BBC engulfed in crisis over allegations about presenter’s conduct

Receive free BBC updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest BBC news every morning.

The BBC was engulfed in a crisis on Sunday over allegations about the personal conduct of a presenter, with politicians piling pressure on the broadcaster to “get its house in order”.

The Sun newspaper reported that the unnamed star paid a teenager £35,000 for sexually explicit photos over a three-year period. The young woman was allegedly 17 years old when the payments started.

Reports that the BBC allowed the presenter to continue on air after the mother of the teenager complained in May have alarmed MPs, and led to further questions about the way the broadcaster handles such issues.

Victoria Atkins, a government minister conducting the Sunday morning broadcast round, told Sky’s Sophy Ridge: “These are very, very serious allegations.”

Atkins, Treasury minister, added: “I think as public attention and concern grows, the BBC is going to have to act very swiftly to deal with these allegations and to set out what they are doing to investigate them.”

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow chancellor, told the same programme: “It’s deeply concerning. The idea that some presenters think that they act with impunity and they can get away with these sorts of things.

“It does call into question the ethics, the investigations, how long these things take and the BBC, but also other broadcasters do need to get a grip because we seem to lurch from one scandal to another and more needs to be done.”

The BBC has so far declined to give details of its internal inquiry but said on Friday: “We treat any allegations very seriously and we have processes in place to proactively deal with them.”

The broadcaster did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

The scandal comes ahead of the publication of the BBC annual results next week, when director-general Tim Davie will need to answer questions about how it has handled a series of recent crises. 

The lack of a more detailed response from the broadcaster has led to further criticism over its handling of these scandals, with several of the BBC’s best-known faces, including Gary Lineker and Jeremy Vine, being forced to take to social media to say they were not the presenter in question, amid speculation about the star’s identity.

Earlier this year, the broadcaster was forced to back down in a row with star presenter Gary Lineker following his tweet criticising government immigration policy.

The BBC has had to launch an independent review of its social media guidelines after criticism of its handling of the situation both internally and externally. Its previous chair Richard Sharp left last month following a separate investigation into whether he had helped former prime minister Boris Johnson secure an £800,000 loan.

Reeves added: “The concerning thing, that someone makes a complaint, a very serious complaint, and then puts on the telly the next night and they’re still there. And that’s not good enough.”

Caroline Dinenage, Tory chair of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, said: “It’s vital that TV companies have in place the right systems and processes to ensure their stars, who have disproportionate power and influence over the lives and careers of others, don’t abuse it.”