BBC says Gregg Wallace not entitled to damages and denies harassment claim

By Nina Massey, PA Law Correspondent

The BBC has said Gregg Wallace is not “entitled to any damages” in response to his High Court claim alleging that the broadcaster and one of its subsidiaries caused him “distress and harassment”.

The former MasterChef presenter is suing the BBC and BBC Studios Distribution Limited after he was sacked in July.

His dismissal came after an investigation into historical allegations of misconduct, which upheld multiple accusations against him.

The presenter has filed a legal claim for up to £10,000 in damages, alleging that the broadcaster failed to comply with a request for copies of his personal data, which caused “distress and harassment”.

It is denied that the claimant is entitled to any damages, interest or other reliefJason Pobjoy KC

In its defence filed at the High Court, Jason Pobjoy KC, for the BBC, said: “It is denied that the claimant has suffered any distress or harassment as a result of the responses of the BBC.”

He continued: “It is denied that the claimant is entitled to any damages, interest or other relief, whether as pleaded or otherwise.”

The broadcaster further denied that Mr Wallace “has suffered any distress or harassment” as a result of its responses.

The court documents also allege that Mr Wallace failed to give the BBC prior notice of his intention to issue legal proceedings.

The BBC admitted that Mr Wallace wrote to it on March 6 this year, asking for copies of his personal data.

Mr Pobjoy also said it was “admitted and averred that primarily due to the lack of proportionality and scale”, the BBC had not provided Mr Wallace with “a substantive response” within three months.

He continued that after designating the request as complex, the BBC responded to Mr Wallace on October 7, providing him with a copy of his personal data, which he was entitled to.

Mr Pobjoy said that the “voluntary disclosure demonstrates that the claimant has no basis to claim damages for distress, or otherwise, in respect of the withholding of such information”.

In court documents filed on behalf of Mr Wallace last month, barrister Lawrence Power said the presenter had requested “personal data” from the BBC and BBC Studios related to “his work, contractual relations and conduct”.

Requests for access to personal data should be processed within a month, but this deadline can be extended if the information is complex, Mr Power said.

The barrister continued that on August 7, the BBC emailed Mr Wallace to apologise for the delay and stated it was “taking all reasonable steps” to process the request in “a timely manner as possible going forward”, but at the time of filing the court documents had still not received a response.

Mr Power said that the body had “wrongly redacted” information and had “unlawfully failed to supply all of the claimant’s personal data”.

He said: “By reason of the defendants failing to fully comply with the subject access requests made by the claimant for his own personal data, the defendants acted in breach of their statutory duty and in doing so caused distress and harassment to the claimant.”

Mr Wallace began co-presenting MasterChef in 2005, but it was announced in November 2024 that he would step away from his role while the misconduct allegations were investigated.

A review by law firm Lewis Silkin later upheld 45 of the 83 allegations against him, including one of “unwelcome physical contact”.

The report found that the “majority of the allegations against Mr Wallace (94%) related to behaviour which is said to have occurred between 2005 and 2018”, with only one allegation substantiated after that year.

It also concluded that the “majority of the substantiated allegations against Mr Wallace related to inappropriate sexual language and humour”, adding that “a smaller number of allegations of other inappropriate language and being in a state of undress were also substantiated”.

Mr Wallace issued an apology saying he was “deeply sorry for any distress caused” and that he “never set out to harm or humiliate”.