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Huw Edwards hits back at Media Secretary claim that BBC full of people ‘whose parents worked there’

04 Oct 2021 2 minute read
Nadine Dorries picture by Chris McAndrew (CC BY 3.0). Right, Huw Edwards picture by Brian Minkoff-London Pixels (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Broadcaster Huw Edwards has hit back at a claim by Media and Culture Secretary of State Nadine Dorries that the BBC is staffed by people “whose mum and dad worked there”.

The new culture secretary condemned what she called “groupthink” in the BBC, saying the broadcaster and the arts more widely included a predominance of privately educated people reliant on nepotism.

But Huw Edwards fired back on social media, saying that “I know one spectacularly successful BBC News presenter whose parents were never on the BBC’s books and who made it ‘despite’ his state and non-Oxbridge education. Fancy that!”

He was educated at Llanelli Boys’ Grammar School and graduated with a degree in French from University College, Cardiff, in 1983.

He also posted a picture of himself as a boy with his late father Hywel Teifi Edwards, his mother Aerona, and his sister Meinir. His father was a Research Professor of Welsh-language Literature at University College, Swansea, and his mother a teacher at Llanelli’s Ysgol Gyfun y Strade.

Speaking earlier at the Conservative Party conference, Nadine Dorries had said that the BBC needed a more socially diverse workforce and had “an impartiality problem”.

“The perspective from the BBC is that they will get a settlement and then we’ll talk about how they’re going to change,” Dorries told a live edition of the Telegraph podcast Chopper’s Politics at the conference in Manchester. “But my perspective is, tell me how you’re going to change and then you get a settlement.

“We’re having a discussion about how the BBC can become more representative of the people who pay the licence fee, and how it can be more accessible to people from all backgrounds, not just people whose mum and dad worked there.”

Some on social media responding to her comments claimed that they were ironic given that she had faced criticism for employing two of her daughters as staff in her parliamentary office at a cost of up to £80,000 in 2013.


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Gill Jones
Gill Jones
3 years ago

Da iawn Huw – hen bryd sefyll lan i’r dwpsen hon.

Kerry Davies
Kerry Davies
3 years ago

If there was ever a more hypocritical politician than this numpty I don’t know of them. Dorries complaining of nepotism when she charged we taxpayers £80,000 a year to “employ” her two daughters who did nothing for the money is like the billionaire Rishi Sunak telling a single mother who is about to lose her £20 UC “I feel your pain.”

Jacob Rees Mogg is right, they are all scum.

Y Cymro
Y Cymro
3 years ago

Nadine Dorries, you absolute Tory hypocrite of the highest order. A woman who was gifted her Ministerial job rather than earned it. Also, she forgets. Her beloved leader Boris Johnson, his sister and father all got into the media gravy-train like she has due to connections.. So instead of pointing fingers should take a long hard look at herself in the mirror. No doubt it’ll be difficult seeing you’ve got no reflection with a dislike of direct sunlight being an old bat. And in 2013 this Tory shirker didn’t inform her constituency office that she was entering ITV’s ‘I’m a… Read more »

hdavies15
hdavies15
3 years ago
Reply to  Y Cymro

Good of you to suggest that she takes a long hard look at herself in a mirror. Sadly, the thing will crack after a few seconds unless its been trained to cope with a reptilian image. She is a seriously deviant piece of work, recently employing her own brat while calling others out for nepotism. She must be inhaling the same muck as Gove and others.

Hedda Mulgrew
Hedda Mulgrew
3 years ago
Reply to  hdavies15

What happened in your life that you have to spend so much time spewing bile on a fringe click bait website?

Maybe you aren’t half the woman Nadine Dorries is?

You can bad mouth her all you like on here, I bet there is a fair few male members of Plaid who would forego their differences if it gave them a chance.

Last edited 3 years ago by Hedda Mulgrew
Welsh_Sion
Welsh_Sion
3 years ago

And your point, caller?

hdavies15
hdavies15
3 years ago

What did you expect him to do ? He worked his way “up” didn’t climb over daddy or mummy’s shoulders to get a start. You provided your own answer or are you blinded by your own prejudices ?

arthur owen
3 years ago

Huw was born into a cultural establishment,all he did was get transferred to a bigger one,just as if he had been a Swansea City player signed by Chelsea.His father really did start off in the local leagues.

Mick Tems
Mick Tems
3 years ago

Nadine Dorries is absolutely appalling. Culture? There’s more culture in a tub of yoghurt.

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