paper that our friend — the cold, frozen Mr Gavin Welby — got married to Mr Churchill's secretary? Something must have happened."

By 1956, the Welbys were living in Onslow Square, Chelsea. Gavin had invested much of the money he had made in America and was now a Name on the Lloyds insurance market. His son was born on January 6 that year.

Justin Portal Welby was christened at Holy Trinity, Brompton, with Adam Butler and the Hon Flora Fraser, now Lady Saltoun, acting as godparents. This was the same church to which he would return for comfort after the death of his first child in a car accident in Paris, and where he first felt called to the ministry.

The marriage between his parents did not last. Within three years, Jane Welby petitioned for divorce on the grounds that her husband was "guilty of adultery". Mr Welby did not contest the claim. The divorce was finalised in February 1959. Jane Portal went on to marry Charles Williams, the former Essex county cricketer and oil executive, in 1975. When he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer in 1985, she became Lady Williams of Elvel.

After the marriage ended, Gavin Welby went back to dividing his time between Britain and America. He stood for Parliament again in 1955, as a last-minute replacement candidate in Goole, Yorkshire.

The local party chairman wrote: "His qualifications seem so astonishingly good ... [we] are extraordinary lucky [to have] a man of such calibre."

But Mr Welby lost again, badly.

His next notable romantic involvement was in the early Sixties, with the 23-year-old actress Vanessa Redgrave, a rising star of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Welby was now 50, but claimed to be younger.

"I have something very special to tell you," Miss Redgrave wrote to her father. "I am going to marry a sweet, darling man called Gavin Welby."

Her father, Sir Michael Redgrave, did not approve. Her mother, Rachel Kempson, wrote to him: "Vanessa is completely infatuated ... I only pray we can prevent marriage." They feared Welby was a "rotten piece of work".

The actress did eventually end the relationship. She told her father: "I have decided not to marry Gavin because, although I do love him, for various reasons I know it wouldn't work ... I had a talk with Mum this evening and realised that it is the only thing to do."

So much of this astonishing life was hidden from his son, who was moved by the story The Sunday Telegraph was able to share with him.

Bishop Welby did not know, for example, that his father had Jewish ancestry, or an older sister called Peggy.

She married a future Labour MP, the communist sympathiser Lester Hutchinson who was expelled from the party in 1949, and she died in 1983. Bishop Welby continues to wonder whether he has secret brothers or sisters.

"In many ways, I think the story you have told me brings more credit on him than the story he himself told," Bishop Welby said.

"It is the 'making good' story isn't it? It's a great thing of overcoming setbacks. I would have thought 'wow, that's a fantastic story' if he had told me about it when I was a child."

He went on: "There is no hiding the fact that he was a complicated man. He was really, really, brilliant. I think what you have said shows he was really brilliant in many ways. But there were, probably from his background, complications in his life that hindered that brilliance really being deployed fully."