The BBC Trust should be scrapped and the broadcaster regulated externally, a report into the way it is governed is expected to say today.
Sir David Clementi is expected to recommend that the BBC Trust, the BBC’s governing body, is replaced with a unitary board.
The former deputy governor of the Bank of England is also expected to recommend that external regulation of the corporation be passed to Ofcom, the communications regulator that oversees other public sector broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4.
The BBC Trust, which has the dual role of overseeing the BBC’s financial management and strategy, has long been criticised for being “at once the enforcer and defender” of the corporation, one former trust executive acknowledged.
Even Rona Fairhead, the trust’s chairwoman, has called for its abolition, saying that the set-up created blurred accountabilities between the trust and BBC management.
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Government figures told The Times that the corporation would need a heavy-hitting chairman.
Potential candidates include Archie Norman, the outgoing chairman of ITV and former Conservative frontbencher, and Sir Roger Carr, chairman of BAE Systems and vice-chairman at the BBC Trust.
The corporation is also expected to have more non-executives on its board to hold the executive team to account.
The independent review into corporate governance, which began in autumn last year, comes as the government prepares to renew the BBC’s governing charter this year, which will determine the scope and the purpose of the corporation for the next decade.
John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, has made little secret of his desire to overhaul the BBC’s governance, which has come under sustained criticism” as a result of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, excessive executive payoffs and salaries and, more recently, the resignation of Alan Yentob as creative director after a perceived conflict of interest with his role at the now-defunct charity Kids Company.
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In a green paper published last summer the Department for Culture, Media and Sport suggested three possible alternatives to the BBC’s governance: reforming the trust; creating a unitary board alongside a new standalone regulator; or creating a new BBC board and switching regulatory powers to Ofcom.
Ofcom, which is headed by Sharon White, a former Treasury mandarin, would need extra resources to regulate the BBC, which has far more prescriptive codes of conduct and comes under far greater public and political scrutiny than other public sector broadcasters.
Sir David’s governance review will feed into the government’s broader consultation on the future of the BBC. A white paper is due to be published at the end of May.
• The senior judge who led a BBC investigation into Tony Blackburn has criticised the DJ for claiming that he was never questioned over allegations he seduced a 15-year-old girl.
Sir Brian Neill, now a retired lord justice, said that he stood by his 1972 report and that it was inconceivable he had not questioned the radio presenter. Blackburn, 73, was dismissed last week by the BBC over a dispute about the evidence that he had given to an inquiry into sex abuse at the corporation.
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“Of course I can remember . . . it is written in my report,” Sir Brian told the Daily Mail. “I interviewed him . . . and said that I didn’t think he was involved.”
Blackburn has repeatedly said that he was not questioned over allegations that he seduced the girl, who later took her own life. He is planning to sue the BBC over its decision to terminate his contract after the investigation into historical sex abuse.