Sir Julian Lewis: I would fight in the last ditch to prevent the BBC from ceasing to be a public service broadcaster and from being broken up. Any large organisation can have bad actors who behave unethically, and that has happened on this occasion, but it does the BBC no service when people parrot the line that the person responsible for this crisis is not the idiot who tampered with Donald Trump’s quote but a former Tory spin doctor, one of 13 members of the board, who allegedly influenced other members of the board to somehow provoke the present crisis. The crisis has nothing to do with Robbie Gibb; it has something to do with a mindset that, on the front page of today’s Guardian, has the whole thing about Robbie Gibb and relegates the fact that a $1 billion lawsuit may be taken out by Donald Trump against the BBC to a tiny paragraph at the end of the article on page 2. If you want to know what is wrong with some bits of the BBC, read The Guardian today.
[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lisa Nandy): I am not entirely sure how to respond to that, but the right hon. Member’s views are now on the record.]