Commenting on the Jimmy Savile affair Roger said: “The sordid details of child abuse by Jimmy Savile and subsequent revelations that in national institutions like the BBC there have been a culture of sexual harassment grows bigger and more widespread every day. There are Police enquiries and internal enquiries in the Health Service and BBC and these need to be as forensic and as far reaching as necessary in order to uncover all of the truths however unpalatable. There is one particular thing, however, that needs to happen at the BBC.
The BBC is a national institution which is rightly revered by the overwhelming majority of people. I know from personal experience just how trusted and valued the BBC World Service is because it is viewed as the one unbiased voice of world affairs.
The BBC has, however, always insisted that it will not bow to pressure over its editorial decision making and this is very commendable. The fact that the proposed programme revealing allegations against Jimmy Savile was ‘pulled’ just before it was due to be broadcast seems to me to completely undermine the editorial freedom which the BBC has always insisted upon.”
He commented critically: “A plausible explanation has not been given by either the Editor, Peter Rippon nor by senior management at the BBC including the new Director General, George Entwistle, who looks absolutely out of his depth in confronting this crisis.”
Roger said: “I hope that the investigation underway will unearth the truth of what happened but I suspect that Peter Rippon was ‘lent upon’ by people like Helen Boden or George Entwistle to not allow the programme to go ahead and it may be that the reason was because of lot of time, effort and money had already gone into preparing the Christmas tribute programmes for Jimmy Savile and to have ‘pulled the programme’ would have caused all this money and effort to be wasted.
If this turns out to be the reason then those in BBC management who ‘lent on Rippon’ ought to resign or be sacked because they have compromised the ‘editorial principle’ which the BBC has always stood by.
It wasn’t that long ago that the BBC, quite rightly, went ahead and ran its programme on corruption within FIFA a few days before the vote on England’s application to host the World Cup was decided. There were plaintiff pleas from the Football authorities for the programme not to be shown until the vote had taken place but the BBC, quite rightly, went ahead and ran the programme and the end result was that England only got 2 votes (one its own) when FIFA made its decision.”

This article appeared in the November edition of Roger's newsletter 'Postcard from Parliament'