Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many candidates (a) applied for and (b) were interviewed for the position of BBC Chair.
Answered by John Whittingdale
In line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, due diligence checks were conducted on all candidates shortlisted for the BBC Chair role.
As part of these checks, we considered anything in the public domain related to the applicant’s conduct or professional capacity. This included us undertaking searches of previous public statements and social media, blogs or any other publicly available information, as well as checks on relevant registers including the Disqualified Director and Insolvency Registers.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that due diligence is undertaken in all public appointments.
Answered by John Whittingdale
In line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, due diligence checks were conducted on all candidates shortlisted for the BBC Chair role.
As part of these checks, we considered anything in the public domain related to the applicant’s conduct or professional capacity. This included us undertaking searches of previous public statements and social media, blogs or any other publicly available information, as well as checks on relevant registers including the Disqualified Director and Insolvency Registers.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what due diligence was undertaken on candidates during the appointment process for the BBC Chair.
Answered by John Whittingdale
In line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, due diligence checks were conducted on all candidates shortlisted for the BBC Chair role.
As part of these checks, we considered anything in the public domain related to the applicant’s conduct or professional capacity. This included us undertaking searches of previous public statements and social media, blogs or any other publicly available information, as well as checks on relevant registers including the Disqualified Director and Insolvency Registers.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans his Department has to exclude already regulated news publishers from the upcoming online harms legislation.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
As stated in the Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation, content and articles produced and published by news publishers on their own sites do not constitute user-generated content and are therefore out of scope of the upcoming online harms legislation. Legislation will also exempt below-the-line comments on news publishers’ sites.
In order to protect media freedom, legislation will include robust protections for journalistic content shared on in-scope services. The government will continue to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to develop proposals that protect the invaluable role of a free media and ensure that the UK is the safest place in the world to be online.