Costs of consultants and legal advice over corporation’s handling of disgraced presenter disclosed in FoI request.
The BBC has spent more than £1.3 million on the Huw Edwards scandal, including £340,000 on legal advice over the decision to suspend him on full pay.
Just under £1 million was spent on a review of the corporation’s non-editorial complaints policies and processes, conducted by Deloitte and commissioned in 2023 after Edwards was accused of paying a teenager for sexually explicit images.
Edwards was suspended in July 2023 and arrested in November of that year, before resigning in April last year on “medical advice”. During that period, he continued to collect his £480,000-per-year salary.
In July last year, the disgraced presenter pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment, suspended for two years.
The £1.3 million cost of the investigation into the scandal was disclosed in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request obtained by the Financial Times.
External legal fees for advice connected with Edward’s employment amounted to £340,843 over the year from October 2023. The Deloitte review cost £958,133, with a further £70,000 spent on the provision of additional resources from the BBC corporate investigations team.
A further external review, concerning workplace culture and focusing on “preventing abuse of power and ensuring everyone at the BBC conducts themselves in line with our values”, is in progress.
It follows last month’s disclosure that an external review into allegations against Tim Westwood, the former Radio 1 DJ, cost the BBC £3.3 million plus VAT.
An internal investigation into the making of the BBC’s controversial documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone has also been launched.
Tim Davie, the director-general, previously defended the decision to continue paying Edwards, who was paid £200,000 in the months following his arrest.
“We’re always trying to be judicious with the spending of public money, and we do not want to waste a single pound. From the outset, we tried to act proportionately, fairly and navigate this appropriately. I think that’s what we did,” he said last year.
“It ended up in the conclusion we all know about, but we wouldn’t have wasted money if we weren’t doing the right thing.”
The BBC has asked Edwards to return the money. Samir Shah, the corporation’s chairman, told MPs last week: “We’ve asked, and we’ve said it many times, but he seems unwilling.
“There was a moment that we thought that he might just do the right thing for a change, then he decided not to. It’s quite frustrating this, really… It’s not right. He’s taken licence fee-payers’ money, and he knew what he’d done, and he should return it now.”
In response to details of the FoI, a BBC spokesman said: “Wherever possible we aim to resolve matters without external support, and the decision to commission any review or work by a third party is taken with careful consideration, based on the specific circumstances in each case.
“We only incur external legal costs when absolutely necessary.”