Huw Edwards – latest: BBC faces questions after admitting paying ‘£479,000’ salary despite knowing of arrest

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The BBC is unlikely to remove major news broadcasts presented by Huw Edwards, say corporation insiders.

Pivotal segments such as Queen Elizabeth II’s death, numerous elections, the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 2012 London Olympics and 2014 Commonwealth Games, and the royal weddings of Prince William and Prince Harry, will remain online despite his guilty plea.

In an article in The Times, staffers at the broadcasting house said the historical significance of Britain’s seminal moments outweighed their need for removal. One BBC executive was quoted saying: “News is a matter of public record ... What a nightmare.”

Huw Edwards should hand back some of the salary paid to him since his arrest, a former BBC royal correspondent has suggested.

Jennie Bond told broadcaster Jeremy Vine on Thursday: “Frankly, if Huw has any dignity left then he would hand some of the money back, certainly the 200 grand he has made since his arrest. I think it would be gracious of him to do that.”

She added: “We need to remember the BBC as a whole is being tarnished and reputationally this is very very damaging of course. But the news division is quite rightly and thankfully quite separate from the corporation itself.

“It’s quite a hard division for people to make but we in the news have without fear or favour questioned the bosses at the BBC and that is entirely right. In the newsroom themselves they were kept in the dark right until this week, which is extraordinary.”

Jeremy Vine has said the BBC should clarify if Huw Edwards was asked if he was guilty at the time the corporation was informed of his arrest on “suspicion of serious offences”.

Vine, who hosts a show on BBC Radio 2, said bosses should confirm if they tried to establish whether or not Edwards was guilty of the crimes he was accused, adding: “You can’t justify paying him beyond November if you know he’s guilty.”

Speaking on his self-titled Channel 5 chat show, Vine said: “We need to find out if BBC said, what (were you arrested) for and are you guilty? If he said to them, ‘It’s for these serious offences, but I’m not guilty,’ then I would think you could start to take action to get the money back.

“Because that clearly is a lie. He’s admitted he’s guilty. I don’t know whether the BBC asked him ‘Are you guilty?’ because you can’t justify paying him beyond November if you know he’s guilty.”

He added: “The information may have come from an intermediary who says I’ve got no more information than this - Huw has been arrested.”

He continued: “What a mess and the poor BBC at the centre. It has terrible moments, but there are precious reasons why we don’t want it to go down the swanny. This is not the day to defend it because this is a bad, bad week. I couldn’t believe yesterday when I heard that the BBC had been told about it in November.”

The news of Huw Edwards’ guilty plea comes weeks after the BBC delayed publishing a report in the conduct of former Radio 1 presenter Tim Westwood because of an ongoing police investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct going back four decades.

Westwood “strongly denies all allegations of inappropriate behaviour” and refutes all accusations of wrongdoing. He has not been charged with a criminal offence.

BBC director-general Tim Davie will face tough questions from culture secretary Lisa Nandy about what the corporation knew about Huw Edwards’s case after the veteran broadcaster admitted accessing indecent images of children.

The corporation has said it knew of the veteran broadcaster’s arrest on “suspicion of serious offences” in November, but continued employing him until April.

The public currently pays £169.50 a year for the licence fee and questions will surely be raised if Edwards’ salary was the best use of that money.

The fact Edwards has now admitted three charges of making indecent photographs – after he was sent 41 illegal images by convicted paedophile Alex Williams – will also likely raise serious questions of trust in figures at the BBC.

Laura Harding has the full report:

Responding to numerous questions from reporters at a media briefing, the BBC’s director general Tim Davie defended an increase in Huw Edwards’ salary, saying the corporation was trying to act “proportionally” and “fairly” while navigating it “appropriately”.

The BBC boss continued: “I think that’s what we did and it ended up in the conclusion, we all know, but I think we wouldn’t have wasted money if we weren’t doing the right thing.”

Rachel Hagan has more in this report:

Huw Edwards saw his salary increase by £40,000 last year, the BBC’s latest annual pay report showed.

Edwards was suspended in July 2023 over allegations of paying a young person for sexually explicit photos, but police did not take any action as there was no evidence of a criminal offence.

The BBC has now said it was made aware in confidence that Edwards had been arrested on suspicion of “serious” allegations and released on bail while police investigated. He later resigned in April citing medical reasons. It is BBC policy for staff to remain on the payroll while suspended, BBC News reported.

The lastest BBC figures show his pay was in the region of £475,000 to £479,000 between April 2023 and April 2024, up from between £435,000 and 439,999 in the previous year.

Former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty to three counts of “making indecent images of children”, but what this offence means is easily misinterpreted due to its wording.

It does not mean Mr Edwards had arranged for the images to be made, nor does it mean he used any kind of AI software to artificially produce them.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) acknowledges that the offence has been widely interpreted over the years.

Online guidance from the CPS says: “Making indecent images can have a wide definition in the law and can include opening an email attachment containing such an image, downloading one from a website, or receiving one via social media, even if unsolicited and even if part of a group.”

My colleague Albert Toth has more details on the offence: