Carol Vorderman forced to retract corruption claims against Tory chairman Greg Hands

CAROL Vorderman has been forced to retract cronyism claims against the Tory chairman. 

The telly star-turned-activist yesterday deleted 22 tweets making wild allegations against Greg Hands.

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She had accused him of “illegal corruption” by supposedly doling out a £25.8million Covid contract to his “mate”.

The slew of claims were amplified by other left-wingers including Labour politicians and viewed millions of times.

After forcing a retraction with legal action, Mr Hands told The Sun: “We live in a world where celebrities like Carol, and the lefty enablers that retweet her, can reach millions of people at the push of a button.

“That’s why it’s important to hold them to account – especially when it comes to spreading harmful misinformation.”

Former Countdown star Ms Vorderman, 62, is an arch critic of the Conservative Government and regularly posts attacks to her 867k followers. 

Her tranche of claims centred on Mr Hands forwarding an offer from the chair of his local Tory association to supply ventilators to the Joint Action Coordination Team procuring Covid kit in April 2020. 

Mr Hands – whose job it was to help secure pandemic equipment – insisted he treated all requests equally and had no role in the awarding of contracts. 

At 5.40am yesterday Ms Vorderman said: “I’ve been contacted by Greg Hands MP in response to my tweets about his involvement in the granting of a COVID-19 healthcare contract to Luxe Lifestyle in 2020.

“While the awarding of this contract was unfortunate, and there remain serious questions about the VIP Lane, I’m happy to accept Mr Hands’ assurance that his role in the process was simply to refer the approach to the JACT, and that there was no impropriety on his part.”

Following her clarification Mr Hands called on Ms Vorderman to say sorry after she stopped short of a full-throated apology.

Last night Labour MP Karl Turner had still not deleted his tweet echoing Ms Voderman’s claims.