Dorries denies threatening to cut BBC funding because of Nick Robinson’s interview with PM – as it happened | Politics

The LBC presenter James O’Brien has described Nadine Dorries’s claim that he tweeted aggressively and obsessively about her as “ludicrous”.

In his letter to the Times (paywall) last week announcing that he had withdrawn from the contest to be the next Ofcom chair, Paul Dacre, the former Daily Mail editor, included a dig at the permanent secretary in the culture department, Sarah Healey. Referring to Healey admitting she likes working from home because it allows more time for exercising on her Peloton bike, he said:

After my infelicitous dalliance with the Blob, I’m taking up an exciting new job in the private sector that, in a climate that is increasingly hostile to business, struggles to create the wealth to pay for all those senior civil servants working from home so they can spend more time exercising on their Peloton bikes and polishing their political correctness, safe in the knowledge that it is they, not elected politicians, who really run this country.

Healey, who is giving evidence alongside Dorries, was asked to respond to this comment. She did not reply directly, but she said:

The only thing that I would say in response to a question is that I’m really proud of what everybody in DCMS does to support ministers. I think they’re an incredibly professional department. I think they work exceptionally hard. They’re very, very committed to what they do. I know that that’s how the secretary of state feels and how the former secretary of state felt about the support that they received.

Dorries said she had 100% support for Healey. She said Healey’s comment about her Peloton was the subject of many jokes in the department. She went on:

There are many male permanent secretaries who went for their jog each morning, or for their cycle ride, or walked their dog. Nobody had anything to say about that.

When Kevin Brennan (Lab) asked if Dorries was suggesting Dacre was misogynist, Julian Knight, the chair, told Brennan that his time for questions had run out. Dorries said “no comment”.

Dorries says the tweet she addressed to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg saying a comment she reported was ridiculous was not an attack on her. She says Kuenssberg is one of the best journalists in the business.

Q: You called working for the Daily Mirror “bottom-feeding scum”.

Dorries says that was many years ago.

Nicolson asks about abusive things Dorries has tweeted about James O’Brien, the LBC presenter.

Dorries says she will not answer these questions.

Julian Knight (Con), the committee chair, says the online harms bill could give her huge power over journalists. He says he is allowing the questions on this basis.

Dorries says the tweet about the Mirror was prompted by a journalist harassing her daughter. It was the mother sending those tweets, she says.

Nicolson asks about some of the tweets Dorries has sent about O’Brien.

Dorries says, like other female politicians, she has had to put up with with men tweeting about her obsessively.

Nicolson quotes another tweet that Dorries retweeted about O’Brien, calling him a liar and a hate preacher. That’s actionable, he says.

Dorries says she is not here to answer questions about tweets she sent in the past. But female politicians criticised on Twitter need to respond “assertively”, she says.

John Nicolson (SNP) goes next.

Q: You said you did not know if the BBC will be going in 10 years’ time? That’s extraordinary.

Dorries says she was asked about the licence fee.

Nicolson reads back the quote to her. She said she did not know if the BBC would still be there in 10 years’ time.

Well, I don’t, says Dorries. And neither do you.

Q: The Times reported that you said the Nick Robinson interview with the PM would cost the BBC a lot of money.

Dorries says she did not hear the interview, and she did not say that.

She says she is “very sure the BBC will be here in 10 years’ time”. The point she was making was that you cannot predict the future, she says.

Q: You said BBC broadcasting was like what you would see in a Soviet country. Have you ever visited a Soviet country?

Dorries says she will not comment on tweets she posted 12 years ago.

Nicolson says it was not 12 years ago. It was in the Daily Mail last month.

Dorries says only around 20% of people working at the BBC come from a working-class background. She says thinks it was easier for people from working-class backgrounds to get careers in the arts, and in journalism, in the 1960s than it is now.

Dorries says she would like to see a revival of local journalism. She describes the days when local journalists used to cover council meeting regularly and she says those were “the good old days … of honest reporting” when journalism wasn’t “overlaid with a filter of opinion”.

Dorries tells the culture committee that she is concerned about the loss of local news. She claims that 30% of journalism posts have gone in the last 10 years. Journalism is important to democracy, she says.

Q: What do you think of the decision of the Brit awards to avoid gendered categories?

Dorries claims this is the first time she has heard about it. She says it sounds like a sad decision. But she says she would be concerned about women not being properly represented.

I have to say it’s the first [time] I’m aware of it. I think it sounds quite a sad decision. I would like to see how they would work in terms of fair gender representation.

Brine says the decision was taken so as not to exclude non-binary artists. Dorries repeats her claim not to have heard of this before. She goes on:

If you look at who used to win awards for novels, and many things in the past, men always dominated, and my concern would be that women weren’t fairly represented moving forward. So I would just be concerned on the gender balance issue.

Whereas we know we’re going to get best female artist, best female producer, best female whatever, I’d be concerned that in the future women weren’t fairly represented in those awards.

Steve Brine (Con) is asking the question.

Q: Do you think Channel 4 privatisation is more or less likely since you took over as culture secretary?

Dorries says she cannot answer that question. She says she does not know what her predecessor thought.

Brine says Channel 4 news is the equivalent of the Guardian on TV. He says that may have clouded the debate on privatisation.

Q: When were you last on Channel 4 News?

Dorries says she has been asked many times to appear on Channel 4 News, but she says no. That is her choice, she says. She says she avoids appearing on news programmes unless she has to.

Dorries insists there would be no point having a consultation on privatising Channel 4 if she was not prepared to listen to what people say.

She says she wants to look at all the evidence, read the culture committee’s report, see a commercial evaluation of Channel 4 and consider the future of public service broadcasting before deciding whether or not to go ahead with the proposed privatisation.

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, is giving evidence to the Commons culture committee. It is her first appearance before the committee in his post. There is a live feed here.

As my colleague Jim Waterson reports, Dorries cited her own children as examples of snowflake lefties, or Islington lefties (types she has regularly criticised in the past on Twitter).

Dorries also denied a report saying she had criticised Nick Robinson, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter, for his interview with Boris Johnson at the Conservative party conference. After the interview, which saw Robinson telling Johnson to “stop talking” because Robinson thought he was playing for time and question-dodging, a Sunday Times report (paywall) claimed Dorries was furious with the presenter’s attitude. “Nick Robinson has cost the BBC a lot of money,” the paper quoted her as telling allies.

Dorries told the committee:

I’ve never criticised Nick Robinson. I didn’t hear the interview that I was supposed to have criticised, and I never made the comments …

It was attributed to me, but nobody can actually say that I said it.

Hospitality venues in Scotland are likely to welcome the Scotttish government’s decision not to extend the scope of vaccine passports in Scotland. (See 2.42pm.) They feared the scheme could have been expanded to cover pubs and restaurants.

Here are some quotes from the Sturgeon statement, from the SNP’s Twitter feed.

Sturgeon is now giving an update on Scotland’s Covid certification scheme.

The current scheme – which covers nightclubs and large events – will apply for at least the next three weeks, she says.

From 6 December people will be able to access places or events covered by the scheme either by showing proof of vaccination, as now, or by showing proof of a recent negative lateral flow test (which is not accepted now).

And she says the cabinet has decided not to extend the scope of the scheme. The decision was ”finely balanced”, she says. But she says they decided that at this stage extending the scheme would not be proportionate.

Sturgeon says the government is asking people over the Christmas period to take a lateral flow test before any occasion when they are socialising with others. That could be going out for drinks, going to someone’s home, or even just going out shopping, she says.

And if you test positive, you should not go, she says.

Sturgeon stresses the importance of pregnant women getting vaccinated too.

Sturgeon says delivering the booster programme is the top priority.

She says 1.4m people have already had a booster. That is just over 30% of the population over the age of 12.

She says people who are not as vaccinated as they could be could be putting the lives of their loved ones in danger. People who have not had a first or second dose now should get one.

And she says getting the booster is “not just a small top up”. It is every bit as important as the first or second dose, she says. She says booster reduce the chance of symptomatic infection by more than 80%.