BBC must act with ‘candour’ to rebuild trust after Bob Vylan storm, says Culture Secretary

Lisa Nandy said on LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast that she "agrees" it is time that we see more openness and candour from the BBC if they're going to rebuild public trust.

The BBC faced a widespread backlash after airing a performance of Bob Vylan at Glastonbury Festival this summer, during which rapper Bobby Vylan, whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, led a chant of "death, death to the IDF".

Despite the deeply controversial scenes, the set was not taken off air at the time. Instead, it remained on the BBC’s livestream for several hours, prompting questions over the broadcaster’s editorial judgment and chain of command.

Speaking about the incident, Ms Nandy said it is "absolutely essential that people can have trust in their national broadcaster".

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Nick questioned why the BBC has not yet produced a full report explaining how the performance was able to go out, and the lessons learned from the incident.

Ms Nandy said: "They have stepped up to meet that challenge. I've been really frustrated, and I think openly frustrated, with the slowness of the action of the BBC leadership over the last 18 months since I became Culture Secretary.

"And I won't shy away from saying so when I think they get it wrong. But in this instance, I think they have recognised that that was, in the Chairman's own words, a catastrophic error to broadcast that live from Glastonbury. And they've put in place a number of measures"

Nick questioned whether the public deserve to more and suggested that the BBC are being allowed to "mark their own homework".

Ms Nandy rejected the claim saying she has had answers and action.

She said: "What people in Parliament, across the board, parliamentarians, were asking for was accountability.

"We've had staffing changes, we've had changes to processes and we've had a recognition that this was a catastrophic mistake that cannot happen again."

Ms Nandy said one of the changes that has been made is around live streaming of events like Glastonbury, to make sure that there is a time delay so better editorial decisions can be made.

She also noted that the BBC will make sure more senior people are involved in the decisions about how to categorise risk.

Ms Nandy added: "And in this particular case I have to say that there was a risk assessment done, this was categorised as high risk and then it was broadcast anyway.

"The BBC leadership has put in place measures to make sure that that doesn't happen again, and I'm pleased that they have."

Speaking on a podcast in his first interview since Glastonbury, Mr Robinson-Foster, said he was originally praised by BBC staff for a “fantastic” performance.

He said: “We come off stage. It’s normal. Nobody thought anything. Nobody. Even staff at the BBC were like, ‘That was fantastic! We loved that!’”

“Nobody at the BBC at that time was there like, ‘oh my gosh’. You know… it was very normal. And then we got back and… we went and got ice cream,” he added.

The corporation has since apologised, describing the chants as “unacceptable”.

In a letter to MPs, BBC’s Director General Tim Davie said: “I deeply regret that such deplorable behaviour appeared on the BBC and want to apologise to our viewers and listeners and in particular the Jewish community.”