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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: …the BBC Director General George Entwhistle was told that Newsnight were investigating Jimmy Savile but did not ask what about. The investigation that would have coincided with a planned tribute to Savile was dropped last year by Newsnight and new Mr Entwhistle has launched an investigation into the investigation and the head of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, has hinted that heads could roll if there has been evidence of wrongdoing. Well in a moment I will be speaking to the former chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons. Well let’s say a very good morning to Sir Michael Lyons who joins me now from Sutton Coldfield. Sir Michael, first of all an overview, given your high regard of course at your time at the BBC, just how potentially damaging is this, that one of the most prolific sex offenders of modern times was on the payroll there for so long?

MICHAEL LYONS: Well, hello Dermot, there is no doubt about the seriousness of the allegations against Jimmy Savile and they need to be taken seriously and quite properly, there is a police investigation going on to establish the detailed facts of the case. It clearly has consequences for the BBC but frankly I think the consequences spread well beyond the BBC. There may well be lessons here to learn about the way that we tolerate the behaviour of predatory men, particularly when they are in powerful positions and there may be lessons to learn, I’m sure there are, about the licence that we sometimes collectively allow to celebrities. This goes well beyond the BBC although there are issues for the BBC to address.

DM: But is it critical for the BBC to get its response right here?

ML: Well it always is and over the four years that I served as Chairman, we had a number of high profile controversies. As they emerge the BBC perhaps understandably becomes a very intense focus for people’s concern and anxieties, after all it is the national broadcaster, we do want to trust it, we need to be able to trust what it says, so it is naturally the focus where these cases relate to it but equally you have to say, as you know there is a degree of hysteria in the extent to which it is focused exclusively on the BBC rather than being seen as something of much wider consequence.

DM: Do you really feel that because a lot of it does focus on the access that Jimmy Savile and it seems some others were able to have, particularly to young women and girls, at the BBC, on BBC premises, through the kudos and status that they got from appearing on BBC programmes?

ML: Well as you listen to the allegations unfold and clearly they are going to be investigated and need to be, what we hear are not just allegations relating to the BBC, although I don’t want to diminish those, but also allegations made about hospital and prison context so this is, if they are proved right, here we have a serial offender potentially, across a wide range of settings. None of that detracts from the importance of the BBC making sure that it understands what happened and makes sure that there is no risk at all of such events happening now.

DM: Of course there are two broad strands aren’t there, to these investigations. I don't know what your assessment is, would you say it is equally as troubling what happened towards the end of last year, after the death of Jimmy Savile and the BBC planning on the general entertainment side of the BBC, these tributes to Jimmy Savile’s legacy and at the same time some of this, some of these allegations that we now know much more about were investigated, and it seems very fully, by Newsnight but that was never broadcast.

ML: Well I don't know the detail and there is no reason why I should, there clearly is a question to be answered and George Entwhistle has set up an investigation and put Fiona Reynolds in the chair temporarily of his board to do those investigations and we do need I think to be clear that there was no inappropriate influence there. You know that in any news programme you sometimes put together stories which for one reason or another don’t make it to air. If this is more than that and there is any suggestion that for the sake of an entertainment programme the BBC failed to investigate allegations which clearly related to its own history, then that’s a serious matter and I think Chris Patten has made it very clear that the Trust takes it seriously and will pursue it to its end.

DM: Do you think we need to look closely at George Entwhistle’s role? He is the current Director-General, of course relatively new in the post, but at the time last year was Director of Vision, effectively in charge of all those channels and he seems to say he was aware of it but didn’t know the substance of what Newsnight was investigating.

ML: Well I think it’s important not to confuse the role he did then and the role he does now and it seems to me, again without all of the detail, that it was right that Helen Boaden made him aware of this Newsnight investigation given the potential consequences for a programme which as Head of Vision he was responsible for but he was not editor in chief at that stage so I think it is important that this examines not only what George did but actually whether the matter went any further and really as much for the integrity of the BBCs own journalism in-house, whether or not there was anyone who vetoed this Newsnight item going ahead. I would be surprised if it was vetoed but it is important that the chapter and verse on that is delivered and it is scrutinised by the Trust and then made public.

DM: But is there a danger for George Entwhistle of getting caught in that position and other so-called chief executives in other organisations find this, that he should have known but he didn’t or he did know and he didn’t take it any further?

ML: Well let’s come back to the role he was acting in then. If he had had editorial responsibilities for that programme then of course he would have applied a different set of tests, he would have wanted to know more than if he was just being made aware of something because of its relationship to a programme for which he was responsible. Let’s be clear, the Director General is probably in a unique role in the UK in terms of the intensity of public scrutiny on everything that you do and that is quite proper I think but let’s not mix up what George did as the Head of Vision with what he now has to do as Director General. I think his actions over the last week appear to have been pretty well faultless really, we will learn more of what happened earlier in the year and judgements will be made. There is no question of things being covered up here, I’m sure of that.

DM: There is a more subtle problem though that perhaps these investigations might not be able to address and this is the sense that is coming from some unnamed BBC journalists, that there is almost an air of self-censorship there, that those within the News and Current Affairs division felt they didn’t want to queer the pitch so to speak when it came to the Jimmy Savile tributes because it was known that they would get mass audiences.

ML: Well Dermot, you know the BBC, any notion that is a monolithic organisation is quickly dispelled. There are a myriad of opinions within it at any time and often quite strongly contested views particularly amongst journalists. I think the key issue here is if this issue was not pursued because they couldn’t put the programme together in a way that met the BBC’s editorial standards, well that’s fine. If somebody intervened to stop it because it would be an embarrassment at the time that they were promoting an entertainment programme on Savile, that would be I think offensive and I am sure there will be actions following up on that. I don’t believe that the BBC has lost its nerve for doing searching inquiries, what it has I think over the last few years got a bit more careful about and the Trust has played an important part in that, is in being sure that it gets its facts right before it goes on air. We’ve seen that in one or two Panorama programmes and as I look across the wider piece, and particularly with the Hillsborough report ringing in our ears, actually there is a profound lesson there for the media as a whole.

DM: What’s your feeling, just finally Sir Michael, as you watch from the outside but with direct experience as you mentioned earlier of problems that the BBC has faced in the past, in terms of magnitude does it compare with David Kelly and then the whole Hutton convulsions or is this something that you believe will pass and will be dealt with effectively?

ML: No, I don't think this is a Hutton/Kelly incident. This is one of those periodic events where a storm is created and the BBC is focused upon even though the issues are applicable to a wider range of organisations. There is a bit, if you don’t mind me saying this, there is a bit within the communications industry of its own self reverence, its own interests in its own dealings, focusing on the BBC even when actually the issues are broader. The issues here I think are about child protection, they are about how we identify offenders, they are about whether or not we allow celebrities in our modern society, let alone in the past, more licence than we should.

DM: Okay, Sir Michael, thank you very much indeed for your time. Sir Michael Lyons there, former chairman of the BBC Trust.