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Hello, I'm Susan Hume and this is the Yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Monday, the 24th of November, MPs heard from some of the players in the crisis, now facing the BBC.

On a Monday afternoon in a Commons committee room, the kind of emotions were expressed that you'd expect in a BBC Sunday night drama.

Most people in this country, certainly myself included, might go as far as to say that they love the BBC.

The BBC really matters to me as an institution. I think it's extremely important.

I'm passionate defender of the BBC. I'm passionate defender of the BBC.

I'm passionate defender of its values.

But despite all that love and passion, the BBC has just lost both its director general

and its head of news and is facing a billion dollar lawsuit from the US president.

The crisis was triggered by a leaked memo from a former

advisor Michael Prescott, outlining where he felt the BBC had not dealt properly with

editorial failings on race, trans issues, Israel and an edit of a speech by President Trump. So for the

first time since the row blew up, he explained his thinking to MPs.

We kept seeing incipient problems which I thought were not being tackled properly.

And indeed, I thought the problems were getting worse.

The memo has been claimed by some as blowing the whistle on left-wing bias in the BBC.

But Michael Prescott insisted there was no party politics at play, for example, over the Trump speech.

If it had found that it had been Kamala Harris misrepresented, not Donald Trump,

I would have acted in exactly the same way because I don't want the BBC's coverage skewed this way or that way.

I just want it to be impartial, accurate and fair.

So the committee chair and Conservative MP Dame Caroline Dynage wondered.

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