ITV has instructed a barrister to carry out an external review of the facts following Phillip Schofield’s statement and departure from This Morning, chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall has said.
In a letter seen by the PA news agency, ITV’s Dame McCall said: “You will have seen the significant media coverage concerning Phillip Schofield.
“As you would expect we take the matter extremely seriously and have reviewed our own records over the weekend.
“Given the ongoing rumours, we continued to ask questions of both parties, who both continued to deny the rumours, including as recently as this month.
“There has been a lot of inaccuracy in the reporting so I thought it would be useful to set out some facts.”
The letter was sent to Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, DCMS Committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage and Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes.
It went on to say that the younger man who Schofield had an “unwise but not illegal” relationship with was 19-years-old when he first did work experience on This Morning in 2015.
Aged 20, he secured a job as a runner on the daytime TV show where he worked till he was promoted to a role on Loose Women in 2019. He then left ITV in 2021.
