July 10th 2023.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk has weighed in on the recent allegations that an unnamed BBC presenter paid a teenager tens of thousands of pounds for sexually explicit images. He spoke to Sky News about his concerns as a parent, saying, "These are very serious and concerning allegations. You ask me as a parent — I would be extremely concerned about that."
Chalk continued, "I think in fairness, I don’t know precisely what was said and at what time, but certainly you would expect allegations of that nature to be dealt with very robustly and promptly." He urged for the incident to be dealt with ‘quickly and fairly’, and said that it was important that the victim's interests were taken into account.
The Cabinet minister then commented on the BBC's handling of the situation, saying, "If that is right, then it is astonishing and you would have expected robust action to have been taken much more quickly. I don’t know precisely what was said, and that is why there needs to be a full discussion of this in the fullness of time.”
Chalk also weighed in on the public interest in naming the presenter, saying, “This is quite a difficult, nuanced legal issue. I’m not going to criticise them at this stage because it will depend on all sorts of things. So, for example, if an allegation were made against you and it was of an extremely serious nature, then I don’t think it would necessarily be appropriate to name you immediately until there had been a full investigation."
He added, "Once the allegation is publicly made and that individual is unmasked, the consequences can be very serious, to say nothing of the potential legal knock-on implications."
The Justice Secretary concluded by saying that he wanted to see the internal BBC investigation wrapped up in a timely manner, noting, “I want them to get on with it.” His comments come as the BBC has suspended a male member of staff following the presenter allegations and Rylan Clark has shut down rumours that he is the presenter taken off-air.
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