A cabinet minister has said he would not use parliamentary privilege to identify the BBC presenter at the heart of a scandal over alleged cash for explicit pictures, in an apparent move to discourage fellow MPs from taking that decision.
A prominent male BBC presenter was suspended at the weekend after allegations he spent 35,000 buying explicit images from a young person, who was allegedly 17 years old when they started talking online.
Claims about BBC presenter are rubbish, says young person at centre of scandal
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The work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, also suggested that whether the young person involved was in “adulthood or childhood was material” to how the allegations should be responded to.
Asked on Sky News if Stride would use parliamentary privilege – in effect a form of legal immunity that grants MPs protection in the House of Commons – to name the presenter involved, as some of his colleagues have suggested they might, he said he would not.
“I can only speak for myself. I would personally certainly not be doing that,” he said.
“That is a privilege that should be used very sparingly and with great thought,” he added.
Asked the same question on LBC, Stride said: “I can only tell you what I would do, which is that I would not be naming anybody in the House of Commons.
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