ITV appears to be “lurching from one tragic disaster to another”, the Chair of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has said.

ITV appears to be “lurching from one tragic disaster to another”, the Chair of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has said.
Speaking to GB News, Dame Caroline Dinenage – who is set to grill ITV’s chief executive over Phillip Schofield’s departure from This Morning – said the broadcaster “does not have a very good track record” with duty of care towards staff and complaint handling.
Her comments come after it emerged ITV Chief Executive Dame Carolyn McCall has been asked to face questions from MPs on Wednesday after Schofield resigned and admitted to an “unwise but not illegal” affair with a younger male colleague.
Dinenage says ITV should be ensuring they are “robustly safeguarding staff” following tragic incidents involving Caroline Flack, Love Island stars and Jeremy Kyle employees.
Speaking to Esther McVey and Philip Davies, she said: “ITV is a public service broadcaster, our committee and the public at large feel that it’s really important that they have a duty of care towards their staff, that this is a matter regarding issues of safeguarding, complaint handling and that is of high importance.
“The public must have confidence in broadcasters to make sure that they are robustly safeguarding the interests of their staff.
“Unfortunately, ITV do not have a very good track record over the last few years, we’ve had incidents with Love Island, with Caroline Flack. We’ve had the Jeremy Kyle show.
“They seem to be lurching from one tragic disaster to another and I do feel it’s time that Carolyn McCall came before the committee and answered a few questions.”
Former This Morning presenter Schofield compared himself to Caroline Flack as he said he was “broken” and had “lost everything”.
“If my girls hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here. Because I don’t see a future. How much do you want a man to take – and are you truly only happy when he’s dead?” he told the BBC.
“This is now Caroline Flack felt and it didn’t stop.”
Flack’s mum Christine has since slammed ITV.
Asked if she felt they had learned anything from her daughter’s death, she said: “No. They haven’t learned anything. They haven’t. They treat them as commodities.
“I know it’s a lovely job and they earn money, but also the television stations earn money from them.
“But they’re not commodities, they’re people and they’re employed. And if my employer didn’t take care of me, there’d be all hell to pay.
“And there’s not, they’re just sidelined, and they’re not protected. They could have someone speaking for him really, whether he did right or wrong. And even his agent, and all his friends. It’s not a good look really.”