Yentob should resign

Alan Yentob has had a highly successful career with the BBC. He is credited with producing some of the corporation’s best arts programmes and considered an innovative controller of both BBC One and BBC Two. Aged 68, he remains a powerful and influential figure at the BBC and gives of his time for charitable work. But Mr Yentob, who is paid in the region of £330,000, has evidently lost all sense of proportion.

As chairman of the now defunct Kid’s Company, he appealed directly to ministers for more taxpayers’ money to keep it afloat by warning that young people in the capital who relied upon the help it provided would riot and loot if it closed. An extraordinary letter to the Cabinet Office even suggested there would be arson attacks on government buildings if £3 million was not handed over. Not only was the language completely over the top, it was tantamount to blackmail.

Indeed, it is questionable whether Mr Yentob should have been a trustee of such a high-profile charity at all. His role there always risked people thinking, whether justifiably or not, that Kid’s Company could always rely on support from the BBC. He became an evangelist for, and defender of, its founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, rather than a hard-nosed overseer of the charity’s activities. Ironically, BBC journalists have done the most to expose the shortcomings at Kid’s Company, yet Mr Yentob allegedly tried to influence the coverage of the issue. Mr Yentob, who has accumulated a pension pot worth £6 million, displayed poor judgment and allowed a conflict of interest to develop. In these circumstances, why should the licence-fee payer continue to fund his vast income? It is time he went.