Lord Grade set for Ofcom chair role after two-year search for candidate

Lord Michael Grade has been named as the government’s preferred candidate to head the media regulator Ofcom.

The Tory peer – who has previously described himself as a “secular but certainly cultural Jew” – still needs to complete a face pre-appointment hearing in front of MPs but is expected to be confirmed in the role.

If appointed, it would complete a lengthy two year long search for a candidate.

Grade, who has held senior posts at the BBC and Channel 4, has spoken favourably on the strength of broadcasting in this country in the past.

But he was recently outspoken in his criticism of the BBC over their handling of the outcry into their reporting of the Chanukah bus incident on London’s Oxford Street last November.

He has also spoken in favour of scrapping the BBC licence fee, calling it a “regressive tax.”

Grade’s father Leslie had the surname Winogradsky, but this was later changed.

His non-Jewish mother left when he was a young child, but he said it an interview: “I suppose I am what you might call a secular Jew and certainly a cultural Jew. I feel 100 per cent Jewish. I have strong faith and just occasionally go to shul.”

He has said of the Liberal Jewish synagogue in St John’s Wood: “I absolutely find that an oasis of calm and sanity and the ritual is minimal. But I don’t like the politics of organised religion.”

If confirmed as Ofcom chair, Grade will become the main point of contact for the government. But his role, although important, excludes him from operational duties.

Grade said he felt “privileged” to be asked to be chair, saying Ofcom is a “first rate” regulator.