S Poddar
The BBC has requested that former newsreader Huw Edwards return £200,000 of his salary following the revelation that he was involved in a child pornography case. At one time the highest-paid presenter at the BBC, Edwards was accused of seriously bringing discredit upon the broadcaster.
Back in November of last year, Edwards was arrested when South Wales police found his contact information on a convicted paedophile’s phone. That eventually led to him finally pleading guilty to creating indecent images of children. With the charges pressed against him still, he was allowed to have his full salary even after his arrest, and the BBC is now doing something about it.
For his part, the chair of the BBC, Samir Shah, hid little as he felt that Edwards was clearly a “villain” who had “betrayed the trust of staff and audiences” by leading a double life. Shah emphasized in an email to BBC employees that Edwards had never come clean with his wrongdoings during earlier probes by the Corporation when he was arrested. Shah said Edwards knew he had accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds of licence fee-payers’ money at a time when he was aware of his own guilt.
The legal situation is also quite complex; there is no open-and-shut case for recovery of the £200,000 already paid to Edwards. Instead, the corporation is calling for Edwards to return it, citing that the presenter had not come clean on his situation when first asked about the charges brought against him. According to Shah, the wrongs are grave, partly because Edwards continued to receive a paycheck as he was under such serious legal scrutiny.
The Edwards scandal broke last summer when The Sun revealed financial transactions he had with a young man in return for explicit pictures. Other accusations then surfaced, including inappropriate messages he had sent to younger BBC employees. The revelations led to Edwards being placed on medical leave with full pay.
It has also attracted criticism that the BBC moved not to immediately sack Edwards after his arrest. Only very few senior managers at the BBC had been told about the fall arrest of Edwards, including its Director General Tim Davie and the BBC News chief, Deborah Turness. It was finally agreed not to dismiss Edwards as charges against him still had to be officially filed and it wasn’t known what he would plead, which now some within the BBC are regretting.
By the time he left the BBC in April, Edwards had already taken home a huge amount while on leave. His salary, when he quit, had just been risen to £435,000. This has infuriated BBC staff, who face redundancies and below-inflation pay rises. This has been fueled by the fact that he continued to pick up his massive salary despite these charges against him.
The BBC board praised strong support for Davie’s decision on how he had handled the incident, though they have also shifted part of the blame onto Edwards. They concededed that, contractual committments to the host and knowledge available at the time considered, Davie and his team did the best they could. But they have since sanction seeking a refund in Edwards’ salary, saying that had Edwards come clean about the arrest, they would never have commited public money to continuing his pay.
The fallout from the Edwards case has prompted the BBC board to commission an independent review, under which recommendations are to be made for strengthening its workplace culture. It will look at how the BBC can align its practice at work more closely with its values, so that a repetition of such incidents is avoided.
With closer scrutiny—especially from the new Conservative-led Commons Culture Select Committee when parliament returns in September—increasingly required is accountability. “I’m not going to interfere in the BBC’s day-to-day business,” said culture secretary Lisa Nandy, though she has had discussions with the BBC chair over the Edwards case. He said people working at the BBC should feel safe in the knowledge that all noneditorial complaints against them would be dealt with quickly and fairly.
The Huw Edwards scandal has undoubtedly marred the reputation of the BBC, raising serious questions about internal processes at the broadcaster and the standard of its top-level executives. The fallout from this case underlines the fact that institutions matter for transparency and accountability.
