BBC’s new probe must ensure Edwards-type scandal can never happen & that broadcaster genuinely changes
Fix the BBC
SCANDAL after scandal, followed by one failed internal “review” after another.
Will the BBC finally make this new one count?
We wearily welcome the independent probe now commissioned into the battered corporation’s workplace culture.
But previous efforts have appeared little more than futile box-ticking exercises.
Why will this be any different?
It is hardly reassuring that the firm hired to carry it out “also led the work on the BBC’s 2013 Respect at Work Review”.
Clearly no one paid that any attention.
Because since then the Beeb has been rocked by the Huw Edwards and Strictly bullying scandals — both brought to light only thanks to Sun investigations.
The BBC seems to learn nothing.
Jimmy Savile, Stuart Hall, Rolf Harris, the lies of Martin Bashir.
What seems to link these shocking cases is a management desperate to circle its wagons around the “talent”, turning a deaf ear instead of fully investigating and exposing abuses of power or even crime.
The new review must be different.
It must tackle exactly what went wrong over its handling of Edwards, given years of internal rumours about his behaviour and the complaints then made by a family directly against him.
It must lead to cast-iron processes which allow staff to speak out with confidence — and for any allegations to be properly looked into even if they threaten to disgrace a household name.
BBC chairman Samir Shah is “fully committed to tackling inappropriate or abusive behaviour”. Great.
Let The Sun’s exposing of the corporation’s top newsreader be the earthquake it needed.
Let this new probe be the first to secure genuine change.
Let it ensure that another Edwards-type scandal can never happen at this broadcaster we are all still forced to fund.
Grow figure
WHY, at every turn, does a Government supposedly so committed to growth seem hell-bent on crushing it?
Net Zero is a recipe for an economic boom only in the minds of ardent eco warriors who need to pretend it won’t be the wrecking ball most sensible people fear.
But even green zealots cannot surely believe new carbon taxes on businesses would be anything but ruinous.
One of the Chancellor’s top aides, bizarrely, seems to like the idea.
“Around the world, even the places with a carbon tax are way lower than I think anybody thinks are necessary to get the kind of transition we want to,” says John Van Reenen, head of Rachel Reeves’ council of economic advisers.
His group’s remit is to lead us towards higher growth.
He seems far less interested in that than he is in Miliband-style eco-signalling.