As criticism of the BBC’s handling of the Huw Edwards paedophile scandal rages on, you might think that executives would seek to combat widespread allegations of a cover-up by adopting a new spirit of openness.
There were no signs of this yesterday. A BBC spokesman stuck to the line that they will continue to protect the disgraced news anchor’s ‘right to privacy’ even though he resigned from the corporation in April and even though he has now pleaded guilty to receiving 41 indecent images of children, including two sexual videos of a boy under nine.
On the day Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ‘shocked and appalled’ by Edwards’s offences, BBC sources said they would never reveal the findings and recommendations of an internal investigation into Edwards while he was the News At Ten anchor on £475,000 a year.
They won’t even confirm that the probe is complete, or say whether Edwards cooperated to the extent of giving an interview.
As criticism of the BBC ‘s handling of the Huw Edwards paedophile scandal rages on, you might think that executives would seek to combat widespread allegations of a cover-up by adopting a new spirit of openness
Huw Edwards and wife in December 2018. The BBC won’t even confirm that the probe is complete, or say whether Edwards cooperated to the extent of giving an interview
The broadcaster, 62, announced that the Queen had died in September 2022
Nor will they disclose the allegations made against him, which involved the flirtatious pursuit of younger male colleagues.
One of these — until recently a junior BBC producer — yesterday spoke out about the BBC’s apparent cover-up of Edwards’s activity.
The man said Edwards had sent him a message starting ‘Hello beauty’ and invited him to share his hotel room in Windsor before the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.
More messages followed as a persistent Edwards pressured the much younger man to meet in private.
Former Sky anchor Adam Boulton, once a friend of Edwards, said the BBC should now release details of its investigation into him. ‘It behoves the BBC to make it clear what they found out about what went on here,’ he said, adding: ‘It’s in the BBC’s interests to allay concerns among junior staff that they might be overruled in relation to stars. It does seem there was an institutional urge not to make a fuss about it.
‘One can understand from the point of view of [the story’s] prominence, but I don’t think any commercial organisation would have felt reputationally it could afford to try to brush it under the carpet.’
Despite the clamour for transparency, a BBC spokesman said of the investigation: ‘We won’t comment on individuals or internal matters for reasons of privacy.’
Huw Edwards is yet another BBC star to be disgraced after he admitted three counts of making indecent pictures of children between 2020 and 2022
Huw Edwards was last seen on the screen on July 5 last year when he covered King Charles’ visit to Scotland (pictured). Nine months on he has left the BBC on health grounds
The Welsh newsreader, 62, was allegedly spoken to about his behaviour by BBC bosses on two separate occasions in 2021 and 2022. Pictured: BBC Broadcasting House, in central London
This echoes what BBC acting chair Dame Elan Closs Stephens told the Mail last September: ‘The investigation is ongoing. I am not sure what we will publish when, or when we will publish. As you know Huw has a right to privacy which we take seriously and there has to be due process.
‘We need to speak to him and that has to take its turn. It will happen when he is ready and with regard to any mental health issues which he may or may not have. So it is not yet done.’
BBC director general Tim Davie confirmed on the BBC’s 6pm News last night that he would not be lifting the veil of secrecy over the investigation. He said the corporation was not ‘sitting on anything that I think we need to share with the police, or is of a serious nature that would make me feel that we hadn’t followed up properly’.
He added: ‘I can categorically say when it comes to the offences we’ve seen, which are truly horrendous, any evidence that is out there is not in the hands of the BBC. If I saw evidence of that, that is not a complicated decision [to hand it over].’
There is widespread anger among former colleagues over this stance. They see the ‘behind closed doors investigation’ as a betrayal of the rank and file of the BBC newsroom by a handful of highly paid bosses who were friends with Edwards.
Edwards yesterday pleaded guilty to receiving 41 indecent images of children, which included two sexual videos of a boy under nine
Huw Edwards (pictured) messaged ‘lads in the newsroom for drinks’ for years, a BBC insider has claimed
They are also appalled at how Edwards betrayed the BBC by playing ‘the mental health card’ while instructing lawyers at Harbottle to send aggressive legal letters to media outlets citing his privacy rights.
The effect was to cover up his wrongdoing. Last April, this newspaper asked Edwards’s lawyers if he had been arrested and was told that he had not. In a Kafkaesque twist, they claimed Edwards had a right to privacy which would make it impossible to report on his arrest even if it had happened.
‘Huw gamed the system — and he’s still doing it,’ a source said. ‘He has been using the huge money given to him by the BBC to build a legal wall around himself.’
Yesterday, a former colleague alleged that Edwards, married with five children and apparently the soul of respectability, used a ‘burner’ phone, one with prepaid minutes which the user can dispose of at will as they are free of any contract.
One said: ‘I am told that his phone and [computer] devices did not belong to the BBC, they were his.’
All these devices had been wiped clean by the time Scotland Yard examined them last November.
They were able to bring a case against Edwards only because the phone belonging to Alex Williams, given a suspended sentence earlier this year for possessing and distributing indecent images, showed that he had sent the TV presenter 377 images, 41 of which were indecent.
As Edwards’s barrister Philip Evans KC said in court: ‘It is important to remember — for context —that, as you would expect, the devices were seized and searched and there’s nothing on those devices. He didn’t keep any images.’
Senior figures who used to work at the BBC, including former royal correspondents Jennie Bond and Nicholas Witchell, waded in following his bombshell admissions in court on Wednesday.
A young BBC worker claims that Huw Edwards invited him to stay in his hotel suite on the eve of presenting coverage of Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021 (pictured)
Senior figures who used to work at the BBC, including former royal correspondents Jennie Bond (above) and Nicholas Witchell, waded in following his bombshell admissions in court on Wednesday
B BC sources say — in further evidence of a cosy closed club for top talent and bosses — new BBC chairman Samir Shah knew Edwards well and has been friends for many years with Vicky Flind, Edwards’s TV producer wife. She worked on a current affairs show, This Week, for Shah’s production company, Juniper.
Ms Flind is believed to be divorcing Edwards. This was common knowledge among friends of the pair in Dulwich as long ago as May but it was only made public when court papers revealed that Edwards had given a different London address to that of his former marital home.
Ms Flind, a former governor of the private James Allen’s Girls’ school, is well-respected locally and people hope she stays in the area.
Neither the BBC’s lawyers nor Edwards’s will comment, but corporation sources say there has been scant contact between Edwards and the BBC over the 11 months since the crisis began — when The Sun reported that a BBC presenter had paid a young male £35,000 for sexually explicit material. Other BBC presenters were wrongly identified and eventually Ms Flind came forward to say that the person in question was her husband, saying he was receiving ‘in-patient hospital care… for the foreseeable future.’ She hired crisis comms expert and former News Of The World editor Andy Coulson.
A mocked up version of a reported Instagram message exchange between the BBC star and a teenager
Edwards, pictured with his mother, has been off air since last July after he was accused of paying a young person for sexually explicit images
It’s not known if Coulson is still working with her — he did not respond to messages this week.Last summer, Edwards told friends he was ‘keen to clear his name’ and ‘wanted his job back.’ Then he went silent.
We now know he was arrested over the abusive images — entirely separate to The Sun’s story — in November. He then quit, with the BBC saying he had resigned on advice from his doctors.
Yesterday, the BBC confirmed it was told of his arrest by the police, not by Edwards or his lawyers.
The corporation says it did not know the seriousness of the allegations and in a statement on Wednesday signed by director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness, expressed profound shock. But in his eventual media appearance Tim Davie did not answer the most basic question: did the BBC even ask if he was guilty — and did he respond?
The question of who knew what when and who took the decision to keep paying him has also attracted criticism. (The anchor was paid almost £200,000 between November and April.)
Former executive Roger Bolton said: ‘We now know the BBC executives were told in confidence that Huw Edwards had been arrested. The big question is, why did they continue to pay him so much?’
Jennie Bond told broadcaster Jeremy Vine on Thursday: ‘Frankly, if Huw has any dignity left then he would hand some of the money back, certainly the 200 grand he has made since his arrest. I think it would be gracious of him to do that.’
She added: ‘We need to remember the BBC as a whole is being tarnished and reputationally this is very very damaging of course. But the news division is quite rightly and thankfully quite separate from the corporation itself.
‘It’s quite a hard division for people to make but we in the news have, without fear or favour, questioned the bosses at the BBC and that is entirely right. In the newsroom themselves they were kept in the dark right until this week, which is extraordinary.’
Clips featuring Huw Edwards continue to be available on BBC iPlayer, including his announcement of the death of HM the Queen.
They serve as a salutory reminder of how far and how fast the once much-loved household name has fallen.
