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Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the crisis at the BBC has provided an “opportunity” to “take away all the people who were political appointees”.
According to the PA news agency, Cooper told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme:
We Liberal Democrats don’t think that there should be any political appointees and we would like to see legislation to bring back the independent appointments process for the BBC board.
The St Albans MP added:
I do think that this crisis in the BBC provides an opportunity for us to clear up the BBC and to make sure we can safeguard its independence for future.
When you look at independent editorial decisions that have been made on particular stories, there’s no doubt in my mind that the BBC has, on a number of occasions, been pretty sloppy, and it’s been very slow at correcting them.
But I think ultimately this is an opportunity, this crisis, and the way we make the most of that, to protect the BBC, to safeguard its future and to protect its independence, is to make sure that we can take away all the people who were political appointees.
Trump says he has 'obligation' to sue BBC
Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the continuing fallout at the BBC as Donald Trump claimed the broadcaster had “defrauded the public” and he had an “obligation” to take legal action over the editing of a speech.
Director-general Tim Davie quit on Sunday amid criticisms over the editing of a speech by Trump before the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 in an edition of Panorama which aired last year just before the 2024 presidential election.
The US president reiterated his threat of launching a $1bn legal action during an interview on Fox News. He said:
I think I have an obligation to do it, you can’t allow people to do that.
I guess I have to. They defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally [the UK].
That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical.
The edit suggested Trump told the crowd:
We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.
The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart.
A legal letter, from Trump counsel Alejandro Brito, has demanded that “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” made about Trump be retracted immediately.
The letter says if the BBC “does not comply”, the president will be “left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars in damages”.
