MPs question key BBC figures amid editorial crises – latest updates

Michael Prescott, author of leaked memo, and former adviser Caroline Daniel first to face grilling

Prescott is the first to respond, acknowledging “the saga does begin with that memo that I wrote”, which he says he wrote because “let me be clear, because I am a strong supporter of the BBC.”

What troubled me was that during my three years on the BBC’s standards committee, we kept seeing incipient problems, which I thought were not being tackled properly. And indeed, I thought the problems were getting worse.

“I would like it to happen, but it can only happen successfully if the BBC, I think, does a better job addressing these incipient and growing problems of the type that the Standards Committee kept identifying. And that’s why I tried to alert the BBC board to what was going on. And indeed thereafter sent a memo on to Ofcom and DCMs. There was no ideology at play here, no party politics.”