Dowden appears on Sky News and BBC shows, and says May’s local elections could see big loss of Conservative councillors
Oliver Dowden is often viewed as one of the safest pairs of Conservative party hands in media performances, but he’s had a tricky couple of minutes here where Sophy Ridge has first challenged him over concerns about appointments to the BBC raised with him when he was at the DCMS, and is struggling to answer on whether he thinks it would be embarrassing if Boris Johnson appointed his own father to the House of Lords.
Sophy Ridge has pointed out to Oliver Dowden that there have been nine justice ministers in the last few years, and that the backlog in crown court cases is not diminishing. He tried to pin the backlog on Covid, to which she said: “That’s not true, the backlog started before the pandemic.”
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