THE hostile-shading-into-abrasive BBC presenter Emma Barnett, who earlier this year supplanted the notably civilised duo of Jane Garvey and Jenni Murray at Woman’s Hour, is apparently under orders to soft-pedal when it comes to interrogating government ministers, presumably from a fear that the programme might otherwise face a Downing Street boycott, replicating the 2019 sanction on Radio 4’s Today in a row over supposed election coverage bias and amid questions over the future of the licence fee.
Either that, or Barnett is at one with the Tories over the government’s insulting one per cent pay offer to nurses and other NHS staff (see Bronterre’s Nurses need more than cheers on the doorstep to keep the wolf from the door, 23 January).
Whatever, she essentially appeared as softened putty in an enfeebled questioning today of health minister Nadine Dorries, failing dismally – in the context of the one percent offer – to doggedly press for a response over the incredibly important scandal of executives from Boston Consulting Group being paid around £7,000 a day to work on the government’s test-and-trace system.
This level of payment is of course transparently indefensible but, instead of resolutely demanding that Dorries engage with the point, Barnett weakly capitulated. Is this the best a public exasperated by government cronyism can expect from the BBC?
If you were a nurse – especially one paid below the average – you’d have been gnashing your teeth. Is that what Woman’s Hour is content to be responsible for?
Bronterre News 