Maria Eagle MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, responding to the news that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport may face a Judicial Review following its handling of the public consultation into the future of the BBC, says:

“How can Ministers claim to be taking their own public consultation on the BBC seriously when they haven’t even bothered to read all the submissions before publishing their response? The Culture Secretary must explain why these submissions were ignored, and why he chose to publish the results of the consultation anyway.

“It is clear the Tory Government doesn’t care about what the public think about the future of the BBC and have already decided to attack and downgrade our much loved national broadcaster.

“The Government must now publish all the responses to the consultation in full, so that the public can have confidence that all submissions to this consultation have been properly considered.”