ITV chief to be quizzed by MPs over Schofield safeguarding issues

The chief executive of ITV has been summoned to appear in front of UK MPs to answer questions about the broadcaster’s practices surrounding safeguarding and complaints, after a high-profile host quit over a relationship with a younger colleague.

ITV boss Carolyn McCall has agreed to appear at a specially organised session of the House of Commons culture, media and sports select committee on June 14. It will scrutinise the broadcaster’s duty of care to staff after presenter Phillip Schofield acknowledged having the affair with a young staff member before stepping down from the channel.

Schofield, who hosted ITV daytime talk show This Morning for two decades and also appeared on primetime ITV programmes, resigned from the broadcaster last week and was released by his talent agency YMU after acknowledging an “unwise, but not illegal” relationship with a younger male employee.

In a letter to the DCMS committee chair, media regulator Ofcom and the culture secretary on Wednesday, McCall said that ITV had instructed barrister Jane Mulcahy KC to conduct an external review of the case. This is expected to report in the next few months following conversations with those involved, according to people close to the broadcaster.

Responding to McCall’s letter, Caroline Dinenage, the Conservative MP who runs the committee, wrote in a letter on Thursday that the Schofield case “raises fundamental issues about safeguarding and complaint-handling both at ITV and more widely across the media”. She added that public service broadcasters such as ITV should particularly “be open to scrutiny”.

Executives from the BBC and Channel 4 will be asked similar questions about safeguarding procedures in “regular scrutiny sessions” scheduled for later in the year, Dinenage added.

In her letter on Wednesday, McCall explained how ITV managers had questioned Schofield, the younger employee and Schofield’s agents about the relationship after social media rumours began circulating in late 2019. All parties “both categorically and repeatedly denied the rumours”.

Schofield, who said he was gay and separated from his wife in 2020, said he had “lied” to ITV, his colleagues, his agents and reporters about the affair when announcing his resignation last week. McCall said ITV has been supporting the younger employee, who left the broadcaster in 2021, throughout the period.

McCall said in her letter that the broadcaster felt “badly let down” by Schofield’s misrepresentations. She stressed that its investigation of the initial rumours was “reasonable and proportionate” and that it had “robust and well-established processes in place which allow anyone who works with us to raise concerns they may have anonymously”.

McCall has run ITV for five years following a stint as chief executive of easyJet. She has focused on pivoting ITV away from the declining traditional broadcast model by launching its steaming platform ITVX in December and increasing emphasis on its ITV Studios arm, which accounted for nearly half of revenues last year.

Shares in the London-listed group are down 6 per cent over the past fortnight, deepening a 58 per cent share price decline over the past five years.

The ITV boss has had to grapple with other issues relating to high-profile presenters during her tenure. Piers Morgan quit ITV’s breakfast show Good Morning Britain in 2021 and McCall axed the Jeremy Kyle Show last year after more than a decade on air following the suspected suicide of a guest.

She also appeared in front of MPs in 2019 to answer questions about ITV’s duty of care to staff after the presenter of Love Island and three former contestants took their own lives.