BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten should appear before a parliamentary committee to answer questions in public over alleged bias in the broadcaster's coverage of European issues, Speaker John Bercow has said.
Lord Patten has refused to appear before the European Scrutiny Committee and its Tory arch-Eurosceptic chair Bill Cash prompting accusations he is abusing his position as a Lord.
Commons Leader Andrew Lansley said he would raise the issue of accountability with the BBC as Mr Bercow stressed that no-one is too senior to be above scrutiny from Parliament.
Lord Patten - a former EU commissioner - has three times rebuffed requests from the cross-party panel of MPs and peers to appear before it.The committee found "serious questions need to be answered about how EU issues in general and scrutiny in particular are covered".
Mr Bercow said: "Anybody who's invited to appear before a committee in this House should do so. No-one, no matter how senior should imagine him or herself above such scrutiny."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article