As Huw Edwards faces a possible prison sentence after admitting accessing indecent photographs of children as young as seven, there are questions to be asked about the BBC management’s handling of the scandal and the impact on its reputation.
When was Edwards given a pay rise ?
Edwards was paid between £475,000 and £479,000 for the year 2023-24. He was suspended on full salary in July 2023 after allegations in the Sun, unrelated to his court case, and resigned in April 2024 on “medical advice”. The BBC said he did not receive a payoff.
The BBC was aware of his arrest on “serious charges” in November. Yet Edwards still received about £200,000 of public money from licence fee payers for the five months after his arrest up to his resignation in April.
The BBC faces calls to explain how that use of public money was justified, as well as when and by whom that decision was taken.
The salary he received included a £40,000 pay rise, prompting questions over when he received a rise, before or after his July 2023 suspension?
What did the BBC know of the police investigation into Edwards?
BBC management learned Edwards had been arrested on 8 November but kept this from BBC News who, like the rest of the media, learned on Monday.
BBC News reports the information was given “in strict confidence by the police and was not to be shared”.
But what exactly the BBC knew in November is not clear.
Its statement after Edwards’ guilty pleas said the BBC had been made aware of allegations of “serious offences”. It added it had been “shocked to hear the details which have emerged in court today”.
The BBC investigations correspondent Joe Pike told Newsnight on Wednesday he had been able to confirm that the BBC was told those “serious offences” concerned child abuse images.
It may be the BBC was aware of the general nature of the allegations but not the detail of the number of images or the categorisation of those images or ages of the children in them.
What did the BBC do upon hearing about Edwards’ arrest?
The BBC would have taken legal and HR advice. To sack Edwards on arrest could be prejudicial to any future trial, or if charges were not subsequently brought. It was also aware of “significant risk to his health”.
Yet it said if he had been charged, “it would act immediately to dismiss him”. To do that before any trial could also be viewed as prejudicial. Certainly, the BBC explanations for its actions throw up as many questions as they answer.
It has to balance its duty of care to an employee who had an expectation of privacy, and its duties to the public who fund it. Whether it got that balance right is key to its handling, and any fallout.
In the end it did not have to sack Edwards because he resigned two months before he was formally charged in June. Instead, it allowed him to continue on full pay, and leave on his own terms in April, a decision said to have angered many insiders at the broadcaster.
What happened to internal BBC investigations into Edwards?
Edwards was suspended in July 2023 after his wife identified him as the unnamed senior broadcasting figure at the centre of allegations that a young person was paid for sexually explicit images.
After that, BBC Two’s Newsnight broadcast allegations concerning Edwards’ behaviour towards junior members of staff. The BBC promised investigations into both.
In February an independent report by Deloitte into the BBC’s complaints procedure found the need for “greater consistency” in how complaints were processed. But no further details of the investigations have so far been made public.
The Met police ruled out action over the Sun’s story, which featured allegations made by the mother of the young person. After Edwards’ guilty plea to unrelated charges in court, she told the Sun she was still begging for answers. “We got no answers when Huw quit from the BBC and have been left in the dark.
“I expected the BBC investigators to want to go through these messages and evidence with me to explain what was happening to my child at the time, but they didn’t seem interested,” she said.
Newsnight reported it did not know if the investigation into its claims had been concluded, or if findings would be published. It seemed, the programme heard, that after Edwards’ departure from the BBC the investigation disappeared.
Will the BBC director general face a parliamentary grilling over the handling of the crisis?
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, immediately called an urgent telephone meeting with the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, indicating just how much pressure the corporation faces over its handling of the situation.
It is not unimaginable Davie, who declined invitations to appear on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and Newsnight, could find himself answering questions before the culture, media and sport select committee after summer recess.
The licence fee, through which the corporation is funded, will be reviewed in 2027. After years of Conservative opposition to the funding model, Keir Starmer has said: “We are committed in our manifesto to the BBC and to the licensing scheme. There’s going to be some more thought between now and [2027], but we are committed.”
But media and Westminster observers will be watching for any signs of Labour exploiting the Edwards case as an excuse for a change of guard at the top – and perhaps the removal of Davie, once a Conservative councillor candidate and deputy chair of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party in the 1990s.