Outgoing BBC director basic Tim Davie says workers tradition at company will ‘by no means be totally mounted’
Tim Davie, the outgoing BBC director general, has said that the staff culture at the publicly-funded corporation will never be ‘fully fixed’.
It follows remarks made yesterday at an outgoing all-staff call where he said it became ‘very clear’ Scott Mills had to go after the corporation received ‘new information’ that a sexual offence investigation into the Radio 2 presenter involved a person under 16.
In this same call, Mr Davie then reportedly went on to say the BBC’s staff culture ‘[will] never be fully, fully fixed, but I think it’s changing, I really do’.
He said, per The Telegraph: ‘I think if you come in and behave in a way that some of this industry saw 20 years ago, it just would not be acceptable, you want to create an environment where it’s just ludicrous to do that.’
Mr Davie added that there were senior BBC employees who ‘have had a lot of power’ which has not been ‘called out’ if they ‘misuse’ it, however said that the corporation has now ‘reached a point’ where they are ‘not going to tolerate it’.
High-profile figures at the BBC have been repeatedly shamed in recent years after allegations of historic inappropriate behaviour coming to light – causing an ongoing crisis within the broadcaster.
Convicted paedophile Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to three charges of making indecent images in July 2024, for which the BBC News presenter was given a suspended six-month prison sentence in September that year.
TV chef Gregg Wallace was sacked from the BBC show last July after more than 40 misconduct allegations were upheld against him.
Tim Davie (pictured) has said that the staff culture at the BBC will never be ‘fully fixed’
Mr Davie said it became ‘very clear’ Radio 2 presenter Scott Mills (pictured) had to go after ‘new information’ into a sexual offence investigation revealed a person under 16 was involved
And serial paedophile Jimmy Saville used his position at the BBC to horrifically abuse hundreds of young boys and girls across decades, which only came to light after his death.
Mills is now the latest in the string of BBC employees to be axed over his alleged behaviour.
The breakfast how host, 53, was investigated then cleared over allegations of historic ‘serious sexual offences’ against a boy between 1997 and 2000.
The BBC admitted it was aware of the investigation into the Radio 2 star in 2017 – before sacking him last week after learning the alleged victim was under 16.
Mr Davie said yesterday: ‘We’re trying to act fairly. It was new information quite recently that we received that made it very clear about the decision we had to make.’
Mr Davie said Mills’s sacking ‘was a real shock to the organisation’, adding: ‘When something happens where I think there’s a lot of grief, there’s a lot of shock, I think all I would say is we’re trying to act as the leadership with kindness.’
Mills, who would have been 24 at the time of the allegations in the late 1990s, was interviewed under caution in 2018 but the case was rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2019 due to a lack of evidence.
BBC management is going through emails and HR records from the time before speaking to staff about what they knew about the Met Police investigation and whether they knew the complainant was a child.
The BBC finally admitted on Wednesday that it was aware of the police probe at the time – but took no action until it received ‘new information’ recently.
Hours later, in an extraordinary statement issued via his lawyers to the Daily Mail, Mills then broke his silence to admit he was the subject of the investigation and did not deny the allegations, before thanking fans and former BBC colleagues.
He insisted he ‘fully cooperated and responded’ at the time of the police probe. But he did not not address the allegations and did not offer a denial.
Mr Davie had his last day at the BBC yesterday after nearly six years in his role which oversaw a series of scandals, like Bobby Vylan chanting ‘death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury and a $10billion dollar lawsuit from Donald Trump over the editing of a Panorama documentary, which sparked Davie’s resignation in November.
The documentary, which was aired just a week before the US election, spliced together two parts of a speech giving the impression Mr Trump encouraged his followers to storm the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.
The US President went on to file the multi-billion dollar lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, which included one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law.
His attorneys claimed the BBC had published a ‘false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction’ of Trump ‘that was fabricated’ in the Panorama programme titled Trump: A Second Chance?
The lawsuit alleges that the broadcaster ‘intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers’ by ‘splicing together’ the two clips in a ‘brazen’ bid to interfere as well as influence the outcome of the election to ‘President Trump’s detriment’.
Mr Davie is being replaced by interim director-general Rhodri Talfan Davies for the next six weeks, before former Google executive Matt Brittin takes over on May 18.
Mr Davie succeeded Lord Tony Hall as director-general in September 2020, during a volatile time for the broadcaster amid rows about the licence fee, increasing competition from streaming platforms, and issues with gender pay.
