Andy Burnham is facing fresh demands to explain his relationship with Manchester City after reports emerged that records of two hospitality dinners with the club’s chairman were deleted from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s website.
The dinners, involving Khaldoon Al Mubarak in 2017 and 2018, were not included in the authority’s initial account of the prime minister’s contacts with the club during his time as Greater Manchester mayor, prompting renewed questions over what was disclosed, what was discussed and why the records reportedly disappeared.
The controversy places fresh pressure on Burnham after he told MPs that “all of my dealings” with Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners would be published.
On Monday, the GMCA disclosed that Burnham had held a formal meeting with Al Mubarak at an investment summit, spoken to him informally in the stands at Vincent Kompany’s testimonial match and travelled on official overseas visits accompanied by club representatives.
But the subsequent emergence of the two dinners has raised questions about the completeness of that initial disclosure.
Asked why the dinners were not specifically mentioned, Burnham’s press secretary pointed to the GMCA’s statement that he had been a guest of Manchester City at home matches on a small number of occasions and that his attendance and hospitality had been “declared in the usual way”.
When asked why the relevant entries had reportedly been deleted from the authority’s website, the press secretary said the GMCA was responsible for the website.
Declarations are understood to remain online during a mayoral term, adding to calls for a fuller explanation of what happened to the records.
The issue has drawn criticism from the Conservatives, with shadow sports minister Louie French demanding that Burnham disclose more detail about his contacts with the club and its owners.
“We have been given precious little information about these meetings, what was discussed and what may have been agreed,” French said.
He added: “If Burnham has nothing to hide, why is he being so tight-lipped?”
French also criticised what he described as Burnham’s intervention in defence of Manchester City’s owners, arguing that the public should be given enough information to assess the relationship for themselves.
The questions are particularly sensitive because Manchester City has faced a major Premier League investigation into its finances. The club has been found guilty of breaching financial rules and of most charges relating to its alleged failure to co-operate with the league’s investigation.
Burnham told the Commons on Wednesday that the club’s owners and directors had not raised the Premier League charges when he met them.
There is no evidence in the information disclosed that the hospitality dinners involved improper conduct or that the club’s financial case was discussed at those meetings.
The GMCA has sought to place the contacts in the context of routine mayoral business, arguing that representatives from Greater Manchester’s sporting organisations regularly accompanied official international delegations.
Manchester United representatives travelled to Austin and Dublin, Lancashire Cricket Club joined a delegation to India, while Manchester City staff supported visits to China and Japan, the authority said.
It also confirmed that Burnham met Al Mubarak formally at the UK Government’s Global Investment Summit in October 2021, in a meeting arranged by the Department for International Trade.
The distinction between official engagement, hospitality and the public record is now at the centre of the dispute.
Burnham has pledged transparency over his dealings with the club. The emerging questions are whether the published account will be comprehensive, why the dinner declarations reportedly disappeared and whether the full records will now be made available.
For a prime minister already under scrutiny over his relationship with one of English football’s most powerful clubs, the issue is no longer simply who he met. It is whether the public has been given a complete account of those meetings.
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