David Hencke, the award-winning investigative journalist whose scoops for the Guardian brought down government ministers and exposed political corruption, has died from liver cancer at the age of 79.
Exposed cash-for-questions and Mandelson loan scandals
Hencke was one of the key reporters behind the 1994 cash-for-questions scandal, which revealed that Conservative MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith had accepted payments from Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed to ask parliamentary questions. The scandal led to the resignations of both MPs and forced Hamilton and lobbyist Ian Greer to abandon a libel action against the Guardian, which famously ran the front-page headline 'A Liar and a Cheat' with Hencke's byline alongside David Leigh and David Pallister.
In 1998, Hencke was the first to publish the home loan scandal that caused the first of Peter Mandelson's resignations as a minister. He revealed an undisclosed £373,000 loan from Treasury colleague Geoffrey Robinson that enabled Mandelson to buy a house in Notting Hill, west London.
A fair but relentless investigator
According to former Tory cabinet minister Tony Newton, 'There's always a grain of truth in a Hencke story.' Norman Tebbit, no fan of the Guardian, once told Hencke: 'You're the sort of chap who looks for information by hunting through people's bins. But I don't mind because you're not biased: you don't care whose bins you're looking through.'
Hencke's method was not rifling through bins but scrutinising official documents and reports leaked by a wide network of political contacts, including Labour cabinet figures and Tories such as John Major. He maintained friendships even with those he exposed, such as auditor general Sir John Bourn, who was forced to resign after Hencke revealed his lavish travel expenses.
Early life and career
Born in Streatham, south London, on 26 April 1947, Hencke was the only child of Enid and Charles Hencke. He failed his 11-plus and attended Tulse Hill comprehensive before becoming one of the first students at Warwick University, where he studied history and politics and edited the subversive newspaper Giblet.
In his second year he met Margaret Langrick, who suggested journalism as a career. After graduating, he became a trainee at the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph. He moved to the Western Mail in Cardiff and then to London in 1973 to work for the Times Higher Education Supplement, where he leaked Prime Minister James Callaghan's major speech on education calling for a national curriculum.
He joined the Guardian as a general reporter in September 1976, one of new editor Peter Preston's first appointments. He became planning correspondent in 1978 and social services correspondent in 1982. In 1986, Preston gave him a Westminster brief with a roving commission to cover government departments and parliament.
Awards and later work
In 1994, Hencke was named journalist of the year at the What the Papers Say awards. In 1998, he won scoop of the year for the Mandelson loan story. He collaborated with author Francis Beckett on several books, including The Blairs and Their Court (2004), Marching to the Fault Line (2004), and The Survivor: Tony Blair in Peace and War (2005).
After retiring from the Guardian in 2009, he continued investigative work for Tribune magazine and the Exaro website. In 2019, he was successfully sued by former Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming over a defamatory article. He filed his last stories the day he entered hospital earlier this month and gave his final broadcast interview from a wheelchair a fortnight before his death.
Personal life
Hencke married Margaret in 1969. He nursed her devotedly after she suffered a stroke, including taking her on a round-the-world cruise shortly before her death in 2025—which led him to report on inadequate wheelchair provision on cruise ships. He is survived by their daughter, Anne, and five grandchildren, Tegan, Leon, Ryan, Daryan and Atayna.
