Tim Davie resigns live updates: Trump slams ‘dishonest’ BBC after director general and news CEO Deborah Turness quit

Members of the BBC’s board should face scrutiny in Parliament before being appointed, a former controller of BBC Radio 4 has said.

Mark Damazer told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “we know too little” about non-executive directors at the corporation.

“I think that those members of the board who want to be on the board, as it were, non-executive directors, ought each and every one of them come up for parliamentary scrutiny and be made to sing for their supper before they’re appointed, because we know too little about them,” Mr Damazer said.

“I don’t think they’re properly interrogated before they take these posts. Now that at least is a reform that should be carried out.

“But I don’t think the whole thing is about governance. It’s about trying to be proportionate and reasonable and calibrate successfully the BBC errors, because there are, and the Trump one clearly was, and weigh that in the balance against the all round excellence and quality of what the BBC does.”

Former regulator at Ofcom, Stewart Purvis, didn’t expect the resignations to come so quickly.

“There were so many roars going on inside the BBC board with the news management that they couldn’t agree this statement,” he told Sky News.

“That’s why we’ve waited a week for the statement.”

He explained that Deborah Turness may have realised she no longer had the support of the board.

“I suspect Tim Davie thought it might be an appropriate moment to get out as well,” he added.

The chairwoman of the Parliament committee set to receive a response from the BBC’s chairman has said she is “very sad” about director-general Tim Davie’s resignation, but said he “ignored” issues raised in Michael Prescott’s report.

Dame Caroline Dinenage, who chairs the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Mr Davie quitting was a “very avoidable course of action”.

“I’m very sad about Tim Davie stepping down. I think he was an effective leader at the BBC. I think he was a great champion for public service media, but there is no escaping the fact that he was very slow to act on this particular issue. But this isn’t the first time and on this particular issue, Michael Prescott’s report, he just didn’t take it seriously until it was too late.

“He should have reacted with concern and examined the claims, but just ignored it.

“But you know, I do feel it was entirely avoidable and it’s really regretful given the huge commitment to the BBC and public service that Tim Davie demonstrated.”

She added that she thinks it seems “a little bit odd” that her committee has not yet heard from the BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown said Tim Davie and Deborah Turness should have apologised instantly.

Speaking on Sky News he said: “You’ve got to be trusted, and I think the problem that the BBC has had is this happened a year ago, and an apology should be made instantly if a mistake has been made, you’ve got to apologise instantly.”

“Then I don’t think Tim Davie or the head of news would have had to resign because they would have corrected the mistake immediately.”

He added that instead it went “unreported” and “unacknowledged”.

The BBC’s board has not properly defended the corporation, a former Downing Street communications chief has suggested.

Sir Craig Oliver, who is also a former BBC news executive, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the problems at the corporation “matter”, adding “the BBC is an enormous institution with a huge impact on British life”.

“What I think has gone wrong here, I think is really an issue of the governance of the institution,” Sir Craig said.

“We’re living in a fast-moving digital world where there are a lot of people who want to attack the BBC, and what we’ve seen is really a vacuum that has been created.

“It’s been obvious for days now that the BBC needed to step up, explain, apologise, move on.

“And what we’ve seen is the governance of the BBC saying, ‘we’ll get back to you on Monday – we’ll leave that for days. We’ll allow the President of the United States to be attacking the institution, and we’re not going to properly defend it’.”

The Independent’s Whitehall editor Kate Devlin reports…

A minister has said it is “fundamentally important” that the BBC represents the “full spectrum” of views.

Speaking to Sky News, defence minister Louise Sandher-Jones said: “One thing I’ve found really interesting as a constituency MP is I meet such a broad range of people who have such a broad range of views.”

She later added: “It’s absolutely fundamentally important that the BBC as our national broadcaster represents the full spectrum of those views.

“I think that is quite a challenging thing to do, but nonetheless it’s an incredibly important duty, which I know it seeks to uphold across all of its wide wide range of programming.”

Asked whether she does think the corporation does reflect those views, Ms Sandher-Jones said: “I think on the whole it does.”

Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, has said we must “stand up for a free press” and “free speech”, responding to news that the BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness have resigned.

“The BBC isn’t perfect, but it remains one of the few institutions standing between our British values and a populist, Trump-style takeover of our politics,” he said.

“The resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness must be an opportunity for the BBC to turn a new leaf, rebuild trust and not give in to the likes of Nigel Farage who want to destroy it.

“As a public service broadcaster, the BBC’s role is vital in ensuring our democracy is based on facts, scrutiny, and accountability.

“We must stand up for a free press, free speech, and a strong, independent BBC, to stop Trump’s America becoming Farage’s Britain.”

The BBC should “take impartiality seriously”, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph has said.

Lord Charles Moore told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that now Tim Davie and Deborah Turness had resigned “this [the BBC] will be better, or if it isn’t better that really is the end of the BBC because now you [the BBC] have the chance to take impartiality seriously”.

He added: “First thing you have to do is admit you’re wrong instead of trying to defend yourself in this ridiculous way.

“All the BBC bias goes in one direction… the memo goes, it could go much, much further, but it’s about trans issues, identity, race, Trump, Israel, Gaza… it’s always from a sort of metropolitan, left position absolutely consistently. That’s how the bias is.

“So that means that it’s not serving a very large percentage of the licence fee-payers.

“I’m not, of course, saying that it should be right-wing either. I’m saying it should take impartiality seriously and put in people capable of running this gigantic and self-satisfied bureaucracy.”

Government minister Louise Sandher-Jones rejected suggestions the BBC was institutionally biased.

The veterans minister told Sky News: “When you look at the huge range of domestic issues, local issues, international issues, that it has to cover, I think its output is very trusted.

“When I speak to people who’ve got very strongly held views on those, they’re still using the BBC for a lot of their information, it’s forming their views on this.

“I think we can all point to elements of BBC broadcasting of news and say ‘well, that reflects my views, and that doesn’t’ and that’s absolutely right, that we should be able to say that.”

Asked about Donald Trump’s comments on the BBC, she said: “President Trump will obviously speak for himself.

“Tim Davie and Deborah Turness have been quite clear that it’s their decision that they’ve stepped down and I note that the board has thanked them for their service and had said that it had supported them.

“But they’ve, as they’ve said, taken accountability for what the BBC has put out. I think it is very important that public figures have accountability.”