Cabinet minister will not use parliamentary privilege to name BBC presenter
The BBC have paused their own investigations into allegations that a suspended presenter paid a teenager for explicit images as police continue their enquiries.
Speaking at the corporation’s annual report briefing, director-general Tim Davie told reporters that they had been asked to “pause” its own inquiry and added: “We will pass on any material onto them.”
This comes after the young person at the centre of the controversy said that nothing inappropriate or unlawful happened with the unnamed BBC presenter and claimed that the allegations were “rubbish”.
A letter written by their lawyers and reported by the BBC, said: “For the avoidance of doubt, nothing inappropriate or unlawful has taken place between our client and the BBC personality and the allegations reported in the Sun newspaper are rubbish.”
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police confirmed on Monday that “there is no investigation at this time” regarding allegations that the presenter paid a teenager around £35,000 for sexually explicit images.
A statement from the Met said that detectives met with BBC representatives virtually and are “assessing the information” to establish whether there is evidence of a criminal offence.
Since the publication of the claims in The Sun last week, the presenter allegedly has made panicked phone calls to the youngster and asked “What have you done?”. It has also been claimed he asked the now 20-year-old to get their mother to “stop the investigation”.
