Labour Has Met Ofcom Over Handling Of MPs Hosting Their Own Shows

MPs hosting their own TV and radio shows presents “quite a challenge” for Labour’s culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire, as she reveals she has already met with Ofcom to discuss how impartiality rules can be upheld.

Several high profile politicians host their own shows, including the Conservatives’ Jacob Rees-Mogg and Reform’s Lee Anderson on GB News. Labour’s David Lammy has recently stood down from his long-running radio show on LBC.

While the Ofcom code says a politician cannot be a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in a news programme “unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified”, MPs are allowed to host current affairs shows.

However, Ofcom recently found five episodes of programmes hosted by Tory MPs on GB News to have broken its impartiality rules, and warned that repeated contraventions could lead to fines or its broadcasting licence being revoked.  

In an interview with The House magazine, Thangam Debbonaire said it was, “quite a challenge for me to see how we resolve having politicians of a particular party with entire programmes on a station that’s called news, when we have news regulation that is quite strict about impartiality and political impartiality and balance”.

She added that she had “already met with Ofcom” to discuss whether it had the tools it needed to decide whether politicians had acted with impartiality.

In April, Ofcom announced it had launched an investigation into a programme hosted by Lammy on LBC after receiving 51 complaints over a show that aired on 29 March. Labour’s foreign secretary had hosted a Sunday morning show on LBC since 2022.

However, Debbonaire insisted that, “what David’s done with the show is use it as a means of communicating”.

“Ofcom will have to regulate any and all news