Documents released by communities secretary Robert Jenrick regarding his decision to approve the £1bn Westferry printworks scheme clearly show he sped up the approval in order to help the developer avoid paying a local tariff of up to £50m.

The documents show that he signalled to officials to speed up the decision-making process on the 1,500-home application on November 20, two days after he was lobbied by the developer over the issue at a Tory fundraising dinner.

Text messages exchanged between Jenrick and the owner of Westferry Developments, billionaire media mogul Richard Desmond, show Desmond asked Jenrick to intervene “as we don’t want to give Marxists a load of doe [sic] for nothing!”.

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