Richard Ayre, former Controller of Editorial Policy at the BBC, has written a piece in the Guardian calling on the BBC to halt the disciplinary inquiry that's looking into the Gilligan affair.

Last week Tony Hall, a likely applicant to become the next DG, made a similar call.

The Guardian itself describes Richard Ayre's comments as "a scathing attack" on his former colleagues.  This is the text of his piece:

Shell-shocked by the Hutton report at the end of January, the BBC had one standard response to anything it was asked: "we will learn the lessons and move on". But three months later the lessons remain unclear and, far from moving on, the corporation is mired in internal recriminations and the top of BBC news is in a state of suspended animation. In an unprecedented move, the heads of BBC radio and television - both tipped as candidates for director general - have pleaded with the acting DG, Mark Byford, to call a halt to a process they think is tearing the management apart.

There are two separate BBC inquiry teams now ploughing through the minute-by-minute, who-did-what-when of the Gilligan/Kelly affair. One is led by Byford's former boss and mentor Ron Neil, and aims to learn the "editorial lessons". But its work is held up by the other, a confidential disciplinary inquiry, run by the head of personnel Stephen Dando, recently re-styled "director, BBC people".

The corporation won't say which BBC people Dando is interrogating, but the list includes not just the director of news, Richard Sambrook, but his deputy, Mark Damazer; the head of radio news, Steve Mitchell; and the editors of the Today Programme and of Newsnight, Kevin Marsh and George Entwistle. Also under investigation is Stephen Whittle, the controller of editorial policy and a former director of the broadcasting standards watchdog, the BSC. Each has been summoned to a series of disciplinary interviews and questioned for up to seven hours over three days, with the threat of further interviews to come this week. Each interview is recorded. Each of those questioned is allowed to bring along a prisoner's friend.

No one knows what, if anything, they are accused of, but they feel so threatened that they are all thought to have engaged outside lawyers to tell them their rights against the BBC. So the corporation's journalism, and two of its most prestigious programmes, are being led by a whole series of people who feel their jobs or their reputations are under threat. One says his relationship with the BBC has changed for ever, irrespective of the outcome. Friends say another has been "destroyed" by what is happening. A third says he has never been treated so badly in a career spanning 30 years or more. Yet the irony is that it is hard to find anyone, anywhere, who wants more heads to roll.

The loss of a chairman and a director general is widely seen as a high enough price to pay for the failures identified by Lord Hutton. Too high, if you believe what Hutton himself is said to have told confidantes. At the BBC, the acting chairman, Lord Ryder, has told colleagues he does not want more staff disciplined. The government and opposition both say that it's time to "move on". There is no evidence that licence-payers want to see sackings. And, unusually in the BBC, not even the staff seem to want their managers removed. What they do want is their managers' minds back on the job.

Earlier this month, the corporation's most senior programme makers, including Jenny Abramsky, Alan Yentob, and Jana Bennett, sought a private meeting with Byford to tell him to close down the Dando inquiry. Concerned at what it was doing to the individuals under investigation, they feared its chilling effect on the BBC's willingness to engage in difficult, challenging journalism. Byford is said to have listened but declined to discuss it.

He is sensitive to the accusation that he set up a disciplinary inquiry when none was called for. He believes he inherited it from Greg Dyke but the latter's martyrdom is now so enshrined in Broadcasting House mythology that no one can countenance the possibility that "Greg" could ever have done it. The truth is Dyke did write to managers in November warning them he had ordered a "formal process" in which they would be "required to attend for interview" - a clear sign it would be disciplinary in nature.

Whoever set it in train, the tumbrels continue to roll, and no one seems to know when they will reach the end of their journey, nor what awaits them there. The "due process", as BBC spokesmen insist on calling it, has a life of its own. Byford - the only man who could stop it - refuses to discuss it, even with close colleagues, on the grounds that he may end up hearing appeals by the condemned men.

There is only one ray of light in all of this. In less than a month, Michael Grade will arrive as the BBC's new chairman. He seems unlikely to want his first weeks to be marked by the loss of the BBC's head and deputy head of news, head of radio news, head of editorial policy, and the editors of its flagship radio and television news programmes. Grade has the confidence and the clout to declare a general amnesty, release all prisoners, and let the people who have led the BBC's journalism with courage and distinction over many years get back to doing what they do best.