'We never touched a penny' says Captain Sir Tom Moore's daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore about fundraising controversy

During an exclusive interview with Nana Akua on GB News, Hannah Ingram-Moore revealed she has spent £500,000 in legal fees and associated costs to defend her reputation and denied that charity money was used for a spa building. Asked about what happened to the £38.9 million raised by her father, she told Nana Akua on GB News: “That money went through JustGiving to NHS Charities Together. We never touched a penny, (we) could never have touched a penny. It was entirely designated to go to NHS Charities Together and that finished on April 30, 2020.”

She also opened up on how an inquiry into The Captain Tom Foundation has "devastated their lives", and vowed it is "time to move on".

The report by the Commission, published in late 2024, found repeated instances of misconduct and/or mismanagement by the family, who set up the charity in Captain Tom's name.

David Holdsworth, CEO of the Charity Commission, said the charity set up in his name "has not lived up to that legacy of others before self, which is central to charity"

Speaking of the impact of the investigation on her family, she told GB News: "The reality is that this has been devastating on a personal level, emotionally, financially, to have a reputation that you build up over decades demolished so quickly. That's exactly what's happened. I have my own business, but no one will touch my business now. Our lives have been devastated - financially we have been completely and utterly depleted."

When asked by Nana about the family's home, where Captain Tom fundraised almost £40 million for the NHS, Ingram-Moore revealed that after 14 "happy years together" as a family, it is "time to move on" and leave the property.

She admitted: "We will have to move in the end. There used to be seven people in this house, and now everyone's left. It's just my husband and me."

When pressed by Nana if she has "any regrets" about how the family dealt with the charity following the Commission's investigation, Ingram-Moore explained: "I want to be positive because I'm a naturally positive person, I don't want to look at life down a really dark lens, but it's hard to see the future in anything other than hard steps forward.

"People from 162 countries donated £38.9million, and they were not benefiting from the NHS. They were donating for my father, giving hope for my father, and giving them joy for something that he represented. How could we undo that? He positively touched so many people's lives. Even now, with the devastation that's happened afterwards, I'd find it really difficult to say we wouldn't do it again."

Asked about Captain Tom’s book deal, she said: “He received over 225,000 birthday cards and within this we were picking up letters and requests from publishers that he should write a book.

“It was through the PR agency that was supporting my father through all of the craziness of raising £40 million who said, ‘Well, we can introduce you to an agent. She's not one of the sharks. She'll treat you really well, Captain Tom.’

“And so she, the agent, went off at my father's behest to negotiate a book deal for him. She wasn't my agent. She was his agent, and she negotiated on behalf of my father, a terrific three-book deal. He was paid by the publisher to write those books. When he knew how much money he was going to be paid, we sat as a family and he decided what to do with it. It was his money, not my money, not the charity's money, his money for writing books, and he gave it to us.

“He was paid that money in 2020. He was still alive. If somebody had thought that he should have paid some of that money, they could have asked him, but nobody did. They waited until he died, and then came to me and said I should pay it. That book money was his.”

Asked by Nana how people got the impression that money from the book deal would be going to charity, Hannah said: “I don't really know, but let's step back and say that when he was paid that money, and…in the same moment that he decided where to put it, we said, ‘Well, look, we'll support the launch of the charity with some of that money’.

“The Charity Commission are suggesting he didn't know what he was doing. But he absolutely did know what he was doing. He knew his intentions. And the intentions on page four of the book are not an indicator that that's a charity book."

Hannah said she has paid a heavy price to defend her reputation: “The Charity Commission was saying that somehow we were twisting his desires, his actions, the things he decided to do, and that, I think, [was] worse than damaging my reputation, completely damaging [to] my family's reputation. “If you look at legal costs and associated costs, we're looking in the region of half a million pounds.”

Hannah was also asked about taking a £18,000 fee for judging an awards scheme which the Charity Commission said was a conflict of interest. On accepting a £150,000 salary as CEO of the Captain Tom Foundation, she said: “The chair said to me, what are you expecting? What kind of money are you expecting to be paid? “I said, I don't know. This is what I'm earning, and I don't know what CEOs are paid. And he went away and looked at what salaries were paid, what level of salaries were paid. We talked over a long period of time. There was never a moment when I demanded 150 or where I was offered it.

“There were plenty of numbers in there that we discussed. In the end, the Charity Commission said that I did not have any fundraising experience. They offered me a fee, a wage, and I took it. That's it.”

Asked about a memorial centre for Tom that then became known as a spa, Hannah said: “If we look at the legacy that's been left by my father, we have 225,000 birthday cards sitting in storage…there were over 100,000 other things sent sitting in different storage places that we're paying for every month to keep because we don't want to get rid of them.

“And whilst my father was still alive, we said, ‘Well, why don't we create a building to put them in?’ “That would make sense, because at least we've got them here. And what it turned into was, well, we've got so much stuff, there's so many things, we could make a memorial building, and we could also open it so people could come and see all of the things, and then it's not walking through the house, it's walking through something that's left as a legacy for him.

“We were going to set up a place, a place outside for people to have tea and coffee and chat, remember what my father stood for. We were trying to ensure that we stood for a world against ageism, supporting our aging population, and combat loneliness. That was our ambition, to keep people in the community, or whoever they came from, we have plenty of parking. It wouldn't have caused any issues. And then when we put the pool there, I had a Pilates teacher lined up who could come and do Pilates lessons for older people, who could help them with arthritis in the pool.”

Asked how she felt now the building has been demolished and if it was actually a spa, she said: “Devastated. Devastated, not just for us as a family, for the loss of all of those things and a place for people to see them, but devastated for what didn't happen.”