WHOLESALE change is needed at the BBC to tackle bias, according to Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice.
Asked about President Trump suing the BBC, he told GB News: “What I’m supportive of is the fact that President Trump is requesting and requiring much greater recognition within the BBC, just how badly they got things wrong and the wholesale change that needs to take place.
“It’s already resulted in the Director General and the head of news going, but there needs to be a wholesale clear out of the bias in the BBC, whether it’s the bias against President Trump, whether it’s the bias against the Jewish community. There’s so many areas where the BBC has to do much, much better.
“There’s much that’s great about the BBC, but in the news section, they get things consistently wrong, and that’s why wholesale reform is required. That’s why we’ve said that we would reform the funding model for the BBC.
“And look, President Trump is making a serious point. He is, quite rightly, absolutely furious. Is he negotiating from a high level? Well, of course, who knows where it’ll end up, but what is absolutely certain is that wholesale reform of the BBC is required, including its funding model, and we at Reform have made that very plain and clear.”
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Asked about pro-Palestine protests, he said: “Tragically, this is the consequence of weak, feeble, gutless leadership. Those chants are horrific, along with from the river to the sea, that chant, and it has regrettably led to people feeling empowered to carry out vile, horrific acts of terrorism and anti-Semitism.
“I called for the marches to be banned very soon after, in the week after October the seventh, because I could see that they were inciting hatred and violence and anti-Semitism. Lawful, legal marches are part of a democracy, but that doesn’t mean it gives you the right to be anti-Semitic or incite violence, and that’s exactly what’s happened.
“So yes, it’s got to stop, and it requires an absolute crackdown across the West, actually, whether it’s here in the UK, in America, tragically, as we’ve just seen in Australia, this goes on and on, and it won’t stop until there’s a proper deterrent.”
He added: ‘I spoke at the vigil outside the Houses of Parliament yesterday evening, celebrating the Hanukkah, which, of course, is lighting the candles and sort of using light as a strength to pierce through and to break through and to overcome the darkness of anti-Semitism, of hatred and against violence.
“And in a sense, that is the message, that’s the support Reform UK have been rock solid with the Jewish community, and I speak up in in the House of Commons frequently about this, and we have to reassure the Jewish community that they are safe in in London, across the whole of the UK, and at the moment, sadly, because of this weak government that has not become the case.”
On the strikes by resident doctors, Tice said: “It is selfish. It is absolutely outrageous. And worse than that, I’m now hearing an example I spoke to the health section House of Commons yesterday, cited the example of a resident doctor who is not a member of the BMA union, who said that this doctor was not going to go on strike, but was going to continue working, was pressured and bullied into going on strike and told that a locum doctor, at vast extra expense to the NHS, had already been booked to replace this resident doctor.
“This is the sort of outrageous clothes shop tactics that this union is embarking on. They should be ashamed of themselves. It’s absolutely outrageous, and I think most of the country is raging furious with them, alongside the Health Secretary.”
