BBC removes Laura Kuenssberg episode after complaint over Chris Packham comments

The BBC has removed an edition of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg from iPlayer following a complaint about comments made by Chris Packham.

Toby Young, the journalist, claimed that Packham made “false and defamatory” allegations about him.

In a panel discussion about carbon emissions on last Sunday’s episode, Packham referred to Young’s Daily Sceptic blog as the “Daily Septic”.

He alleged that the website “is basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry”.

The comments went unchallenged by Kuenssberg, who later tweeted the clip from her X account. The BBC Politics account also shared it, and at the last count it had been viewed more than 845,000 times.

Young complained to the BBC that “neither I nor any of the other people who put it together have any affiliations to the fossil fuel industry, close or otherwise”, and called the allegation “serious and damaging”.

In a statement, the BBC said: “We received complaints from people unhappy Laura didn’t challenge a comment made by panel member Chris Packham regarding the Daily Sceptic.

“During a discussion with the panel about various issues including climate change, broadcaster and conservationist Chris Packham claimed that the Daily Sceptic, whose editor-in-chief is Toby Young, is ‘basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry’.

“We acknowledge we would ideally have asked him to present his evidence on this, but in a fast-moving live programme it’s not always possible to pick up on every point made by our guests.

“We’ve removed any posts on X with this part of the discussion.”

The BBC has also removed the programme from iPlayer.

Packham had been discussing climate change and arguing that recent floods in Dubai, plus high temperatures in the global south and wildfires, were a result of carbon emissions.

Writing about the discussion in The Spectator, Young said: “And to think the BBC launched a multi-million-pound department last year [BBC Verify] to ‘address the growing threat of disinformation’.”