Burnham hid two Man City chairman dinners from Monday statement

Andy Burnham took two hospitality dinners with Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak while mayor of Greater Manchester, deleted records show, after a Monday statement from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority left those meals out. The dinners were at Etihad matches in August 2017 and April 2018. A previous GMCA register of declarations, seen by the BBC, listed a dinner with then Manchester City Council leader Richard Leese and the Man City chair for an Everton fixture, valued at £300, and another dinner with the chairman at the Man City versus Man Utd derby, valued at about £699.

Burnham had also declared £150 tickets for an Ed Sheeran show at the stadium in May 2018. That register has since been removed from the GMCA website; the authority’s policy is to publish only entries from the current mayoral term, as first reported by The Sun. On Monday the GMCA said Burnham had a formal meeting with Al Mubarak in October 2021 at the UK Government’s Global Investment Summit, arranged by the Department for International Trade, and that he met the chairman informally in the stands at a 2019 Vincent Kompany testimonial.

It added that as mayor he was a guest of Manchester City at home matches on a small number of occasions. It did not spell out that this covered the two hospitality dinners with the chairman. Burnham left the mayoralty in June.

He has faced pressure to clarify past talks with the club since Manchester City were found guilty of having systematically broken Premier League rules, a finding the club will appeal. Last month he said he would be really concerned if the owners now sold up, drawing sharp criticism. The gap between the deleted declarations and Monday’s wording leaves a simple public test.

Hospitality with a club chairman is not a private aside when the same politician later frets about ownership. Voters in Greater Manchester, and anyone watching the Premier League case, are entitled to the full list without having to dig through old files the authority no longer posts.

Original source: BBC Politics