Captain Tom's daughter was paid £18,000 to judge and hand out community awards
Captain Tom Moore's daughter has admitted being paid £18,000 to be a judge for a community awards programme.
Hannah Ingram-Moore also made a number of personal appearances where she handed out awards for the fee. Ms Ingram-Moore and the charity set up in her late dad's name - Captain Sir Tom Moore Foundation - is currently being investigated by the Charity Commission.
Ms Ingram-Moore was paid £18,000 by Virgin Media and O2 for being a judge for the award prize project and for making a small number of appearances. This also included the one in Bristol, while she was interim chief executive of the Captain Sir Tom Moore Foundation, where the charity received £2,000.
The appearance in January 2022 came as part of a partnership with Virgin Media and O2. The two companies ran an award programme which gave grants to community groups and organisations. From 2021, the awards were called "The Virgin Media O2 Captain Tom Foundation Connector Award."
Virgin O2 said the award scheme was inspired by the late Sir Captain Tom. Ashton Vale Club for Young People in Bristol was just the third winner of that award, and was given £5,000 worth of tech equipment, after it was decided the club’s work with young people during the pandemic was worthy of recognition.
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At the time, Ms Ingram-Moore was a judge for the award scheme and said it was ‘an honour’ to come and present the award, which took the form of a plaque as well as the equipment like iPads that the youth club said would make the young people in Ashton Vale better connected.
Hannah Ingram-Moore with her late dad Captain Tom Moore (Getty Images)BristolLive reported that Virgin and O2’s publicity for the award included photos and video of a visit to Ashton Vale Club for Young People that Ms Ingram-Moore made. At the time, she was quoted as saying: “It is an honour to be announcing the third winner of the Virgin Media O2 Captain Tom Foundation Connector Award.
She added: "Ashton Vale Club for Young People is so deserving of this award as they proved to be a vital lifeline during the pandemic. At such a distressing time for many, they ensured a community remained as one. We can’t wait to see what this vital injection of gigabit broadband and tech prizes can do for future projects."
Now, Ms Ingram-Moore has admitted that Virgin O2 paid her family company Maytrix £18,000 as a one-off payment for her appearances at Ashton Vale and other events associated with the Connector Awards - at a time when she was the interim CEO of the foundation she and her father set up in 2020.
The charity set up in her late dad's name - Captain Sir Tom Moore Foundation - is currently being investigated by the Charity Commission (Getty Images)Grilled by Piers Morgan last month, she acknowledged that she had received that £18,000 while she was the CEO but, rather than agreeing she should have given her fee to the foundation or not been paid at all, she suggested she should have moved the visit to Ashton Vale to a time when she wasn’t the charity’s CEO.
At the time she was paid by Virgin and O2, Ms Ingram-Moore was acting as interim chief executive, on a rolling three-month contract - a role she had for a total of nine months in 2021 and 2022, with a pro-rata salary of £85,000.
She said: "That relationship with Virgin Media started way back in 2020, where my father was paid to be a judge, and judges are often paid. It wasn’t award ceremonies, it was community awards. I was doing it with him, because of course he couldn’t do it by himself. They were about awarding a community awards with Virgin Media. That relationship continued and they asked me to keep working with them.
“By the time we evolved it, they were now Virgin Media O2, and all of those discussions were happening even before I was imagining being interim CEO. So those plans were already in place."
Invited by Piers Morgan to say she wished now she had not taken the money, Ms Ingram-Moore said she needed the money. She said: “I think in hindsight what I should have done was stalled that relationship (with Virgin O2) to afterwards (when she was no longer CEO).
“They were the Captain Tom Awards. I worked with Virgin Media to ensure the charity got some money and recognition, because I knew that they would get huge recognition through social media, and hopefully real engagement with the charity, for seeing how the charity was becoming involved through the awards.
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“I think that it’s all very easy to look back and think I should have made different decisions, but I hadn’t planned on being the CEO, and I was only ever there for three months at a time, so I didn’t know if I would have employment past those three months, and I’m not in a position where I can not work, so for me, when we were planning all those dates, they may well have fallen in a period of time when I wasn’t the CEO, but that’s how it landed. And I absolutely ensured that the charity got a donation."
She added: "The better thing to have done was to push those awards to outside that period of time, because I was only ever going to be there for nine months, so I should’ve just pushed them forward or brought them in advance.
“The reality is that I have to work for a living, and that relationship with them was an ongoing relationship. Absolutely in hindsight the two things should have been separated, but that’s not how it landed. It was done with love and with trying to ensure that the community benefited, and the Captain Tom Foundation benefited, and yes I got paid."
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