The BBC should make an immediate public statement that it will refrain from threatening David Cameron by placing an empty chair in his place if he declines to take part in a head-to-head election television debate with Ed Miliband, Michael Grade has said.
The Conservative peer and former chairman of the corporation said that broadcasters risked breaching rules on impartiality as he accused them of “bullying” politicians.
Lord Grade, who served as chairman of the BBC board of governors between 2004 and 2006, described the negotiations as a “shambles” as he defended the prime minister, who insisted on Monday that he would not change his position on the television debates.
Cameron has agreed to take part in one debate with six other party leaders. He has said this must take place in the week beginning Monday 23 March – before the formal start of the election campaign the following week with the dissolution of parliament – in a challenge to the broadcasters, who say the debates must take place in April.
The prime minister has also declined to take part in a second seven-strong debate and one head-to-head debate with Miliband, the opposition Labour leader, on 30 April, prompting the broadcasters to warn that they would place an empty chair in his place.
Grade told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday that it was right the broadcasters should organise the debates but said political leaders should be free to decide whether to take part.
Grade said: “The idea that broadcasters can threaten politicians with empty chairs, real or imaginary, is completely unacceptable and against the statutory requirement for impartiality … It is not for the broadcasters to threaten the prime minister and risk breaching their duty of impartiality. The BBC should stand up today and say that they are not going to empty-chair anybody or to threaten anybody.
“These debates are fun to have, maybe nice to have. The benefits or the dis-benefits you can argue it either way. But there is no requirement that they should be done. And there is a requirement on the broadcasters for impartiality.”
Grade, who left the BBC to become executive chairman of ITV, was scathing about the broadcasters’ handling of the debate negotiations. “I don’t think the broadcasters have covered themselves in glory in the way that they have campaigned for these debates, the way they have gone public early on, the way they have messed it up by missing out various parties. The thing is a shambles. It is embarrassing, frankly.”
In an article in the Times, Grade accused the broadcasters of bullying the prime minister by threatening to signal his absence from the debates with an empty chair. He wrote: “It is bullying, a case of the broadcast media getting way ahead of itself.”
Grade added: “Who do the broadcasters think they are? Their behaviour over the election debates leads me to believe they suddenly have grossly inflated and misguided ideas of their own importance.”
Grade’s intervention will be welcomed by the prime minister, who is facing strong criticism for refusing to take part in the television debates during the “short” general election campaign and for refusing outright to take part in a head-to-head debate.
The prime minister is determined to dilute the impact of the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, and to avoid providing Miliband with a platform that might challenge the main thrust of the Tory campaign – that the Labour leader would be a hopeless prime minister.
Downing Street has calculated that the damage suffered by the prime minister in refusing to take part in the proposed debates is less serious than the potential damage of providing a platform to Farage and Miliband. But there are some nerves in Tory circles that the robust response of the broadcasters means that the prime minister is being damaged by claims that he is running scared.
