This Morning will return to TV screens today, in the wake of the Phillip Schofield controversy.
Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary will present the ITV daytime show from 10am – the first time it has aired since ex-presenter Mr Schofield’s admitted an affair with a younger male colleague.
Last Saturday, Schofield announced he would be leaving This Morning after 20 years at the helm following reports his relationship with co-host Holly Willoughby had become strained.
Less than a week later, on Friday, Schofield released a statement admitting an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a “much younger man” and announced he was stepping down from ITV completely.
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3:39
‘Toxic culture’ at ITV show
He also admitted he lied about the affair to ITV bosses, his agents and the media, resulting in the channel saying it was “deeply disappointed by the admissions of deceit” and his management company YMU Group dropping him.
ITV confirmed on Saturday they had investigated “rumours of a relationship” in 2020 but the pair repeatedly denied the affair.
Ms Willoughby said the admission was “very hurtful“.
On Sunday, Dr Ranj claimed he was managed out after taking his concerns about the “toxic culture” at This Morning to Emma Gormley, the head of ITV Daytime.
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“I was on the show for 10 years and I genuinely loved and valued working there,” he said in a post on Twitter
“However, over time I grew increasingly worried about things behind the scenes and how people, including myself, were being treated.
“I didn’t know the truth about what was going on with Phillip, but I do know the issues with This Morning go far beyond him. It takes more than one person to create a culture.”
Dr Ranj said he “did what I thought was right” and made a complaint about This Morning editor Martin Frizzell’s behaviour, adding “especially given that my job is to look after people’s wellbeing and I had been heavily involved in diversity, anti-bullying and mental health projects across the channel”.
“I then found myself being used less and less,” he said.
“I even took my concerns directly to the top of ITV: the culture at This Morning had become toxic, no longer aligned with ITV values, and I felt like because I whistle-blew I was managed out.
“But as history and experience have taught us, things like bullying and discrimination are very hard to prove, particularly in hindsight and when the ‘people in power’ control the narrative. As we’ve seen, no review or investigation is foolproof.
“I haven’t worked on the show since… and I’m not the only one who has spoken up or experienced similar,” he added.
“That was two years ago and, frankly, it still hurts. The whole process was pretty heart-breaking and even affected my mental health. But I’m happy to say I’ve found my feet again, know my worth and have found my tribe.
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He continued: “There are some good people in TV, but we need to be brave and stand up to those who aren’t. Even if it’s scary as hell, we have to do the right thing otherwise nothing will change. I sincerely hope something good comes from all this.”
He also added in the post’s caption that “there is so much more” he could say.
ITV’s director of television Kevin Lygo told Sky News on Sunday that “no mistakes” were made in the 2020 investigation while newspapers reported that the channel was considering axing the programme.
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‘No mistakes’ were made says ITV boss
An ITV spokesperson said: “We are sorry to read Dr Ranj’s post today.
“At ITV we are fully committed to providing every opportunity for anyone who works with us to raise any concern or comments they may have.
“Following a complaint made by Dr Ranj, we appointed an external and independent advisor to carry out a review. This external review found no evidence of bullying or discrimination.”
Several television personalities including Denise van Outen, Laura Whitmore, Carol Vorderman and former Loose Women panellist Saira Khan left messages of support on his Instagram post with the same statement.
An ITV spokesperson earlier told Sky News they carried out an external review following a complaint made by Dr Ranj, and it “found no evidence to support the complaint of bullying”.
Dr Ranj starting working on This Morning in 2016 and now appears on BBC’s Morning Live.
The RAC and transport analysis company Inrix commissioned a survey which suggested 2.6 million leisure journeys by car will be made on Good Friday.
Meanwhile, at least three major airports have said that the coming days will be their busiest-ever Easter weekend while 493 different pieces of planned engineering works are set to take place on the railways.
Yellow weather warnings for rain and strong winds were issued across parts of the south of England and Northern Ireland respectively on Thursday.
The caution for the south of England expired at 11.59pm on Thursday while the warning for Northern Ireland said “a few” homes and businesses could be flooded and is in place until 3am on Friday.
The unsettled conditions are expected to continue into Easter, as the bank holiday weekend leads into a two-week break for many schools.
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Sky News weather producer Joanna Robinson said Good Friday will be less windy than Thursday, with a few showers around on Saturday and Easter Sunday, along with pleasant sunny spells.
Temperatures of up to 15C (59F) are expected in west London and 14C (57.2F) in Manchester on Sunday, which is typical for the time of year.
New Earth-like planets could soon be discovered after scientists made a technological breakthrough.
Physicists have developed an astrocomb that can analyse the blue-green light emitted by stars.
Astrocombs can detect tiny variations in a star’s light created by orbiting exoplanets (those beyond our own solar system) – potentially revealing one similar to Earth.
They have been mainly limited to the green-red part of the light spectrum, but the new system offers the chance to uncover even more space secrets.
The breakthrough was made by physicists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and Cambridge University.
“This is a really exciting development that will enable us to study smaller planets on longer orbits than ever before – with the aim of discovering the first ‘Earth-like’ planet orbiting around a nearby sun-like star,” said Dr Samantha Thompson from Cambridge.
Heriot-Watt Professor Derryck Reid said the shorter wavelength light the new system can examine is “rich in the atomic absorption features of interest to astronomers”.
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“Our new approach for the first time provides a continuous sequence of optical markers from the ultraviolet to the blue-green that serve as a precision wavelength scale in this part of the spectrum,” added Professor Reid.
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More than £1m of unexplained transactions were transferred in to Post Office profit at the height of the Horizon scandal, leaked documents have shown.
The papers, seen by Sky News, show a snapshot of transfers from a Post Office “miscellaneous client” suspense account over a four-year period, up to 2014.
A suspense account is where unexplained, or disputed, transactions remain until they are able to be “reconciled”.
Unaccounted-for transactions were transferred out of the Post Office suspense account and into their profit and loss account after three years.
Ian Henderson, director of Second Sight – the forensic accountants hired years ago by Post Office – said: “The Post Office was not printing money. It was accumulating funds in its suspense account.
“Those funds belong to somebody, either to third-party clients or to sub-postmasters, and part of the work we were doing in 2015 was drilling into that.”
Mr Henderson said they were sacked not long after asking questions about whether the Post Office profited from shortfalls paid for by sub-postmasters.
More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted due to faults with Horizon accounting software.
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A letter from Alisdair Cameron, the Post Office’s chief financial officer, to Second Sight in February 2015 states some “postings cannot be traced” to “underlying transactions”.
He added: “We are not always able to drill back from the combined totals to itemise all the underlying transactions.”
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9:45
‘Compensation paid by summer’
Mr Henderson said the letter shows that “the Post Office was benefiting from this uncertainty due to, frankly, bad record keeping, but taking it to the benefit of their profit and loss account”.
He maintains that it’s impossible to prove for sure that sub-postmasters’ money went into Post Office profit because of a “lack of granularity”.
He says therefore that it is of “sufficient public interest” that a further independent review into the use of suspense accounts should happen.
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2:37
Post Office redress delay overshadowed by executive drama
Mr Henderson added: “It didn’t come from thin air, where did the money come from? That’s a fundamental question the Post Office has not answered.”
Meanwhile, separately, a secret recording obtained by Sky News indicates that the Post Office was trying to gag the independent forensic accountants.
The recording is of a meeting in January 2014 between Second Sight, a lawyer and a Post Office representative.
It took place over a year before the accountants were sacked.
In the conference call, there are signs the relationship between the Post Office and Second Sight was beginning to weaken.
There is discussion about a contractual confidentiality agreement, a “letter of engagement” between the parties.
In the recording, Ian Henderson says: “Either, you know, we have unfettered discretion and authorisation to just talk to MPs or we haven’t.
“At the moment, the way the document is drafted, we are prevented from doing that. That’s the issue.”
His colleague at Second Sight, Ron Warmington is heard agreeing.
In another part of the recording, there are more concerns raised that the investigators are being blocked from talking to MPs.
Mr Henderson says: “My point is we should not be gagging either the applicant or Second Sight in being able to respond, you know, fully and frankly to MPs who frankly sort of set this whole process in motion.”
The Post Office representative replies, saying they’re not trying to gag anybody.
Mr Henderson describes “a point of principle”: “In exactly the same way that when we were doing spot reviews, we disclosed to MPs, when they asked us a specific question, the information provided to us by Fujitsu and by Post Office.
“And that’s why it’s so important to establish this principle that there should be no gagging of Second Sight in relation to being able to discuss our investigative work with MPs.”
In the same meeting, his colleague Ron Warmington said that if it later emerges that Second Sight have been “effectively gagged” in its dealing with MPs, “it’s not going to be Second Sight they are particularly annoyed with, it’s going to be Post Office”.
The representative responds directly with: “I think that’s something that the Post Office will have to deal with if – if it arises.”
Adding that “some of the terminology in terms of gagging is probably an exaggeration of what it is that is trying to be done here, and at the moment you haven’t signed anything.”
The Post Office released a statement in response to the findings, saying: “The statutory public inquiry, chaired by a judge with the power to question witnesses under oath, is the best forum to examine the issues raised by this evidence.
“We continue to remain fully focused on supporting the inquiry to get to the truth of what happened and accountability for that.”