How the BBC’s Flawed Impartiality Scuppered a Podcast About a Heating System

I am fairly sure that I am not the only regular BBC listener who had no idea that Evan Davis, presenter of Radio 4’s PM programme, has been hosting a non-BBC podcast about heat pumps since 2024.

In fact, the first I heard of this side-line was the news that the BBC had told him he couldn’t do it anymore.

Davis hosted 20 Happy Heat Pump podcasts after being given permission to do so by his BBC managers.

The podcast explored how heat pumps work, their advantages and drawbacks, and the contribution they can make to net zero 2050 – the UK’s drive towards the long-term reduction of carbon emissions.  

The last edition of the podcast began with the news that the plug was being pulled.

Davis appeared sad but philosophical: “I take their shilling”, he said, referring to his BBC managers. “They dictate the rules, they know they have to keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy, and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial”.

He was quite explicit about the reasoning behind the BBC’s decision to stop him hosting the non-BBC podcast: “I think the timetable set of net zero is slightly in play as an issue politically and so people who want us not to go full on for net zero 2050 will pick on problems with heat pumps… I had this argument with the BBC – it’s more about net zero than about this particular form of heating.” 

His co-host Bean Beanland, of the Heat Pump Federation, put it even more starkly: “It does seem to me that, somehow, we’ve – the technologies that we espouse – have fallen victim to some sort of culture war.”

The BBC’s guidelines state that staff and regular presenters or reporters associated with its news or public policy-related output “may offer professional judgements rooted in evidence” – which would appear to provide Davis leeway to be involved in the podcast.

But they also state that “it is not normally appropriate for them to present or write personal view content on public policy, matters of political or industrial controversy, or ‘controversial subjects’ in any area”.

It is clear that the BBC has been wrestling with the concept of “controversy”, and what impartiality means and how it should be applied.

Sadly, it appears to often confuse impartiality with ‘both-siding’ – presenting two opposing views and allowing the audience to make up its mind. This is all very well when there is legitimate debate to be had – when there is a genuine difference of opinion between honest people of goodwill. The problem is that our public discourse is now dominated by dishonest people who lie routinely.

For figures such as Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump (and there are plenty of domestic examples in the UK), lying is a practical tool – the intention is to make people distrust everything; to confuse them about what the facts of an issue are; to doubt, in fact, if there is actually any such thing as the truth. People who cannot be sure of any objective truth are easier to control.

Its fuzzy notion of impartiality sees the corporation’s output slip into ‘he-says-this, but she-says-that’ narratives that only intensify confusion, rather than calling out lies and telling its audience the factual truth.

As we saw during the Brexit years and the pandemic, giving equal weight to people who tell lies or mislead and people intent on presenting facts may superficially look like impartiality. But this model of impartiality, in effect, takes the side of the lies – because the truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie.

The climate crisis is another topic that has fallen foul of this approach in the past – most notoriously when former Chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson was invited onto Radio 4’s Today programme to talk about global warming, even though he has no expertise on the subject and his views contradicted those of everyone who did. 

The BBC admitted that had been a mistake, but this is a continuing process – a process that has seen experts with views formed by peer-reviewed, fact-based research being ‘balanced’ against right-wing columnists, spokesmen, or one of the stock think tank interviewees that hard-pressed producers turn to when they feel they need to appear impartial.

This charade offers no real balance at all, and can create the impression among the BBC’s audiences that there are two equal sides to a debate when there are not.

As Evan Davis has discovered, there are signs that the BBC now views net zero as controversial and so, presumably, as suitable subject matter for this kind of pseudo-balance.

Then there is the problem of who is in charge of this ‘impartiality’.

Sir Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former spin doctor and a current BBC Board member, plays an influential role in the enforcement of impartiality, despite being well-known among his former colleagues at BBC Westminster and Newsnight as a right-wing conservative who has been intent on driving that agenda.  

As one former colleague told me, “Robbie was a culture warrior before anyone knew what a culture war was”.

Gibb was, of course, famously referred to by former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis as “an active agent of the Conservative Party”, and I have argued previously in these pages about his unsuitability for any involvement with the BBC.

Unfortunately, his influence on the BBC’s management and output appears to have been significant and malign, and the confused practical application of the deeply flawed model of impartiality has given ample opportunity to skew its coverage.

It seems Evan Davis’ well-intentioned attempt to discuss an alternative method of domestic heating has become the latest victim of the processes set in motion by Gibb.