BBC may not be in ‘safe hands’ with chairman, says head of culture committee

The chairman of the culture select committee has questioned whether the BBC board is in “safe hands” with its chairman Samir Shah after he was unable to give “direct answers” at an evidence session focusing on impartiality.

Mr Shah gave evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Monday and was asked about the action he would take following a leaked memo from former editorial adviser Michael Prescott which raised concerns that a speech by US President Donald Trump, featured in a Panorama episode, was selectively edited.

The fallout from the report, which saw Mr Trump threaten the BBC with a billion-dollar litigation, led to the resignation of both director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme, chairwoman of the CMS Committee Dame Caroline Dinenage said there is “chaos at the heart of the BBC board” and “clearly some issues of governance”.

“Samir Shah didn’t really have any direct answers to some of the questions that we asked”, she said.

“We were talked through how the decision to apologise over the Panorama editing error was made, but it became very clear that the board were well aware of that error and that issue many, many months ago.

“And as a chair of the select committee I was just very keen to get to the bottom of why it was that suddenly, now this sort of profuse apology came forward.

“Was it because they had 500 complaints from members of the public? Was it because it was subject of multiple reports in the newspaper, or was it because they’re being threatened with legal action by the president of the United States.

“And it was quite difficult to get a straight answer to those questions.”

After Mr Prescott’s report became public the chairman apologised on behalf of the BBC over an “error of judgment” and accepted that the editing of the speech gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action”.

The programme, broadcast a week before the 2024 US election results, spliced two clips together so that Mr Trump appeared to tell the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

Dame Caroline said: “There’s clearly some chaos at the heart of the BBC board, but, but then there’s sort of more systemic issues beyond that, and we were really looking for hard evidence that the BBC board are going to grip this, I’m not entirely convinced that they can and that they will.”

She added: “I don’t think as a committee, we were wildly enthused that the the board is in safe hands.”

Following reports of the leaked memo, it took nearly a week for the BBC to issue an apology and Mr Shah admitted the corporation was too slow in responding to the Panorama edit of Mr Trump.

Asked if someone else should take over as chair after a new director-general is appointed, Dame Caroline said: “Well I mean, obviously that’s… that’s a matter for the BBC board.

“And the two members that appeared in front of us today, said that they had full confidence in the chair… but I think we’re going to need to see a lot more robust answers to questions like the ones we were posing today.

“Everything was very wishy washy. There wasn’t a huge sense that there was grip at the at the heart of the BBC governance.”

Mr Shah also told the CMS Committee on Monday that he was “inclined” to restructure the BBC’s executive committee after commenting that the role of director-general is “too big for one person”.