This morning Richard Sharp, the BBC’s Chairman, appeared before the Culture select committee of MPs. It was a difficult session for Sharp as the panel focused on reports that he helped Boris Johnson secure a loan, weeks before the then-prime minister recommended him for the role. Johnson has denied that Sharp had given him such advice. John Nicholson of the SNP and Labour’s Kevin Brennan led the way on grilling Sharp about whether he had breached any conflict of interest rules. Below are four things we learned from his testimony.
Sharp insists he did not given Johnson financial advice
Boris Johnson has said he is ‘ding dang sure’ that Sharp did not give him advice about his finances – and the former Goldman banker concurred in his evidence today. This, however is not something he was accused of doing, in the original Sunday Times report about Sharp’s links to Johnson. The original story focused on Sharp’s involvement in an £800,000 loan – and here the BBC Chairman was firm, insisting that he did not need to declare his links because there was no conflict of interest.
Sharp was working at No. 10 as an adviser at the time and says he was contacted by his friend Sam Blyth who read reports saying Johnson was in need of cash; Sharp passed him on to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case. Some MPs on the committee seemed unimpressed by this reply: asked as to why he did not disclose his involvement in these talks, Sharp insists that he thought his conversation with Case was sufficient. Members on the committee responded by arguing he still should have declared it. ‘Did you not think you were hiding something?’ asked Julie Elliott. ‘No’ replied Sharp.
Case criticised, again
Why then, all this focus on financial advice, rather than the loan? The reason is because of a memo which Case drafted for Johnson in December 2020 in which he wrote that ‘given the imminent announcement of Richard Sharp as the new BBC chair, it is important that you no longer ask his advice about your personal financial matters.’ Damian Green asked why, if Sharp had never given Johnson financial advice, Case wrote such a memo.
Sharp replied that the wording of the document was an ‘ambiguous construction that is open to misinterpretation’ and added that the Cabinet Office had confirmed this to him unofficially. He says that this memo was written to ensure that Johnson did not call Sharp, as only then would it have created a conflict of interest. A disbelieving Green responded by saying that he wording of the memo seems ‘unbelievably shoddy’ in retrospect. The confusion around the memo will only add to the chorus of criticism about Case’s current performance in the role.
One for the Public Administration Committee to examine further perhaps?
He met Johnson before his appointment
Richard Sharp also explained the previously-reported news that he did go to see Boris Johnson in No. 10 to discuss the BBC chairmanship before applying for the role in late 2020. This was of course an opportunity not afforded to other candidates during the supposedly ‘open and fair’ contest — and another detail which was not earlier disclosed alongside Sharp’s involvement in talks about Johnson’s finances.
The impact of this row on the BBC
Sharp told MPs that ‘I regret the distraction’ that the row about his appointment has called and that he is ‘disturbed’ that the ‘tremendous things’ that the BBC is doing are now being ‘overshadowed’. However, he defended his recent decision to sit on the selection panel for the director of news position, suggesting that those staff who are angry about this simply ‘don’t understand’ the structure of the BBC. Sharp claimed to be getting a number of supportive messages from staff. Such a claim was ridiculed by John Nicholson, who cited other employees who are ‘furious’ about Sharp’s continued presence at the Beeb.
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