Captain Sir Tom Moore’s daughter Hannah says she’s ‘sorry people feel misled’

Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family’s “deepest regret” is having a charity set up in his name, his daughter has said, as she repeated her insistence there was no intention to mislead the public over money from a book deal going to charity.

A damning report from the charities regulator last year found a “repeated pattern of behaviour” which saw Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin make private gains and which the watchdog said will have left the public feeling “misled”.

Sir Tom, who died in February 2021, became a household name during the pandemic, raising millions for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden in lockdown.

Speaking to the BBC as she prepares to write and publish her own books about grief, loneliness and resilience, Mrs Ingram-Moore said the charity had been set up after a family discussion about how to ensure Sir Tom’s legacy, but that “in hindsight, we didn’t need to do that”.

She added: “It didn’t need to be set up as a charity. We could have continued that legacy without it, because what it’s done is all but completely derailed our lives.”

Asked if her biggest regret was setting up the foundation, she said: “We didn’t set it up.

“It was set up with my father’s name, and that is our deepest regret.”

Sir Tom’s book, Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day, had a line in the prologue where he said “with the offer to write this memoir I have also been given the chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation now established in my name”.

The Charity Commission report, published in November, concluded: “The inquiry cannot see how the first sentence in the above quote from Captain Tom can be interpreted as anything other than funds provided to Captain Tom for writing his memoir would flow to the charity to continue his charitable work.”

She said that about £800,000 had been left from the book deal once fees had been paid to others, including the literary agent, legal and PR professionals.

But she repeated that her father had signed the contract and wanted the money to go to his family, saying: “He was of very sound mind. He wanted us to benefit, and he chose where to put it. It was his money.”

Asked what she would say to people who feel misled, she said: “I’m sorry they feel misled. I genuinely am. But there was never any intent to mislead. And if there was any misleading, it wasn’t our doing.”

The commission has called on the Ingram-Moores to make a “suitable donation”, declining to say how much, from the book advance deal, to “honour the commitment that Captain Tom, in his own words in his first book, stated in the foreword about the money benefiting the foundation set up in his name”.

Asked if she would do that, Mrs Ingram-Moore said: “We have made, much money has gone, it’s already happened. And they (the commission) also know that.”

Asked to be more specific about how much money from the book advance was spent on the foundation, she declined to say.

She told the BBC: “I don’t think that’s even the right thing to do. I don’t think it’s helpful now for me to put another number out, because that’s the number everyone will talk about.

“So there is nothing dishonest about what happened. The book said, it said it would support the launch (of the foundation), and it did.”

In January, it was disclosed that Sir Tom’s name had been removed from the foundation set up in his honour.

A foundation spokesman at the time said it had “acceded to the family’s demand that it removes Captain Tom’s name from its title”.

It is now known as the 1189808 Foundation, reflecting the organisation’s charity number.

At that point, the spokesman said the Ingram-Moores had still not paid funds the charity says are owed after the watchdog investigation.

The millions raised by Sir Tom and donated to NHS Charities Together before the foundation was formed were not part of the commission’s inquiry.