The BBC should consider paying compensation to whistleblowers whose careers were affected after raising concerns about Martin Bashir following his Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales and needs to be transparent about why he was rehired, a senior Tory MP has said.
In his report released on Thursday, Lord Dyson found Bashir had commissioned fake bank statements that falsely suggested people were being paid to monitor Diana so as to gain access to her. He called this a “serious breach” of the BBC’s editorial guidelines.
Julian Knight, the chairman of the Commons culture and media committee, said he had written to the director general, Tim Davie, asking for a response to questions prior to a private meeting next week.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Saturday, Knight said he wanted to know why Bashir, who left the BBC in 1999, was rehired in 2016 as religion editor.
“I have asked him what were the processes that were put in place around the rehiring of Martin Bashir,” he said. “We do have some grave concerns. Despite the fact the investigation was considered woeful, they still found he had lied three times and also he had had to resign from a mediocre American network, so why was he considered good enough for the BBC? I have to say there are a lot of questions.”
Asked if Bashir was rehired to “keep him quiet,” Knight said there were suspicions about that and he wanted “transparency and answers” from the BBC.
He has also urged Davie to meet the graphic designer, Matt Wiessler, who said he was sidelined after disclosing he had been commissioned by Bashir to produce fake documents.
“I think they need to get on the phone to him,” Knight told the Today. “He is clearly very emotional as he feels that this has probably impaired his life to a certain degree, which is often the experience of whistleblowers who aren’t listened to.
“I think the BBC needs to have a real open mind in terms of the possibility of compensation but also how it interacts with people like Wiessler, who clearly has faced quite profound consequences due to this fiasco.”
Earlier on Today, the BBC’s former chief operating officer Caroline Thomson, said it was crucial that the BBC acted quickly to restore trust.
She said whistleblowers in the Diana case should be “dealt with properly and compensated if necessary, properly apologised to”, and called for a series of measures to regain trust “among BBC journalists and staff as well as among the public”.
Michael Grade, the former BBC chairman who is now a member of a government panel looking into the future of public service broadcasting, has called for the creation of a BBC editorial board of independent journalists, although it is understood there are no immediate government plans for this.
The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, who will lead the midterm charter review, has said he would consider whether further governance reforms are needed.
Newsnight has reported that the corporation will be given a chance to introduce the changes itself.
On possible changes to BBC governance, Thomson suggested the introduction of a new non-executive board member with dedicated responsibility for news and editorial matters who could be “the face of transparency” and available to those who felt the need to whistleblow.
Knight, however, said editorial policy needed to be strengthened at the BBC but questioned Grade’s proposal.
“I do wonder whether or not it will be a talking shop full of people with big salaries. The BBC does have a lot of boards,” he said.
“What I would propose is that Tim Davie thinks again on his decision to remove the head of editorial policy of the executive committee. I do have concerns with the BBC that editorial policy does not have a loud enough voice and there is a bit of kowtowing to talent.”
Jonathan Dimbleby, whose interview with Prince Charles in 1994 was famously when the heir to the throne first admitted infidelity, told Today that Bashir was a “consummate conman and liar”.
“He played on her existing fears of vulnerabilities. She was a very troubled and well known by that time to be a damaged woman and he very skilfully played on those to secure that interview,” he said.
