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The BBC director general has defended the decision not to sack Huw Edwards, despite knowing that the presenter had been arrested in November over the most serious category of indecent images of children.
In an interview with BBC News on Thursday, Tim Davie said the corporation had taken “difficult decisions in a fair and judicious manner”.
Asked about how much BBC managers were told in November, he said: “We knew it was serious, we knew no specifics, apart from the category of the potential offences.”
BBC bosses were not aware of the ages of the children in the images.
Asked whether Edwards would still receive his pension, Mr Davie said it was “very difficult to claw back, nigh on impossible”, adding: “These are unfortunately the specifics of how it works.
“When it comes to pay, again, [it’s] legally challenging [to recover], but we’ll look at all options.”
Edwards, formerly the BBC’s most high-profile newsreader, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to three counts of making indecent images of children.
Mr Davie was also challenged on the BBC’s own investigation into Edwards, which has not been published.
The director general said he could “categorically” confirm that the BBC was “not sitting on anything that I think we need to share with the police, or is of a serious nature that would make me feel that we hadn’t followed up properly”.
He continued: “I can categorically say that when it comes to the offences we’ve seen, which are truly horrendous, any evidence that is out there is not in the hands of the BBC. If I saw evidence of that, that is not a complicated decision [to hand it over].”
Asked whether any figures in BBC News knew about the charges, Davie confirmed CEO Deborah Turness was aware.
It was “a very small group of people at the centre” and “we had a very restricted list of names”, he said.
“When it comes to news, there was one name on it, the CEO of news, Deborah Turness. She isn’t involved editorially in the reporting of the story.”
On Wednesday, Edwards admitted having 41 indecent images of children, which had been sent to him by a convicted paedophile, Alex Williams, on WhatsApp.
They included seven category A images, the most serious classification – two of which showed a child aged between about seven and nine.
After being arrested last November, Edwards was charged in June. He had been off air since July 2023, when he was named as the star at the centre of different allegations involving an explicit photo.
Earlier on Thursday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “shocked and appalled” by the charges against Edwards.
Apart from Ms Turness, BBC News was not aware of the arrest nor charges against Edwards until they were made public on Monday. BBC News is editorially independent when reporting on the BBC.
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