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Summary
Current and former BBC executives have been grilled by MPs after an inquiry castigated the “deceitful way” in which the landmark 1995 interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, was obtained by the then Panorama journalist Martin Bashir – and the “woeful incompetence” of the internal investigation that followed.
Here’s a summary of the evidence the Commons’ digital, culture, media and sport committee heard from former director generals Lord Hall and Lord Birt, as well as the incumbent Tim Davie and the BBC chair Richard Sharp:
- Martin Bashir perpetrated “one of the biggest crimes in the history of broadcasting”, Lord Birt said. The director general at the time of the original broadcast was scathing in his criticism of Bashir, laying the vast majority of the blame for the scandal at his door and calling him a “serial liar on an industrial scale”.
- The BBC has spoken directly to the royal household to express remorse, the serving director general said. Referring to the moment he heard Prince William’s criticism of the broadcaster, Davie said: “It was upsetting and it was a sad day.” He added: “I have engaged with the royal household directly.”
- And Lord Hall said he deeply regretted the BBC’s failings. He told the MPs that he had not expressed this directly to Prince William because he felt he needed to face the Commons first.
- But the former director general denied presiding over a cover-up. He told the committee that, while he accepted his investigation had been inadequate, that did not mean he had “tried to conceal from the public” its findings. He also said he and his colleagues had failed in their duty to “get to the bottom of the lies”.
- Lord Birt called the episode an “absolute horror story and it should never have happened”. But he was less forthcoming when asked if he accepted Prince William’s assertion that the interview had formed part of the “culture of exploitation and unethical practices that ultimately took [Diana’s] life”, saying it was not possible to truly understand the consequences.
- Bashir would not have been rehired, had the full facts been known, executives said. Lord Hall said: “If we knew then what we know now, of course he wouldn’t have been rehired.” Davie later agreed.
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But Lord Birt said he had no concerns about Bashir while he was in his first stint at the BBC. He told the committee his doubts started only after Bashir “got into trouble in America and the appalling things he said about Sarah Palin and his ill-judged comments about Asian babes.”
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The questioning has moved on to other aspects of the running of BBC News. Davie says the “organisation will be a little smaller”. He says:
There is not, by the way, a news organisation in the world that isn’t going through serious reform.
And that concludes the day’s final evidence session.
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Asked about the programming of children’s content at the corporation, in relation to the likes of Tiny Happy People, Davie has said:
I think within our strategy now is doubling down on Bitesize, the numbers for Bitesize, particularly interestingly among all demographics and to put it on linear television during the pandemic was an outstanding success for us so I think you’ll see further investment in Bitesize.
In programmes like Tiny Happy People, we’re just looking at how we evolve them but overall, CBeebies is a brand that, we are under pressure from the likes of Disney and others, and the jeopardy is there, but the truth is what we need to do is make sure we are differentiated... and not frankly becoming a US-style cartoon network to coin a phrase.
We’ve got good plans and excellent leadership of the children’s area in the BBC.
The chair of the BBC, Richard Sharp, tells the MPs he believes there was a “confirmation bias”, a desire to see the best in Martin Bashir and possibly ... “overlooking and underestimating some of the ethical considerations he demonstrated in his private behaviour” when deciding to rehire him.
Nicholson tells Davie it is suspicious that the document submitted by Tim Gardam could not be found among BBC archives and that the extent of the failings only came to light as a result of a copy of it being uncovered elsewhere.
Davie responds that it was only as a result of the external inquiry he ordered that that copy was found. Nicholson, responding, tells Davie this was no thanks to the BBC and that his hand had been forced because the story was reported in other outlets after Spencer had given up on engaging with the BBC directly.
Davie is asked to account for his treatment of Earl Spencer when he recently tried to raise concerns and, in the words of John Nicholson MP, was given the impression a cover-up would be launched.
Davie says he offered Spencer the opportunity to make clear what he knew. Nicholson responds, telling him Spencer inferred he would be offered nothing more than an internal investigation and that Davie’s tone had been “dismissive”.
Dave repeats that his goal was to find out and assess the strength of the evidence Spencer had before ordering a costly external investigation.
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Asked if he thinks Bashir profited from the interview with Diana, Davie said:
It was certainly an important interview for his career, it was a landmark interview. In terms of joining that up in where that leads, I think that is beyond my expertise, but it was a career-defining interview.
Witnesses earlier had suggested he did not profit from the interview, while the chair of the committee had claimed his future earnings were dependent on it.
BBC has apologised directly to royals, says serving director general
Asked how he felt when hearing about criticism from Prince William, the BBC’s director general Tim Davie has said:
It was upsetting and it was a sad day. Primarily, I felt deep sympathy for the sons of Princess Diana. And, as you know, we offered and have offered an unconditional apology.
And that was the primary thing in my mind, clearly, for us as an institution that cares so deeply and has an outstanding track record in terms of journalistic integrity. It was a very low moment for us ... I have engaged with the royal household directly.
Davie declined to reveal whom he had spoken to, saying the meetings were private and in confidence – and that he is bound to respect that.
Asked about the process of rehiring Bashir, Davie says the 1996 review was seen as definitive and that the documentation the BBC had at the time and on which it based its decision have subsequently been shown to be inadequate.
Davie says he does not believe the BBC held any evidence at the time that would have contradicted that. While he says the 1996 report identified some wrongdoing, it was not of a sufficient scale to prevent Bashir’s return.
In terms of the BBC position, it all goes back to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the 1996 investigation, which was seen as the definitive summary of the affair.
That was internally the record. It took the new evidence when I was DG that led to us appointing Lord Dyson and conducting a very thorough review.
In terms of the rehiring the docs on record and available were those that we have seen to be inadequate in terms of their exposure of the whole story.
Davie agrees with Hall that, had all of the information had been available at the time, Bashir would not have been rehired.
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Tim Davie, the current director general, and the BBC chair Richard Sharp are now giving evidence. The former begins by denying he was reluctant to order a new review of Bashir’s actions.
He says an investigation on the scale that would be required would be a substantial undertaking and he was, therefore, justified in trying to gather some evidence first. He says he acted “deliberately”.
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That concludes Birt’s evidence – there’s going to be brief adjournment before the final session.
'One of the biggest crimes in the history of broadcasting'
Birt, summarising his view on Bashir, tells the MPs:
There is a terrible irony in all of this because [Bashir] starts his BBC career on Songs of Praise and ends it as the BBC’s religious editor. And, in between, perpetrates one of the biggest crimes in the history of broadcasting.
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Birt says he “would like to understand” why Lord Hall and a fellow BBC executive Anne Sloman had not seen fit to pass on the findings of an investigation by Tim Gardam, the former head of weekly programmes.
The report says that Bashir did tell Gardam about the faking of the documents, but was told by the journalist that he had not shown them to anyone.
Well, I would like to understand why he and and Sloman, didn’t not only unveil that but understand why they took the view that it wasn’t worth reporting on.
Birt says he suspected that his colleagues felt Bashir had offered sufficient justification for not being truthful about his practices.
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Lord Birt is refusing to apologise to the graphic designer who mocked up the bank statements that helped Bashir secure the interview and who the report into the scandal exonerated.
Matt Wiessler was praised by Lord Dyson for acting “responsibly and appropriately” after he blew the whistle on Bashir when he realised how the fake statements had been used. Birt says he views Wiessler as a whistleblower and does not “have enough evidence” to explain why he was fired after speaking up.
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Lord Birt developed doubts about Bashir after he left BBC
Asked if he had any concerns about Martin Bashir while he was at the BBC, Lord Birt says:
[There were] absolutely no alarm bells at all. For all the reasons I talked about earlier, earlier. [He has] the quiet, gentle emotionally sympathetic manner that you see in the interview itself. No, there were no alarm bells.
To me, [it was] when he got into trouble in America and the appalling things he said about Sarah Palin and his ill-judged comments about Asian babes.
And, to be honest, also – nobody else has mentioned this – I felt very uneasy about what he did with Michael Jackson. And that was the first time my doubts started to kick in. And you can’t be definitive about what he did with Michael Jackson but I never liked the smell of that and the failure to reach proper conclusions in that. So I did subsequently think: ‘I’m not sure about this person’.
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'An absolute horror story and it should never have happened'
Birt is asked by the Tory MP Steve Brine whether he accepts the episode helped worsen Diana’s mental state and, as a result, “sparked a train of events which less than two years later would see the events in that underpass in Paris”. He says:
It is a tragic occurrence. It is an absolute horror story and it should never have happened. And it is a complete embarrassment that it did happen.
None of us can speculate. My heart goes out to the sons of Princess Diana but none of us can truly understand what the consequences were. What we can understand is that this was a plane crash.
And you probably want to discuss how it might have been avoided and what the BBC might do to ensure that it never happens again.
Bashir a 'serial liar on an industrial scale' – Lord Birt
Lord Birt tells the MPs that Bashir’s deception was “on a very, very significant scale”. He adds:
I don’t think the scale of his deception has remotely been understood in the public discourse, and were to completely different perceptions, you can’t understand what happened.
He describes an elaborate two-pronged campaign of deception set out by Bashir that was both “cunning and callous”. He labels Bashir’s approach:
Extensive, cunning considered and deeply callous because of the impact it had on many of the individuals concerned. And he was utterly oblivious of the harm that he was causing.
But that was the backdrop that he presented and the essence of the story, from my point of view. And, by the way, I have only understood the story I’ve just recounted over recent weeks and months. The essence of the story is that he fooled the BBC executives concerned.
Lord Birt calls Bashir a “serial liar on an industrial scale”.
Lord Birt, who was director general at the time the interview was originally broadcast, is now giving evidence. He is asked at what point the BBC management became aware of the allegations. He says:
Of course, it depends what allegations you mean. But the report from Lord Hall, which has already been discussed, went to the board of management and the board of governors and it was on the basis of those reports that an understanding was reached.
Here’s a little more detail on Hall’s comments on the rehiring of Bashir. Asked if it was likely that the journalists who handled it did not know about the scandal surrounding him, Hall said:
What I understand from the report I read yesterday from the BBC was the head of newsgathering had spoken to Steve Hewlett, the former editor of Panorama, and had been briefed by him and then the judgment about Martin Bashir’s re-employment was made by him and by James Harding so in that sense that was his due diligence.
We didn’t know 25 years ago the scale of what Martin Bashir had done to gain access to the Princess of Wales through Earl Spencer.
As we reported earlier, he then added:
If we knew now, through Lord Dyson, what we know about Martin Bashir then of course he wouldn’t have been re-employed.
That’s the conclusion of Lord Hall’s evidence. Lord John Birt, a fellow former director general of the BBC, is due next in a couple of minutes.
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Former BBC director general denies covering up Bashir scandal
Nicholson closes by accusing Hall of presiding over a “cover-up”. The former BBC director general, taking issue with this, asks to comment. He tells the MPs:
Number one: I accept we should have spoken to Earl Spencer, I accept that conclusion from Lord Dyson’s report that one of us should have gone back to Spencer on this issue of the documents; I accept that.
But can I also say that we have not tried to conceal from the public – or anyone – any of the conclusions we came to around this 25 years ago?
The notion that there’s been some consistent line that we’ve drawn under this trying to conceal something for the public is not true. We thought we’d come to a conclusion 25 years ago; an honest conclusion based on somebody who was contrite and was prepared to see he had made a big mistake.
So what we thought was inexperienced out of his depth, we’ve got that wrong, we believed in, and I’m sorry for that.
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The SNP’s John Nicholson tells Hall he believes it “implausible” he was not involved in the rehiring of Bashir as religious affairs correspondent in 2016 – as the investigation by the BBC executive Ken MacQuarrie has found.
Nicholson calls that report a “whitewash”. Hall retorts:
Well, I don’t think it is because it’s reporting what I know to be the case as well ... But no, I was not constantly asking for briefings about one correspondent in one part of the news operation. Neither would I expect to be, running the BBC.
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Hall 'deeply sorry' to Diana's family
Hall is asked about comments made by Prince William, who said his mother was “failed, not just by a rogue reporter, but by leaders at the BBC, who looked the other way, rather than asking the tough questions”. He says:
I regret deeply that we didn’t get to the bottom of Martin Bashir and what happened 25 years ago.
We did what we thought was right at the time investigating Martin Bashir, not once but also twice. And I have a huge amount of respect for the prince – I’ve worked with him on various things in the past and I’m deeply sorry for the hurt this has caused to him, and I really do want to make that clear.
Asked if he has expressed this to William, he said:
No I haven’t. I wanted to have this session with you all before I think what I do next
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Hall tells MPs that he is not sure why the BBC decided not to report on the Bashir story when it first broke, saying that he leaves it to individual editors to decide whether or not matters involving the running of the institution are newsworthy. He says:
The way in which BBC editors report on the BBC and the independence within which they report on the BBC is an important part of our contract with the public.
Hall said it was the “wrong judgment” to believe Bashir had been remorseful for his actions surrounding the Panorama interview.
The decision that we had to make, and it is a decision lots of managers have to make in lots of different places, if someone breaches the guidelines and it is the first time they have done it, do you say: ‘That’s it, farewell, you’re sacked’ or do you say: ‘Alright, you are remorseful, we will give you a second chance.’ And that is what we did.
And we did it listening to him having talked to him 25 years ago. Now, in the light of what I know now about Bashir, was that the wrong judgment? Yes it was, but we trusted him and we clearly shouldn’t have.
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BBC didn't get to the bottom of Bashir's lies – Hall
Lord Hall is asked if he agrees with Lord Dyson’s conclusion that his investigation process was “woefully ineffective”.
He says the report found that Diana was not deceived into actually doing the interview, though there were concerns about how Bashir had got close to her. He says their second investigation resulted in Bashir being given a “yellow card”.
He says he and his team didn’t “get to the bottom of the lies” but insists they weren’t trying to conceal anything, that they were lied to and their trust in him had been misplaced. “He took us all in,” he says.
But he accepts that it was a mistake for his team not to have gone to Diana’s brother Earl Spencer to find out what he knew.
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Hall is asked why he decided to believe Bashir “given that you knew that he’d already lied at least three times”.
The former director general says Bashir told him he had already met the Princess of Wales before he concocted the documents, which were to be used for a later programme. Because Bashir was upset, contrite and out of his depth, Hall says they decided to believe him.
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Asked why Bashir was allowed to “moonlight” for ITV, Lord Hall again defers to his middle management, saying it is not for the director-general of an organisation as large as the BBC to get involved in matters such as deployment or payment of individual correspondents.
The Tory chair of the committee, an increasingly exasperated Julian Knight, tells Hall “we’re getting nowhere” and moves on.
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Hall is asked whether the hiring process was “concocted” to ensure that Bashir got the job. But he says:
By looking at the report yesterday – and I can only read it as you can – I can see no reason to say this a shoo-in for Mr Bashir.
Bashir would not have been rehired had we known what we know now – Hall
Referring to the rehiring of Martin Bashir, Hall points out that a report found no evidence to suggest Bashir was employed to aid a cover-up of the events surrounding the 1995 Panorama programme.
Hall also tells the MPs he did not get personally involved in the hiring process. Asked why he did not get involved once he realised what had happened, he said it is not possible to do so when running such a large organisation and that he trusted his subordinates to get it right. He adds:
It’s also clear that, if we knew then what we know now, of course he wouldn’t have been rehired.
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Lord Hall adds that he set up a fresh inquiry after an ongoing member of staff reported concerns about faked documents and Bashir was “contrite and in tears”.
We then decided at that point, there was a clear breach of those editorial guidelines on straight dealing straight dealing with people who are prospective candidates for a programme.
But Hall says he decided to give Bashir a second chance because of his contrition.
Lord Hall opens his evidence by saying that he does not believe it was inappropriate to have called Martin Bashir an “honest and honourable” man 25 years ago, saying that he had looked into the matter and been told by Diana that she had been shown no faked documents.
That meant, he said, that he was justified in taking the view that he could trust Bashir.
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BBC bosses to face MPs
Senior BBC figure are about to give evidence to MPs investigating the circumstances surrounding Martin Bashir’s interview with Diana, Princess of Wales – three weeks after a report by Lord Dyson found that Bashir was duplicitous in his approach to securing the interview and guilty of a “serious breach” of BBC guidelines.
Dyson found that Bashir had commissioned phoney bank transactions by a graphic designer who worked for the BBC. They purported to show payments from News International into the account of Alan Waller, a former security guard for Earl Spencer, to induce Spencer to arrange a meeting with Diana, his sister.
Spencer accused Bashir of using this to convince him to help the journalist get close enough to his sister to secure the interview. Here’s the running order:
- The former BBC director-general Lord Tony Hall will be questioned shortly
- Lord John Birt, also a former director-general, is due up at 10.45am
- Tim Davie, the current director-general, and the chair Richard Sharp will give evidence from 11.30am
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