Andrew Paul Gilligan is a British policy adviser and journalist, currently transport adviser to the Prime Minister. Until July 2019, he was senior correspondent of The Sunday Times and had also served as head of the Capital City Foundation at Policy Exchange. Between 2013 and 2016 he also worked as cycling commissioner for London. He is best known for a 2003 report on BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme in which he described a British government briefing paper on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction as 'sexed up'. He was awarded Journalist of the Year in 2008 for his investigative reports on Ken Livingstone. and was shortlisted for the award again in 2015 for investigations which helped cause the downfall of politician Lutfur Rahman. He has also been a nominee for the Paul Foot Award, the Orwell Prize, the British Journalism Awards and Foreign Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.
In 1994, he joined the Cambridge Evening News, then in 1995 he moved to The Sunday Telegraph where he became a specialist reporter on defence. In 1999, he was recruited by the editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Rod Liddle, as Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent. In May 2003, Gilligan made a broadcast in which he claimed that the British Government had "sexed up" a report in order to exaggerate the weapon of mass destruction capabilities of Saddam Hussein. Gilligan resigned from the BBC in 2004, in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry surrounding the death of David Kelly, after Lord Hutton questioned the reliability of Gilligan's evidence. After resigning from the BBC, Gilligan was offered a job at The Spectator by its editor, Boris Johnson, who had been a key supporter of Gilligan during the Hutton Inquiry. Later that year Gilligan joined the London Evening Standard. He was named Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2008 for his work on the London Mayoral elections, described as "relentless investigative journalism at its best". Between 2007 and 2009 Gilligan presented a fortnightly programme for Press TV, the Iranian government's English-language TV channel. Rod Liddle challenged Gilligan in July 2009 about working for an "international propaganda channel run by the Iranian government". Gilligan stopped his regular show in December 2009, though he appeared twice more on the network just before the UK's May 2010 general election. Gilligan attributed his decision to leave to the politics of Iran "that was inconsistent with my opposition to Islamism. I have not worked for Press TV since." In 2009 Gilligan became London editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph,. He was also a reporter for Channel 4's investigative programme Dispatches, covering a number of issues, including Rahman and his claimed involvement with the Islamic Forum of Europe in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. He has also been a cover presenter for LBC radio. On 22 November 2011, Gilligan criticised the Leveson Inquiry in an appearance before the House of Lords communications committee. In January 2013, Gilligan was appointed as the Cycling Commissioner for London by the Mayor, Boris Johnson. Accusations of "cronyism" were made following the appointment as Gilligan was considered instrumental in toppling the Mayor's main rival Ken Livingstone. He helped deliver London's first segregated cycle superhighways and was subsequently given an award by the London Cycling Campaign for his "outstanding contribution to cycling." In August 2016 Gilligan was part of a wave of redundancies at The Daily Telegraph, joining The Sunday Times immediately afterwards. In 2019, he was appointed transport adviser by the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, based in the Downing Street policy unit.
Controversy
In May 2016, The Telegraph apologised and paid substantial damages as part of an out-of-court settlement for defamation due to false claims made by Gilligan in a series of articles alleging corruption surrounding the purchase of Poplar Town Hall by businessman Mujibul Islam from Tower Hamlets Council when Rahman was mayor. In May 2018, The Sunday Telegraph paid “substantial damages” to Mohammed Kozbar, general secretary of Finsbury Park mosque following an article by Gilligan in March 2016. Gilligan tweeted that The Telegraph had wrongly "capitulated" to Kozbar, stood by the claims in the article and invited Kozbar to sue him if he was wrong. In January 2019, The Sunday Times was required to publish a correction by the Independent Press Standards Organisation, who ruled that an article in July 2018 by Gilligan about laws regarding transgender people had been 'misleading'.
