BBC chairman steps down, questions over whether the appointment was ‘fair and open’
Richard Sharp has resigned as chairman of the BBC after a report found he had breached appointment rules.
Sharp failed to tell the panel interviewing him for the job that he had been involved in facilitating a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson, then the prime minister.
Adam Heppinstall KC said that Sharp’s involvement in the loan “gave rise to a potential perceived conflict of interest” and “a risk of a perception” that he would “not be independent from the former prime minister” as BBC chairman. He said that Sharp’s failure to tell the panel about the loan “caused a breach of the governance code”.
Heppinstall also questioned whether “leaks and briefing to the press” that Sharp was the preferred candidate for the chairmanship meant that the appointment process was truly a “fair and open competition” as required under government rules.
Announcing his resignation moments before Heppinstall’s report was published, Sharp said that he had decided that “it is right to prioritise the interests of the BBC”. Stressing that his “involvement” in Johnson’s financial affairs was “very limited”, Sharp accepted that he had made an “error” in believing that after a discussion with Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, he had “been removed from any conflict or perception of conflict”.
He added: “I would like once again to apologise for that oversight, inadvertent though it was, and the distraction these events have caused the BBC.”
Sharp, 67, is a Conservative donor and former banker at Goldman Sachs, where he was Rishi Sunak’s boss and mentor.
In a statement the BBC board said that Sharp had been “a very effective chairman of the BBC” and insisted he was “a person of integrity”. The board said that the government would be “moving swiftly to begin the process of appointing a new chairman”.
Source: The Times
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