The BBC has asked Huw Edwards to hand back the salary he was paid after being arrested for making indecent images of children.

The presenter brought the BBC “into disrepute” and “behaved in bad faith” by continuing to take the money, the corporation’s board said on Friday

Edwards, who pleaded guilty to eight charges last week, earned more than £200,000 between being arrested in November last year and resigning in April.

In a statement, the BBC board also said it backed the way Tim Davie, its director-general, had handled the matter.

Mr Davie confirmed last week that the BBC had known that the presenter had been arrested over possessing the most serious category of images.

“Today, the board has authorised the executive to seek the return of salary paid to Mr Edwards from the time he was arrested in November last year,” the board statement said.

“Mr Edwards pleaded guilty to an appalling crime.

“Had he been up front when asked by the BBC about his arrest, we would never have continued to pay him public money.

“He has clearly undermined trust in the BBC and brought us into disrepute.”

It follows a demand from Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, for Edwards to return the money.

The statement added that it “supports the decisions taken by the director-general and his team during this period”.

It said the decision was made taking into account the BBC’s legal obligations, as well as “duty of care concerns”, “the knowledge the BBC had at the time” and regard to public money.

The board said the corporation’s executive had agreed to see if lessons could be learned concerning payments to employees who have been suspended.

It also made reference to allegations concerning the presenter’s behaviour to colleagues within the BBC.

“Whilst the nature of the charges against Mr Edwards is related to his own personal life, the board believes these events have also put a spotlight on the question of power imbalances in the workplace,” the statement said.

“We remain concerned about the potential for inappropriate workplace behaviour, particularly in creative and editorial environments.

“Whilst challenges related to power imbalances in the workplace are a challenge for multiple employers, the BBC must hold itself to the highest standards.”

The Telegraph understands that the BBC will appoint an external individual or organisation to investigate the issue of power imbalance.

They will make recommendations on how management can improve its response to members of staff who raise concerns about the behaviour of more powerful colleagues and the feedback they receive.

“The fact is that we have people who didn’t much like his [Edwards’s] behaviour. We are alive to that.”

Separately, the BBC reported on Friday that a letter to staff by Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, had said Edwards “behaved in bad faith” by continuing to take the money after his arrest.

A senior BBC source said that demanding the money back was “more a moral point than a legal one”.

Although they said that they had not ruled out suing Edwards for the money, they said: “You have to balance the fact that we’d be attempting something legally difficult, the chances of success, with the expense of doing it.”

He also said Mr Shah was “incandescent” about Edwards’s behaviour, adding that there was a “lot of fury” in the organisation.

‘He betrayed the trust of staff’

Mr Shah said it was “a shock to discover that Huw Edwards was living a double life”, in a note sent to staff.

The note said: “On the face of it, he was a much-admired broadcaster with whom the BBC had entrusted the responsibility of anchoring its flagship news programme and presiding over national events but he betrayed the trust of staff and our audiences in the most egregious possible way.

“Let me be clear: the villain of this piece is Huw Edwards.”

The note continued: “Whilst I was not chair when the BBC was first alerted to Mr Edwards’s behaviour and the consequent actions taken, I – and the board – have now had detailed accounts from BBC executives about what happened.

“The executive had to navigate a very difficult and complex situation on two fronts: the complaints made by colleagues and others and, separately, the police investigation into Mr Edwards’ criminal behaviour. In the light of what was known at the time, the decisions taken by the director-general and his team following Mr Edwards’s arrest were well considered and reasonable.

“Of course hindsight can always suggest alternative actions, but unfortunately, hindsight was not available at the time. It was a balancing of considerations and an evaluation of the known facts that determined the course of action.”

‘BBC staff must be able to feel safe’

In response to the BBC requesting the return of Edwards’s salary, Ms Nandy said: “Public trust in the BBC is essential, and so I welcome the BBC’s decision to launch an independent review into the culture within the organisation following the Huw Edwards case and his abhorrent actions.

“The BBC is a hugely valued and important player in the public service broadcasting landscape that reaches millions every day and it is vital that the public has complete trust and faith in the organisation and in how it is run.

“BBC staff must be able to feel safe in the workplace and be confident that if non-editorial complaints are raised they will be acted upon and dealt with fairly and decisively.

“The BBC is operationally and editorially independent of the Government, however I have spoken to the BBC chair in the past week to convey these points in the interests of the public.”

Edwards, 62, was suspended in July last year following allegations in The Sun newspaper that a senior figure at the corporation had paid a young person for sexually explicit images.

Apparently separately, South Wales Police seized the phone of 25-year-old Alex Williams from Merthyr Tydfil.

From this they ascertained that Edwards had been sent 37 indecent images of children on WhatsApp, including seven in category A, the most serious.

The presenter received a £40,000 pay rise last year, increasing his licence fee-funded salary to between £475,000 and £479,999.

A 13-year-old girl with a severe dairy allergy died after drinking a hot chocolate from Costa Coffee that she believed was made with soya milk.

Hannah Jacobs, from Barking in east London, had picked up the takeaway drink with her mother on the way to a dentist appointment on Feb 8, 2023.

The schoolgirl and her family had known of her intolerance to dairy, egg, fish and wheat since she was a toddler and had navigated the risks throughout her life.

Her mother ordered the drink and informed the barista of Hannah’s dairy allergy, according to Leigh Day solicitors.

Concerns about the contents of the drink began after Hannah started to sip it in the dentist’s waiting room and suspected it was made with dairy rather than soya.

They sought help from a nearby pharmacy where Hannah was given an EpiPen to self-administer, which helps to relax the muscles in the airways and combat allergic reactions, buying time for further help to arrive.

An ambulance crew made its way to the scene shortly afterwards and attempted to save her life through resuscitation, but she was pronounced dead at 1pm.

She had suffered a suspected severe anaphylactic reaction to the hot chocolate drink.

An inquest into her death will begin at East London Coroner’s Court on Aug 12 and will attempt to establish the circumstances that led to her death.

More common allergy in children

Anaphylaxis is a severe and potentially life-threatening allergic reaction that comes on very suddenly once triggered.

Experts say about 10 people die from anaphylactic shock every year as the result of an allergic reaction each year.

A dairy allergy is the most common in children, with about one in 50 children allergic to cows’ milk in the developed world, according to Allergy UK.

Hannah’s death follows the case of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who died in 2016 after an allergic reaction to sesame seeds in a baguette from Pret a Manger.

In response, the government announced the introduction of stricter laws aimed at safeguarding allergy sufferers.

Natasha’s Law came into force in 2021 and requires all food businesses to provide full ingredient lists and clear allergen labelling on pre-packaged foods made on the premises for direct sale.

It had previously been sufficient for stores to have general allergen warnings posted around the shop rather than on individual items made in-store.

Food businesses could face financial penalties if they fail to comply with the regulation, according to the Food Standards Agency.

Costa Coffee has been approached for comment.

The first known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting campaign against religious prisoners said he was now ready to speak out and expose the “evil” of the Chinese Communist Party.

Cheng Pei Ming, 58, who will talk publicly for the first time in Washington on Friday, described how he still feels “extreme pain” 20 years after parts of his lung and liver were forcibly removed.

“I believed they would kill me. I’m not sure they thought I could survive, but I did,” Mr Cheng told The Telegraph as he took off his shirt to expose a scar that wraps around his chest all the way to his back.

Mr Cheng says he was detained and tortured for years by the Chinese state for practising Falun Gong, a spiritual movement founded in the early 1990s. 

The movement swept across the country, but was outlawed in 1999 and then brutally suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which branded it an “evil cult” and a threat to the state. 

Beijing has long viewed religious groups as a threat to social order and the party’s ideological grip on power. 

In the decades after Falun Gong was banned and its followers were persecuted, China’s organ transplantation industry exploded. Vital organs became readily available within a matter of days in state-run hospitals – a timeframe no national transplantation system elsewhere in the world has ever been able to achieve.

In 2019, an independent tribunal in London ruled that the Chinese government continued to commit crimes against humanity by targeting minorities, including the Falun Gong movement, for organ harvesting. 

The CCP has denied accusations of organ harvesting and repeatedly denied that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs.

But in 2021, UN human rights experts reported that along with Falun Gong practitioners, other minorities had been targeted, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians in detention in China.

Mr Cheng said he could not understand why they would crack down on a religion that promoted peace.

“Falun Gong teaches people to be good and to have compassion and empathy for all people. We mean no harm to society, the persecution against us should have never happened,” he said.

After 14 years of evading Chinese authorities, including five years in Thailand where he was granted UN refugee status, Mr Cheng reached the US in July 2020.

Mr Cheng was first arrested in September 1999. He said he was tortured and told to give up his faith and that when he refused he was expelled along with his family from his home in the eastern province of Shandong.

In the years that followed, he was “kidnapped by the CCP” five times, each time suffering “unbearable” torture, he said.  

“I remembered asking: ‘Why don’t you kill me instead?’ And they said: ‘It is too easy, we get great pleasure in torturing you’,” Mr Cheng said.

In 2002, he was sentenced to eight years in jail. He recalled seeing other Falun Gong inmates disappear. Some were sent to so-called “re-education” labour camps; others were tortured to death.

In July 2004, Mr Cheng said he was dragged into a hospital where agents from the CCP’s infamous 610 office – dubbed “China’s gestapo” – tried to make him sign consent forms. When he refused, they knocked him down and put him to sleep.

His family was told that he was undergoing surgery and had a 20 per cent chance of survival.

Mr Cheng woke up three days later, terrified, shackled to a bed, and with a 35cm incision across his chest. Transplant experts have since confirmed that scans show sections of Mr Cheng’s liver and left lung were surgically removed.

Two years later, prison guards took him back to hospital. “There was no reason for them to operate, so I understood I would be killed. My family were told I had swallowed knives and wasn’t likely to survive.”

But an unexpected opportunity presented itself for escape. His guard had fallen asleep, so Mr Cheng made a run for it. 

For nine years, “I lived a life of escape and hiding under false names”, he said, adding that the CCP “wanted to find men and kill me to cover up what they had done”.

He eventually escaped to Thailand where “I felt I could have been killed anytime”, Mr Cheng said. He only felt safe once he reached US soil in 2020.

In June, the US House passed The Falun Gong Protection Act, which aims to force an end to the persecution of Falun Gong by the CCP as well as forced organ harvesting from apprehended practitioners of the faith.

Mr Cheng, whose family largely remains in China, still cannot feel parts of his chest, and he struggles on a daily basis with shocks of pain that ripple through his body.

But he is now ready to tell his story. “I want the world to know how evil the CCP is. It does not only seek to harm people in China, but the world. I have to expose what has happened to the Falun Gong.”

Dr Charles Lee, a leading advocate for the Falun Gong movement, who himself was arrested and tortured for his beliefs by the CCP in 2003, told The Telegraph that the importance of Mr Cheng’s testimony cannot be overstated.

“We heard reports for decades about the extremely inhuman treatment Falun Gong faced, those that were tortured to death, their bodies cut open and organs missing. But now we have the first live witness.”

He added: “This should be an alarm to people and governments around the world that the CCP does not care for human lives.”

A British terror suspect and associate of the notorious “White Widow” has been deported from Kenya to the UK after completing a lengthy prison sentence.

Jermaine Grant flew from Kenya to Britain on Thursday, accompanied by Kenyan officials, and was immediately arrested on his arrival.

Grant, originally from London, had been imprisoned in the East African nation after being convicted of possessing bomb-making materials and using forged documents to obtain Kenyan citizenship. He is believed to have completed his sentence at a jail in Mombasa.

A Government spokesman said: “We can confirm that an individual was deported to the UK following the completion of a criminal sentence in Kenya.

“Our priority remains to ensure the safety and security of the UK. We will continue to do whatever is necessary to protect the UK, and have one of the most robust counter-terrorism frameworks in the world to ensure this.”

Police found chemicals in flat

Grant, a Muslim convert, was considered a close associate of Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called “White Widow” terror suspect who has been on the run from police for more than a decade.

Germaine Lindsay, Lewthwaite’s husband, was one of four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London in 2005. She is wanted by Interpol and Kenya for possession of bomb-making materials and conspiracy to commit a felony.

Grant was prosecuted in Kenya after police found chemicals, switches and a bomb-making manual in a flat he shared with Lewthwaite. He was accused of being involved in a plot targeting hotels visited by foreign tourists.

In a 2019 trial, he was convicted of possession of bomb-making materials, but the court acquitted him of conspiracy over the alleged plot.

He was given a four-year sentence after already having been given a nine-year sentence at an earlier trial for using forged documents to obtain Kenyan citizenship.

‘Repatriated to his country of origin’

Last year, Kenya made it clear that it wanted to deport him as soon as his sentence was over. A Kenyan high court ruled that he would be “repatriated to his country of origin by the cabinet secretary in charge of immigration in accordance with the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act”.

However, Kenyan and UK authorities are understood to have disagreed on when his exact release date fell, based on differing calculations of time served. A Mombasa prison source told The Telegraph that Grant’s sentence ended on Aug 7.

He flew to the UK on a Kenya Airways flight on Thursday morning, flanked by Kenyan officials. The Home Office would not comment on what restrictions would be placed on Grant on his return.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “We can confirm that, on Aug 8, officers from the Met Police arrested 41-year-old man who was wanted on recall to prison in relation to breaching licence conditions linked to a previous conviction.

“He was arrested at Heathrow airport as he arrived back into the UK on a flight from Kenya. The man’s licence conditions were revoked in August 2005 following the initial breach.

“Upon his return to the UK on Aug 8, the man was also arrested for being unlawfully at large and arrested on suspicion of being a member of proscribed organisation Al-Shabaab. He remains in police custody.”

A British tourist is expected to be fined thousands of euros after he carved the initials of his name and those of his daughters on the wall of one of Pompeii’s most famous attractions.

The 37-year-old from Derby reportedly used a blunt object to carve the letters, JW, LMW and MW and the date August 7 on the frescoed wall of the ancient House of the Vestals, while scrawling the word ‘Mylaw’ beside the entrance.

Pompeii security staff reported the man to police and the public prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Torre Annunziata has opened an investigation.

When asked for an explanation, the man is said to have apologised, saying he wanted to leave a mark of the family’s visit to the world-famous Unesco World Heritage site.

“After his arrest, he was mortified,” a local police source told The Telegraph. “He said he wanted to leave something of himself there. He apologised for what he did but he will have to pay.”

Located south-east of Naples, Pompeii was buried in the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

It is one of Italy’s most popular tourist sites and attracts about four million visitors a year. The House of the Vestals was once an imposing luxury villa famous for its water features in the Roman era.

Earlier this year, the Italian parliament approved tough new fines, ranging from €15,000 to €60,000 (£13,000 to £51,000) for anyone found guilty of causing damage to a site of historical, cultural or artistic interest.

But the risk of a hefty fine does not appear to be deterring tourists from leaving their mark on Italy’s ancient monuments, especially during peak season.

In June, a tourist from Kazakhstan was caught carving the letters “ALI” on the plaster of Pompeii’s House of Ceii, while a Dutch tourist was cited for drawing graffiti on the walls of an ancient Roman villa in the archeological ruins of Herculaneum near Naples.

Last summer, a young woman was also caught carving a heart into a column of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, which dates back to the 12th century.

“Unfortunately, even today we find ourselves commenting on an uncivil and idiotic defacement inflicted on our artistic and cultural heritage,” Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy’s minister of culture, said at the time.

A Bulgarian national living in Bristol, last year, provoked outrage after he was filmed carving names into an inner wall at the Colosseum in Rome.

Ivan Dimitrov, who claimed he was unaware of the antiquity of the 2000-year-old amphitheatre, was fined and faces a possible prison sentence of two to five years.