HAS OFCOM’S ‘PLAN B’ FOR FARAGE PASSED THE NANDY TEST ?

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Last month (September 2025) the Secretary of State for Culture,Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, launched an attack on “political polemic presented as news” and cited Nigel Farage’s programme on GB News. She told MPs on the Culture Select Committee :

“Ofcom is currently consulting on tightening the rules around politicians presenting news programmes and news in any format and that is something that we as a government strongly support. We will look closely at what Ofcom present to us but it is an area in which we intend to act”.

Just in case Ofcom wasn’t listening, she said something similar at the Royal Television Society conference and again in an interview with the Media Confidential podcast. And in a further flourish before Ofcom announced its decision she followed up on research from Cardiff University, funded by AHRC and carrIed out by YouGov.This found ‘public opposition to allowing politicians to front current affairs programmes – contradicting research carried out by the regulator, Ofcom’. Responding to this finding the Secretary of State doubled down saying the public were “right to be concerned about elected politicians playing the role of news presenters”.

Now we have Ofcom’s decision about politician presenters in a document which also sets out its views on the responses to its consultation. Among those responses was one which I submitted with former Ofcom colleague Chris Banatvala.

There has been much confusion about what the Ofcom announcement means. First the easy bit: the original proposal which Ofcom put out to consultation has been dropped because a range of objectors (including us and GB News) argued it was unworkable. Now the complicated alternative. Ofcom has come up with its Plan B which some readers think is tightening the rules as Lisa Nandy wants and some think loosens them which she certainly doesn’t.

Chris Banatvala has done his own independent forensic examination of the announcement. He explains that Ofcom has decided not to make any changes to the Broadcasting Code which would tighten the rules but instead has refined its ‘non-binding guidance’ in a way which allows the Farage show to continue. He concludes “For the first time ever, Ofcom seems to be allowing politicians to present ‘news, in whatever form’ within non-news programmes but will then consider a number of factors before deciding whether the content is impartial” .

I read that as a loosening of the rules and you don’t have to take my word for it, the positive response from GB News to the announcement confirms this. But maybe the regulator won’t mind a bit of confusion all round, a bit of ‘creative ambiguity’ to leave some potential jeopardy for GB News if it goes too far for the regulator.

We await Ms Nandy’s judgement on whether Ofcom’s ‘Plan B’ has passed her test, has Ofcom tightened ‘the rules around politicians presenting news programmes and news in any format’? .

One other point worth making; the Ofcom announcement does not push back hard against criticism from us and some academics about the quality of that audience research which it has relied upon to justify its position. Instead it promises to ‘explore conducting further research into audience attitudes towards news and current affairs on TV and radio’. 

So the next steps to watch out for:

  • Any response of any kind from Lisa Nandy as to whether Ofcom has met her test.
  • If it hasn’t, any sign of a way in which the regulator and the minister could find common ground, maybe fresh public attitude research.
  • Failing that, any sign that the Government does or doesn’t have the taste or the time for legislation?
  • Meanwhile any new complaints about GB News output which become test cases of Ofcom’s ‘Plan B’.

Some recommendations: Giles Winn’s newsletter ‘ScreenPower’ on Substack is a way of staying in touch with issues ‘where TV and Film meet politics and power’.Roger Bolton’s Beeb Watch podcast has an interview with Professor Stephen Cushion of Cardiff University about his research on the audience’s views on impartiality. 

THE GOVERNMENT ‘INTEND TO ACT’ ON OFCOM, DUE IMPARTIALITY AND GB NEWS. WHAT LISA NANDY SAID AND WHY IT MATTERS.

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During the four year long debate about whether GB News are breaking the rules requiring impartial broadcast news there has been a noticeably missing voice, a clear view from the Labour Party . That situation ended at 10.45 am on Wednesday 10th September 2025 when the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, was appearing before the CMS Select Committee. No transcript has yet been released so I have prepared one plus what I think are some key points. (If you want to see the video of the hearing it is here and the relevant section is at 10:45:00). 

Lisa Nandy was answering a question about the BBC, talking about its funding and its independence, when she began what looked like a deliberate pivot:

“And If I may on that issue of independence the other thing that the BBC finds very challenging and you know the committee will know that there have been several challenging issues and areas where the BBC has fallen short in recent months is that they are rightly held to the highest of standards but there has been a fracturing of the news media and there are different standards being observed in other places.

“So to take a very clear example of something that this government and I feel very strongly about, there is a real importance for the public when they look at the news to be able to understand whether what they are seeing is political polemic or news. At the moment that situation is currently completely unsatisfactory and there has been a blurring of political polemic that is presented as news on other channels. I am really keen that as part of supporting not just the BBC but all of our public service broadcasters that we make sure that we get those rules right . Ofcom is currently consulting on tightening the rules around politicians presenting news programmes and news in any format and that is something that we as a government strongly support. We will look closely at what Ofcom present to us but it is any area in which we intend to act”.

Labour MP Paul Waugh then asked: 

“By implication are you talking about GB News there, I mean obviously like me you’d be a strong supporter of freedom of speech and of the freedom of media and the press but at the same time if you switch on GB News at  night it is basically a newspaper on TV format which is not meant to be the Ofcom rules is it?”

The  Culture Secretary replied:

“I’ve had particular concerns raised with me by parliamentarians about the appearance of Nigel Farage presenting news programmes on GB News. I think that is a fair criticism from members of parliament of all political parties because the public have a right to know if what they are seeing is news and is impartial or is not and one of the challenges that then creates for public service broadcasters is that people lose trust in the news altogether. Now that is then a challenge for the whole country because the way in which people consume their news has polarised and fragmented and people are reading different accounts. Those shared spaces and that shared understanding is the basis of democracy is fracturing. I think that is very, very dangerous, a very dangerous position for a country to be in and it is something that we intend to robustly defend is the impartiality of our news. It is not for the government ever to stray into determining who can be featured on broadcast media and what is discussed, That is entirely a question for broadcasters whether its GB News, the BBC or others not least because they exist to hold the mirror up to government and subject us to scrutiny and that is essential in any democracy. But it is right and proper that as a government we ensure we have a proper framework so that viewers are empowered to understand if what they are seeing is news or is what they are seeing is political polemic presented as news”. 

Some key points:

  1. It may not have had the usual trappings of a major policy change, no pre-briefing, no press statement, but this was a Cabinet minister saying for the first time what, according to her, MPs of all parties have been telling her. Presumably that’s MPs of every party except Reform. 
  2. Why now? My hunch is that Labour have always thought this but decided they didn’t need to get involved publicly in what they saw as GB News helping Reform take voters away from the Conservatives. Maybe they’ve decided they are now losing out too and “intend to act”.
  3. How would they act? Ms Nandy said “We will look closely at what Ofcom present to us” on “tightening the rules”. There are two problems with that.
  4. Problem One: Ofcom doesn’t ‘present’ to Government on issues like this, that’s not how an independent regulator is meant to work. When Ofcom announce the outcome of their consultation on the rules (see previous posts) the Government will have to decide whether the problem has been solved or whether some other intervention is necessary, such as a tightening of the legislation.
  5. Problem Two: as argued in previous posts Ofcom’s current plan will not ‘tighten’ the rules because it does not address the core problem, the regulator’s current view that Nigel Farage does not present ‘news’ but ‘current affairs’. That’s why GB News says: “The Culture Secretary is clearly either mistaken or misinformed about the nature of GB News programming.GB News has never and does not use politicians to present news programmes. Politicians can present current affairs programmes.”
  6. Any clues on how the problem could be solved ? Interesting that the SoS mentioned ‘news in any format’. This underlines the point that the Broadcasting Code requires due impartiality in ‘news in whatever form’ not just news bulletins. A revised piece of guidance to the code could build on this and be more precise about what is ‘news in whatever form’ overturning Ofcom’s current view that News Presenter of the Year Nigel Farage doesn’t present news.
  7. Does Lisa Nandy’s involvement help or hinder the argument for the proper enforcement of the rules? The conventional wisdom is that she overplayed her hand on the BBC’s Glastonbury mistakes but learned that lesson. The qualifications set out in the second half of the full transcript of her remarks on impartiality seem to support this.
  8. Next step? Ofcom executives now have to make up their mind after the consultation knowing that whatever they decide the Government have a view and that all the other political parties (and that includes Reform) feel they have a stake in the outcome too. 

How Stuart Prebble helped to change Margaret Thatcher’s mind on broadcasting

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Obituaries of the former ITV executive, author and producer Stuart Prebble who has died aged 74 rightly pay tribute to his creativity and enterprise. One episode which has not been mentioned, in fact Stuart didn’t include it in his own autobiography, was how his skills as a political lobbyist helped to make crucial changes in the 1980 Broadcasting Act which created a new regime for commercial television in the UK. In 1989 Stuart helped to form the Campaign For Quality Television with colleagues from Granada Television and a former colleague Simon Albury as its Director. Sadly Simon died last September so we have lost two highly respected champions of the TV industry in less than 12 months.

Simon and Stuart set out to thwart what they described as ‘Thatcher’s wrecking ball’, the Prime Minister’s plan to award regional ITV franchises to the highest bidder with no quality checks. Their aim was to persuade David Mellor, the Minister in charge of steering the legislation through Parliament, that cash alone could not win a licence. Fortunately Mellor regarded them not as the salaried employees of ITV, which they were, but as a producers’ lobby, even if was partly funded by ITV.

In December 1989 Mellor met Albury and Prebble and three other programme-makers plus comedians Rowan Atkinson and Terry Jones of Monty Python. They floated the idea of a ‘quality threshold’ over which a company had to pass in order for its bid to qualify. There were several more meetings.

The Chairman of the regulator, Sir George Russell, had similar ideas and Mellor was influenced by Russell’s judgment. What was not known at the time but was revealed in Prime Ministerial papers released much later was that two of Thatcher’s most trusted advisers, her deputy Lord Whitelaw, and her Press Officer Bernard Ingham also weighed in on the producers side of the argument. (See my February 2017 blog ‘When Willie warned Maggie he was ‘horrified and deeply antagonistic’ about her plan for British TV’).

On the 9th June 1989 Lord Whitelaw wrote on House of Lords notepaper; ‘Dear Margaret,I apologise for bothering you when you have so many major problems confronting you. But I feel I would be letting you down if I did not tell you at once of my deep anxiety about future Broadcasting policy. If the leaks about the Cabinet Committee are correct -they are certainly widespread- I must stress that I would be horrified and deeply antagonistic if franchises were automatically to go to the highest bidder without clear safeguards . I am convinced that any such course inevitably leads to a major loss of quality in TV programmes. I cannot believe it would be right to sacrifice quality in the hope of greater financial gain. It would certainly be very unpopular in many quarters. Sorry to bother you.Yours ever,Willie’.

Press Secretary Bernard Ingham was even more direct to Thatcher ; ’Politically you are most vulnerable in the area of quality. You, of all people, must not go down in history as the person who ruined British television’.

The outcome was that the Broadcasting Act incorporated an ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause which enabled the regulator to disqualify a bidder whose programme plans did not meet a quality threshold. One of the beneficiaries was Granada TV itself which was outbid by a challenger but which kept its licence because the newcomer was deemed to have failed the quality test while Granada passed. Prebble and Albury had done their bosses a very big favour.

Has the time come to consider changing the law on British broadcasting? Ofcom seems to think so.

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For 22 years the Communications Act has been the law of the land on all things broadcasting. This week the regulator created by that act, Ofcom, announced it was starting a process that may lead to changes in the law. If this comes as news to you it may because you’ve had better things to do during July 2025 but it could also be the absence of news coverage. What regulation and legislation does Ofcom think needs changing and does the review have any impact on Ofcom’s disputes with GB News? Here’s my take:

1.What was the Ofcom announcement ? 

On 21st July 2025 Ofcom issued a press release headlined ‘Public Service content should be findable on YouTube’. The introduction said ‘Urgent steps must be taken to ensure that public service media content is easy to find and discover on third-party platforms, under new Ofcom recommendations to secure the system’s survival’. YouTube was the ‘third-party platform’ highlighted as being particularly important.

2. What were these Ofcom recommendations?

Of the regulator’s six recommendations the first four were about the future of PSBs (public service broadcasters such as BBC, Channel Four, ITV and Channel Five) and PSMs (public service media which Ofcom defines as mostly but not uniquely PSBs). Recommendation five was about the importance of media literacy. Sixth on the list of recommendations was ‘Streamlined regulation to strip away any undated and unnecessary restrictions’.

3.What kind of restrictions does Ofcom want to ‘strip away’.

No examples were given but the overall language in the press release was bold: ‘We are launching a fundamental review of our regulation of broadcast TV and radio’ and ‘this may involve legislative change as well as changes to our regulation’. In the body of the report there was no mention of ‘launching’ any ‘fundamental review’ but a lower key commitment: ‘we will review the regulation across linear and online services to determine if greater consistency is needed to protect audiences from harm no matter what they are watching and listening’. 

4. So what, as they say in the regulatory jargon, is ‘in scope’ for this review?  

I put that question to the Ofcom Media Relations Team and got this quote from an Ofcom spokesperson; ‘On the scope of this – we will look at what regulation needs to change to reflect market conditions and continue to protect and support audiences wherever they are. We’ll have more to say by the end of the year.’.

5. Any other clues? 

It’s worth listening to an interview which Cristina Nicolotti Squires, Ofcom’s Group Director of Broadcast and Media, gave to Matt Deegan of the Media Club podcast. At 17′ 30″ into the podcast Deegan put a direct question, was the review “about trying to change some of those rules” such as those which have caused regulatory and legal disputes with GB News. He didn’t get a direct answer, he was told that the review was about “making sure our regulation is fit for now”. It was “kind of like looking at it all really”. But some issues did get a passing specific mention from Nicolotti Squires: TV advertising, product placement, the future of the TV licence, and one piece of thinking aloud: instead of the separate content codes for broadcasting and video-on-demand “should there just be one code?”

6. What happens next?

Look out for Ofcom having ‘more to say by the end of the year’. There will also be ‘a comprehensive call for evidence this autumn’ and Ofcom will ‘seek input from stakeholders’. One moment in the podcast underlines that this process is nowhere near ready for launch. When Matt Deegan asked how his listeners could send in their views, the Ofcom executive seemed surprised: “that’s a good point” , but on reflection she reassured him: “everything is on our website”.In fact nothing about that particular process is on the website. 

7. How does all this connect with Ofcom’s problems with GB News?

Clearly Ofcom is going to be cautious saying anything while it considers the responses to its consultation on a tweak to the rules . The submission by Chris Banatvala and myself opposing that tweak and arguing for the enforcement of the existing rules is on this website. But a longer term review of the Broadcast Code and the legal framework could offer the regulator the opportunity to ask parliament to either tighten the rules on impartiality, relax them or abolish them for channels such as GB News.

8.Why did this announcement get tacked on as the last recommendation in a press release about PSB and the last page in a 65 page report when it potentially affects so much more ?

  • It includes all the required political buzzphrases such as ‘strip away regulation’ and ‘encouraging growth and innovation’.
  • Ofcom wants to get on the record the words ‘We are committing to update our regulation of broadcast TV and radio’ but isn’t actually ready to start. 
  • Should Ofcom ever need an ‘off ramp’ from its GB News problems the review could provide one.

Finally, here’s what my former Ofcom colleague Chris Banatvala of Bear Consultancy Ltd thinks:

‘Ofcom has always prided itself on regulating only where necessary and certainly no more than the law requires. Nevertheless, there appear to be 3 possible options on the table. First, it may think that it needs to tighten up the rules to make sure all broadcasters follow them in the same way. Second, it may consider there’s room to be more liberal with the rules but within the current statutory framework. Or perhaps, third, it believes that the current legislation is just too out of date, and it believes now is the time for a root and branch review of the law and wants to make recommendations to the Government (for example, removing the universal requirement for due impartiality on all broadcasters). Given that the UK is no longer a member of the EU, it doesn’t have to comply with its Directives – and this could result in greater flexibility in areas like the number of advertising minutes per hour, also sponsorship and product placement. But a decision to no longer follow these European rules could have consequences elsewhere.

Looking at the review, itself, it’s difficult to interpret what direction Ofcom is going in’

MEMORIES OF SANDY GALL, A VERY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.

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In 1972 I started at ITN as one of Sandy Gall’s scriptwriters on News at Ten. In 1992 I was his Editor and organised his farewell party. As I discovered over those twenty years and since he was a truly remarkable man. I have written this tribute to Sandy in a newsletter for former ITN staff.

I was in the ITN Newsroom on the afternoon of 24 February 1991 the day the ground war began to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s occupying forces. So far not a frame of film or video had appeared from any source. The phone rang and the switchboard said “It’s Sandy Gall for you”. Moments later a familiar voice was telling me, ever so calmly, that he had just crossed the border into Kuwait with Saudi forces, he had pictures of tanks crossing the border and the first Iraqi prisoners. His report would be ready in a few minutes. I told him that none of the bright young men and women reporters embedded with Coalition troops had filed. Which meant that this wily old fox, operating solo with his crew, possibly the oldest man on the battlefield at 64, had a world exclusive. “Oh good’; he replied modestly. All very Sandy.

I had first worked with him in 1972. I was in awe of him and the more I learned about Henderson Alexander Gall the more remarkable he became. In contrast with the calm, relaxed, elder statesman dashing off occasionally from the News at Ten desk to obtain an exclusive or two I found that he had once been an impatient and frustrated reporter constantly contrasting ITN unfavourably with his previous employers Reuters. “Although I knew all about being a foreign correspondent”, he later wrote, “I knew nothing about television’ when he joined ITN in 1963 aged 36. Compared to Reuters ITN was a ‘babe in arms’. 

He was shocked by how rarely and how late ITN sent on foreign trips and could be angered by cables from the Foreign Desk: “Bloody Boy Scouts. It irritated me beyond measure that men who were much inferior in experience should be dictating to me.”. On another trip he got angry about a particular microphone he was forced to take. “The idea of carrying this great lump of metal into battle was obviously absurd”. The crew ‘lost it’. 

It was in Vietnam where Sandy began to love television and ITN in particular. When in 1965 the Americans began bombing raids against North Vietnam he ‘cornered’ the Editor Geoffrey Cox but was initially told “I’m not convinced”. A week later he became the first ITN correspondent to report the Vietnam war and ten years later he would be the last as the Americans withdrew. Along the way there were some brilliant eye-witness dispatches from the jungle front line but he also found time for some rounds at the Saigon Golf Club . Excellent food and wine was consumed as high level contacts were entertained at restaurants. Sandy himself told the story of how he once cabled ITN asking for £300 to pay his hotel bill. The amount came out at the ITN end as £3,000, Sandy said the Saigon Post Office accidentally added a nought. The then Editor, Nigel Ryan, cabled back: ‘Your request for more funds. You supposed to be reporting Vietnam, not buying it’.” But another legendary story annoyed him, yes it was true that Sandy was given the keys to the British Club when the UK Consul left Saigon but he didn’t help himself to the wine in the Consul’s cellar.

What I learned about Sandy over the years was that he was partly driven by political views forged in his news agency days. In 1958 he was the only Western correspondent in Budapest when Imre Nagy, the leader of the Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising two years earlier, was executed. “As a Reuter man you’re supposed to be impartial and one was impartial in one’s reporting but one’s own private feelings were that this was a dreadful system that could behave in this sort of way”. In 1982 he set off to Afghanistan with a documentary crew: “I had seen Soviet power at its worst you might say, I wondered what was going to happen there”.

The veteran foreign correspondent, back in the saddle literally, accompanied by mujahideen fighters, traversed the mountainsides of the Hindu Kush. There was a message to go with the stunning pictures, Sandy had met Ahmed Shah Massoud, a mujahideen leader fighting the Russians, who he saw as ‘the second Tito’ leading his partisans against the foreign oppressors. Sandy’s friendship with President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan delivered a series of exclusives to ITN about Massoud’s men. Sandy walked into my office in 1989 with news that he secured a deal to take a satellite dish from Pakistan into mujahideen areas of Afghanistan and transmit live back to London. It caused a TV sensation, a BBC foreign editor once told me they ‘really hurt’ at our success. In 2012, long after we had both left ITN, I interviewed Sandy for a BBC radio programme called ‘When Reporters Cross the Line’. I wondered if he, indeed we, had done exactly that with our positive coverage of Massoud and our non-coverage of how deeply Margaret Thatcher’s Government was involved. Sandy was unapologetic. “I don’t feel at all guilty about it, I didn’t think I’d overstepped my area of journalistic impartiality”.

Nobody can ever doubt Sandy Gall’s bravery in so many places such as ‘C19’, Idi Amin’s favourite execution cell during Sandy’s time in detention in Uganda. He also had a passion for humanitarian commitment creating a charity which fitted 20,000 Afghans with artificial limbs. His wife Eleanor, who he met while they were both working in Hungary, helped run the charity until her death in 2018. So did his daughter Carlotta, now a senior correspondent with the New York Times, who approved of the title of her paper’s obituary;‘Sandy Gall,War Correspondent Without Swagger, Dies at 97’.  

NEW EVIDENCE THAT OFCOM’S PLAN TO SOLVE THEIR GB NEWS PROBLEM WON’T WORK. THEY NEED TO DO WHAT PARLIAMENT INTENDED ON IMPARTIALITY.

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The communications regulator, Ofcom, defeated in the High Court by GB News over their decisions on ‘due impartiality’ and whether a politician can present a ‘news programme’, now want to tweak the Broadcasting Code. Chris Banatvala and I, formerly colleagues at Ofcom, strongly disagree with the proposal from our former employer. We’ve monitored GB News’s primetime output for a week and the content analysis shows the proposed solution only creates new and more problems for the regulator. Ofcom rely on differentiating ‘news’ (which they agree politicians can’t present) and ‘current affairs’ (which they argue politicians can). So they now say politicians can’t be ‘news interviewers’. But our monitoring reveals that every interview conducted and presented by Nigel Farage and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg in our week of monitoring was about that day’s news stories, clearly making the politicians ‘news interviewers’ by any definition.

The monitoring was just part of our review of all the legislation and regulation on due impartiality. Instead of a tweak that won’t work we want Ofcom to enforce the Communications Act in the way we believe Parliament intended. So for the first time we’ve made a submission to an Ofcom public consultation challenging them and asking : ‘was it ever Parliament’s intention that a leader of a political party, or potentially – a Prime Minister, could host an ‘impartial’ daily programme about the political news of that day’.

This is the submission.

Ofcom digs itself into another regulatory hole as Farage returns to presenting on GB News.

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GB News has announced that Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party, who took a break from presenting ‘Farage’ during his successful local election campaign, will return to the channel in ‘early June’.This will create an unprecedented situation in British broadcasting. The leader of a political party who, according to recent polls, has a real chance of becoming the next Prime Minister will have his own programme about the day’s news three times a week from June until the next General Election campaign without any other party leader having to be offered any equivalent airtime.

If that isn’t unusual enough, Farage is returning to the TV presenter’s chair at the very moment the Ofcom regulations about his programme are in a state of limbo. Readers of my last blog will know that in March Ofcom lost an important court case, the first time this has happened on a matter of content regulation. Mrs Justice Collins Rice agreed with a challenge by GB News that Ofcom’s rulings that two GB News broadcasts in 2023 breached the code on ‘due impartiality and due accuracy in news’ were unlawful. Ofcom therefore decided to drop 11 investigations or rulings about broadcasts in which politicians read out news items. Most were on GB News, there were also some cases involving TalkTV and LBC. Ofcom has now published a consultation document on how it wants to change the regulations to solve the problems the court case identified. 

In my March blog I forecast that Ofcom would be tempted to confine the consultation to a narrow legal issue rather than take the opportunity to review how it got into this mess in the first place.The cause of the core problem is Ofcom’s decision, going back to when GB News started using politicians as presenters, that this was allowed because these weren’t ‘news’ programmes but ‘current affairs’. 

As predicted Ofcom wants to change just a few words but they will create a whole new row. Under the current Rule 5.3 politicians can’t be the ‘newsreader, interviewer or reporter’ in what Ofcom deems to be a news programme. But they can do interviews about the news of the day in what Ofcom regards as ‘current affairs programmes’. 

Now the regulator proposes that there should be one rule about politicians which should apply to ‘any type of programme’ and that includes ‘current affairs’ shows. And what should that one rule be?  Ofcom obviously has to define what exactly politicians can’t do in ‘any type of programme’. It has chosen : ‘No politician may be used as a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter in any type of programme’. Let’s focus on that term ‘news interviewer’ which Ofcom has created but not defined.  What exactly is a ‘news interview’ or, for that matter, ‘news’ in Ofcom’s mind ? Is a ‘news interview’ an interview in a news bulletin, an interview with a news-maker in a ‘non-news’ programme such as ‘Farage’, any interview about the news of the day or any interview that makes news. 

It seems politicians won’t be allowed to do ‘news interviews’ whatever they are but could they do interviews about the news? When does one become the other? Could Nigel Farage interview GB News’s Political Editor, Christopher Hope, live about a story of the day, would that be a ‘news interview’? What would happen if Hope wanted to give viewers an important breaking news update, could he do that? Could Farage ask him a follow up question? 

Ofcom has dug itself into another regulatory hole. You do wonder who at Ofcom could have signed this off without realising the implications. 

Details of the consultation are here, the closing date is 23 June 2025.

WHAT OFCOM NEEDS TO DO AFTER DEFEAT IN THE HIGH COURT BY GB NEWS

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It is the first time in its history that Ofcom has lost a judicial review on an issue of content regulation. Even more painful for the regulator was that victory went to the broadcaster with a problematic compliance record, GB News, which it has warned about its future conduct. I’ve given my views on the significance of the case to the podcast ‘Roger Bolton’s Beebwatch’ but I also set them out here.

When regulators are challenged in the High Court the assumption is that judges will not want to intervene unless they are convinced there has been a mistake. In her 117 paragraph judgement in GB News Limited v The Office of Communications Mrs Justice Collins Rice spelt out how Ofcom had indeed made mistakes. She explained why she upheld the legal challenge by GB News and decided that Ofcom’s rulings that two GB News broadcasts in 2023 breached the code on ‘due impartiality and due accuracy in news’ were unlawful.

GB News said ‘Our court victory is hugely significant for the entire British broadcasting industry’. I agree but there could be unintended consequences they didn’t plan for.

Here’s my guide to what the case was about and what the implications are.

1.What was the specific issue?

Let’s start in June 2021, GB News went on the air with presenters putting their personal political views followed up by guests who mostly but not unanimously agreed with them. Some of us asked ‘is that allowed’ ? Ofcom said there was no problem.

March 2023. Conservative MPs began to present GB News programmes. More of us asked ‘is that allowed’? Ofcom explained that politicians can’t present ‘news programmes’ but they can present ‘current affairs programmes’. 

May and June 2023. On two occasions during Jacob Rees-Mogg’s programmes there was breaking news. On one Rees-Mogg read the result of a court case in America involving Donald Trump, on another he did a live interview with a reporter in Nottingham after the murders of two students and a local man.

For the few minutes that he was handling breaking news had Rees-Mogg become the presenter of a news programme -something which isn’t allowed – or was it simply a  news item in a ‘current affairs’ programme that he was allowed to present? 

March 2024. Ofcom recorded two breaches of the code on due impartiality. ‘Ofcom considered that the programmes in question were both news and current affairs programmes. Programmes can feature a mix of news and non-news content and move between the two. However, if a licensee chooses to use a politician as a presenter, it must take steps to ensure they do not act as a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter’.

GB News said see you in court. 

2. What did the judge think?

Here’s how Mrs Justice Collins Rice summarised Ofcom’s view: ‘Programmes could feature a mix of news and non-news content and move between the two’. But here’s what she thought: ‘A programme cannot be a news programme and a current affairs programme at the same time’. 

The Judge also contrasted the Ofcom view that a programme can be both news and current affairs with Ofcom’s requirement for the two genres to be treated completely separately in the quotas for public service broadcasters. Having it both ways was ‘a proposition which on the face of it appears to place the coherence of the statutory scheme under some strain’. 

I think that’s judicial code for ‘sort this out please’. 

As part of this sorting out a whole breed of ‘hybrid’ programmes, from Channel Four News to BBC Newsnight and rolling news programmes on news channels, will have to be regulated as either news or current affairs in the UK and on the international channels which Ofcom also regulates. So if the daytime rolling news hours on GB News are judged to be ‘news’ can the presenters continue to be quite so opinionated?

3. How did this situation come about ?

Ofcom only has itself to blame for this mess. When it conjured up the ‘news v current affairs’ divide to justify what GB News was transmitting it does not seem to have properly considered the wider implications. Take, for example, Section 320 of the Communications Act of 2003 when Parliament decided it wanted due impartiality not just in news or current affairs, however you define them , but in all ’matters of political or industrial controversy’  and ‘matters relating to current public policy’. How is that consistent with the output of a channel where all the prime time presenters express views from the political right with none from the centre or left? 

4. So what happens next? 

An Ofcom statement after the judgement said: ‘We accept the Court’s guidance on this important aspect of due impartiality in broadcast news and the clarity set out in its Judgment. We will now review and consult on proposed changes to the Broadcasting Code to restrict politicians from presenting news in any type of programme to ensure this is clear for all broadcasters.’ 

Since then it has also announced that it has withdrawn ‘the three other breach decisions against GB News’. Ofcom also removed all these decisions from GB News’s compliance record.

Ofcom now has to decide the terms of reference for its consultation.There will be a temptation for them to confine the consultation to the relatively narrow issue of what should happen when there is breaking news during ‘current affairs’ programmes presented by politicians. The judge did some drafting for Ofcom during her judgement and while the case has been underway GB News has handed over to the newsroom to avoid political presenters handling breaking news.

Limiting the issue for consultation in this way would mean missing an important opportunity to review a much broader and significant issue. It is also one in which there is a significant public interest: do we want more or less opinionated news programming on regulated television in the UK? That should be at the heart of the consultation. 

Mrs Justice Collins Rice has done a forensic review of Ofcom’s current impartiality regime and identified flaws which ‘place the coherence of the statutory scheme under some strain’. The consultation therefore needs to go back to the start of the road that led to the High Court and learn from the lessons of the past five years. What did Parliament mean by ‘news’? Did it intend there could be opinionated presenters of programmes reporting the news of the day? The outcome of this consultation will define due impartiality for the decade ahead until the planned switch-off of terrestrial TV inevitably triggers a compete overhaul of ‘broadcast’ regulation.

There will be debate about the meaning of statute and the translation into regulation. But Ofcom also has to ask itself some uncomfortable questions about its failure to enforce the Broadcasting Code when the meaning is crystal clear. Section 5.9 says ‘presenters must not use the advantage of regular appearances to promote their views in a way that compromises the requirement for due impartiality’. How can Ofcom claim that a daily primetime programme called ‘Farage’ is not providing the leader of a political party with regular appearances to promote his views?

There is much that this consultation should consider.

How do you spin a crisis like Kim Philby’s defection to Russia ? What the newly released spy files reveal.

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Government and MI5 files from 1963 released to The National Archives reveal how Whitehall handled the unwelcome news that former MI6 officer Kim Philby had defected to Russia.

The circumstances were unprecedented; an MI6 man who the Government had said wasn’t a KGB agent had now admitted that he was and then set off for Moscow to join two of his spy friends from the Foreign Office. It had happened because MI6 had bungled an attempt to do a deal with him. The news had not yet come out but it was bound to leak soon. The question for the Government of Harold Macmillan was how do we spin our way out of this one? Downing Street and MI5 disagreed on what to do and we can read edited documents in those parts of Philby’s MI5 file which have now been released.

Foreign Office official Peter Westlake was optimistic, ‘it seems highly improbable that the reputation of the Foreign Service proper will suffer’. Philby may have been the First Secretaryat the British Embassy in Washington but press reports had said he worked for MI6 or ‘our friends’ in Whitehall jargon. Westlake recalled that ‘the employment of H.A.R Philby as a member of our friends’ service was terminated in 1951 when the circumstances of the disappearance of Messrs Burgess and Maclean cast serious doubts on his loyalty. Since 1956 he has been a journalist in the Middle East residing in the Lebanon and working for the Observer and the Economist. He disappeared on January 23 and subsequent enquiries have shed no light on his present whereabouts.It is known however that a Soviet ship left Beirut for Odessa on January 23 and it is possible that Philby boarded this clandestinely and may now be in the Soviet Union’. 

What Westlake didn’t mention was that MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, a friend of Philby, had flown to Beirut to confront him with conclusive evidence of his treachery and had given him time to write a confession in return for this not being used in court against him. In the words of another document Philby ‘agreed to submit himself for detailed examination later.’ Instead he disappeared. 

Mr Westlake believed that when the story of Philby’s disappearance broke it would amount to either a presumption or a confirmation that he was the Third Man. ‘In either case HMG’s public posture is good. These events can only serve to confirm that the Government of the day were right to terminated (sic) Mr Philby’s employment in 1951’.  Mr Westlake chose to ignore was that it would also ‘serve to confirm’ that MacMillan, then the Foreign Secretary, had told the House of Commons something very different back in 1955: “I have no reason to conclude that Mr Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of this country or to identify him with the so-called ‘third man’ if, indeed there was one”. 

At the next level up at the FO the Deputy Under-Secretary,Sir Hugh Stephenson, drafting the note that would go to Downing Street toned down Westlake’s words. HMG’s public picture was no longer ’good’ but ‘reasonable’. Stephenson outlined two options for how to handle the news. The first was to take the initiative and make an announcement. This would ‘produce a success story. demonstrating that the tenacity of the Security Service has finally disposed of a long standing case’ .The alternative was ‘to play it long and to deal with the situation as it develops’.

Over at MI5 the Deputy Director-General Graham Mitchell thought there was a third, to ‘announce the substance of the facts’ without the spin. But in an internal MI5 memo he noted: ‘it is not in any case a matter for us to determine and I think we would be wise to make no comment’. 

The very next day, February 22 1963, came Macmillan’s decision: ‘it would be right to do nothing for the time being and to decide later how to handle the case in the light of developments’. Three days later the Arab News Agency in Beirut sent a telegram to Reuters and the world soon knew the story. Macmillan’s Government was forever on the back foot and under attack in the press and parliament. 

At MI5 Graham Mitchell didn’t have much time to say ‘told you so’ and he certainly got no thanks. Later that year he was suspected of being a Soviet agent himself. Macmillan recalled being told Mitchell had been ‘ spotted wandering around the loos in the park,passing things, probably it was opium or something, he seems to be somewhat unhinged. Fortunately he retired before we could do anything about it’. 

‘She could have become a female Philby’ – our new research on the Communist Party spy recruited at Oxford aged 21.

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An article on the Sunday Times website on October 20 2024 by Nicholas Hellen was headlined ‘The Home Office high-flyer cultivated by Soviet spies’. It is the story of Jenifer Hart an Oxford graduate in 1935 who agreed at the age of 21 to become a Communist Party spy inside the Home Office. She had meetings with recruiters from the KGB. Nicholas Hellen’s article says the source of new material about Jenifer Hart is research I have done with my colleague Jeff Hulbert for our book ‘The Summer Camp Spies’. Here’s our summary of what we have discovered:

Newly unearthed documents reveal the full scale of the KGB’s attempt to repeat at Oxford University their success with the recruitment of the ‘Cambridge Five’ spies in the 1930s . They made contact with five Oxford graduates and three of these became KGB agents. 

All five were involved in a summer camp which Oxford students organised for unemployed workers in 1935. One female student who joined the Communist Party after the camp was targeted by the same recruiters who took Cambridge graduate Kim Philby to the KGB. She could have become a female Philby inside the British establishment but became ‘disillusioned’. 

Her history as a secret Communist inside the Home Office was covered up for two decades by her boyfriend, later her husband, an MI5 officer (he got the job thanks to her). She had met KGB recruiters at his flat and he used his MI5 role to try to keep her name out of their file of suspects. Thanks to him and his senior colleagues it was two decades before MI5 was forced to interrogate her after she let the cat out of the bag at a party.

The full story of the couple who became better known post war as Oxford dons Professor Herbert ‘H.L.A.’ Hart and Jenifer Hart is revealed in MI5 files in the National Archives and family files deposited at Oxford University. I discovered them and my colleague, Jeff Hulbert, made a fresh analysis of other MI5 archive files using digital tools not available to MI5 at the time. 

Our research is summarised in ‘The Summer Camp Spies by Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert’ and in follow-up work which we report here. The Oxford students we name have a more diverse background than their posher counterparts in the Cambridge Five. Working with them at the summer camp was a wealthy Indian Marxist student. Apart from the first English woman known to have been targeted by the KGB other women made an impact as spy recruiters and spy catchers.

We name five Oxford graduates at the summer camp who were later involved in espionage either for the British Communist Party or the KGB or both:

  • Peter Rhodes, the camp organiser, was an American student who became a communist while at Oxford. In 1945 he was named by a member of an KGB spy ring in America as a fellow Soviet agent.
  • Jenifer Hart, recruited to the Communist Party at the camp, became an undercover communist inside the Home Office. She had meetings with two KGB recruiters before becoming ‘disillusioned’ with communism.
  • Bernard Floud was a fellow student who asked her to be a secret Communist in the civil service and gather information to ‘prepare for a revolutionary situation’. He later became a Labour MP. After MI5 blocked his promotion to ministerial rank he committed suicide in 1967.
  • Arthur Wynn was the KGB recruiter who Floud arranged for Hart to meet in 1936. He was later revealed in KGB files to be their ‘Agent Scott’. 
  • David Floyd was, variously, an Oxford student on a scholarship from Wiltshire Council, a milkman, a Foreign Office diplomat and a KGB spy. In 1951 he confessed and was found a job on the Daily Telegraph.

Among our other discoveries are that MI5 missed several real spies by concentrating resources on surveillance of known Communist Party activists.

‘The Summer Camp Spies’ is available, price £10, from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road,London NW3 2QB. hampstead@dauntbooks.co.uk 020 7794 8206. Copyright © Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert 2024. Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

spspurvis@blueyonder.co.uk