‘I think you’ve got a wasp down your trousers’: Tory MP rounds on BBC chairman in fiery clash over impartiality

Philip Davies accuses Sir David Clementi of being ‘asleep at the wheel’ over Gary Lineker’s tweets

A Tory MP has accused the chairman of the BBC of being “asleep at the wheel” in a row over impartiality during a select committee session on Tuesday.

Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, clashed Sir David Clementi, the outgoing chairman of the BBC, when he asked why Mr Clementi had “allowed” Gary Lineker to “flaunt his left-wing political views” on Twitter.

The BBC chairman shot back that he did not interfere with individual editorial decisions and defended the BBC’s trust scores and viewership figures, to which the MP responded: “I think you’ve got a wasp down your trousers, calm yourself.”

The firey exchange took place as Sir David faced the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee alongside the BBC’s new director-general, Tim Davie.

The pair were questioned about impartiality among BBC staff and new social media guidelines to be introduced by the broadcaster, which Mr Davie said would arrive in the next few days.

Bringing up tweets by the Match of the Day presenter Mr Lineker, who suggested it was time to make the BBC licence fee voluntary, Mr Davies asked Sir David: “You’ve been there for three and a half years, you said at the start that impartiality starts at the top. 

“So it begs the question, what on earth have you been doing as the chairman of the BBC to allow people like Gary Lineker to flaunt his left-wing political views across everywhere while you’ve been chairman – it seems you’ve been asleep at the wheel.”

Sir David replied that according to the annual report the MP was “supposed to be holding us to account for”, the BBC’s trust scores had gone up from 51 to 62 per cent.

“You’ve got to look at the stats, you can’t rely on talking to individual people in an organisation of 20,000 people. If you look at the actual stats, we’ve done well,” he added.

Mr Davies said the BBC chairman had failed to answer his question about Mr Lineker, to which Sir David replied he was “ignoring the evidence” that trust in the BBC has increased, and pointed towards Ofcom’s statement in 2019 which said the BBC “remains the UK’s primary source for news and has maintained its reputation for trusted and accurate reporting” in spite of an “uncertain political environment”.

“Sir David, I think you’ve got a wasp down your trousers or something, you need to calm yourself down,” said the Shipley MP.

“It’s no surprise that the metropolitan, Remain, virtue-signalling, left-wing, politically correct Ofcom is marking the big city, metropolitan, left-wing, virtue-signalling BBC as thinking they’re doing a fine job.”

He again asked Sir David to address Mr Lineker’s tweets, adding: “You either think those tweets were absolutely fine or what did you do about it if you didn’t think they were fine?”

“You know very well, Mr Davies, you know perfectly well that the editor in chief who deals with individual talent or individual tweets is the director-general,” said Sir David. 

“The role of the board is general oversight, which is why I quoted you the oversight figures. You cannot ask me about individual people who are a matter for the director-general.”

Mr Davies quipped: “So you’ve never said to the director-general at the time, look at these tweets, do you not think we should be doing something about this? That’s what I call oversight, Sir David, I don’t know what you call oversight, maybe having a bottle of wine for lunch or something.”

The BBC chairman said he did speak with the director-general about “hot issues” on a daily basis, adding: “Nevertheless, I am always very careful that my role is not to directly interfere with individual editorial decisions.”