UK media body seeks answers over Arron Banks’ reported surveillance of journalist

A British news industry body has called on businessman and Reform UK donor Arron Banks to disclose the extent of any surveillance of journalists after he appeared to acknowledge commissioning private investigators to examine a Sunday Times reporter.

The News Media Association said on August 10, 2026, that using investigators to deter legitimate reporting threatened press freedom. Its intervention followed reporting by the New Statesman that Banks instructed Precision Risk and Intelligence, a private investigations company he once owned, to look into Gabriel Pogrund, editor of the Sunday Times Insight investigations team.

Banks told the New Statesman that his organisation believed the Sunday Times had used hacked information and said its investigative arm had advanced capabilities. Asked directly whether he had paid investigators to examine Pogrund, he replied with the phrase, “When you live by the sword, you die by the sword.” The Sunday Times strongly rejected Banks’s suggestion about hacked material.

The Guardian reported that Banks declined to say whether reporters at that newspaper had also been investigated. Reform UK said it had no knowledge of his alleged use of investigators. Gawain Towler, a Reform board member, said he was uncomfortable with the development while arguing that questions remained about how journalists obtained private information.

Press-freedom advocates and opposition politicians said surveillance could intimidate reporters and weaken public-interest scrutiny. The available reporting does not establish the full scope of any investigation or show that Reform UK directed it.