Meanwhile, Prescott told MPs he sent his memo to the BBC board after growing increasingly frustrated by a lack of action to tackle “systemic” failings in BBC News while an editorial adviser to the board between 2022 and 2025.

As well as the Panorama edit, his memo documented other “troubling matters” including claims of bias in BBC Arabic’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, and one-sided coverage of trans issues.

“We kept seeing incipient problems which I thought were not being tackled properly, and indeed I thought the problems were getting worse,” he told the House of Commons committee.

“It became pretty clear to me the board was not taking stuff as seriously as I hoped and assumed it would.”

He said he was a “strong supporter” of the BBC and that Davie was “a supreme talent”, but that the outgoing director general had “a blind spot on editorial failings” that led to his downfall.

Prescott also said he was often met with denial by BBC managers when he raised concerns about issues identified in internal reports commissioned by the BBC board from former Newsnight journalist David Grossman.

“You do get levels of denial, as per my memo. Whether it was the issues within covering the US presidential race or Israel-Gaza or whatever, you got these reports through from David Grossman, and the management’s response was just to plain deny and say, ‘Well, we don’t agree with them’.”

He was “in despair” when BBC management originally “would defend and stand by” Panorama’s edit of Trump’s speech, he said.

But he said he had hoped the matter could be “sorted out quietly”, and didn’t know how the memo had been leaked.

Caroline Daniel, who along with Prescott, also used to be an external editorial adviser, was asked if she thought her former colleague’s memo was biased.

“I would not choose to characterise it in that way, I think it’s a personal account of what Michael wanted to bring before the board.”

She also told the MPs there was a “robust debate” about some issues, but the BBC did take action as a result.

“In my view, was the BBC willing to have a proper conversation, debate, and actually take action? In my view, yes, they were,” she said.