The chief executive of right-wing TV channel GB news has staunchly defended employing serving politicians as presenters and said he wants to recruit more MPs “of other parties” to join the fray.

       Angelos Frangopoulos said the channel has been “trying very hard to encourage MPs of other parties to come on board and join them”.

       Mr Frangopoulos also defended the channel’s current composition, explaining that only three of their 34 presenters are “serving politicians”, in reference to Lee Anderson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage, who is not an MP but heads up Reform UK.

       He also said the hiring of only right-leaning MPs was not by design and that GB news would “love” to have a “wide range of MPs on the channel”.

       The executive admitted that despite his channel engaging in “discussions with political parties”, they have not yet been successful in recruiting other politicians because some parties “are not encouraging MPs to take second jobs”, he told the Lords communications and digital committee.

       “It’s purely because we’re yet to find someone who will say yes,” he added.

       The channel has come under fire from communications regulator Ofcom after it found that five episodes of GB News programmes presented by Tory MPs were found have broken broadcasting rules.

       Two episodes of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State Of The Nation, two of Friday Morning With Esther And Phil, and one of Saturday Morning With Esther And Phil, broadcast during May and June 2023, broke due impartiality rules, Ofcom said.

       It comes six months after the regulator found an episode of GB News’s The Live Desk, aired in July 2023, broke the same rules.

       Ofcom said: “We found that host politicians acted as newsreaders, news interviewers or news reporters in sequences which clearly constituted news – including reporting breaking news events – without exceptional justification.

       “News was, therefore, not presented with due impartiality.”

       Ofcom added that politicians played a “partial role in society”, and news content presented by them was “likely to be viewed by audiences in light of that perceived bias”.

       “In our view, the use of politicians to present the news risks undermining the integrity and credibility of regulated broadcast news,” it added.

       The channel was also recently rapped by Ofcom after it ruled misogynistic comments made by actor Laurence Fox about a female journalist had broken broadcasting rules that protect “viewers from offensive content”.

       The communications regulator has warned that further breaches by GB News could result in a statutory sanction, which range from an order not to reuse the offending content, to revoking a broadcaster’s licence.

       Mr Frangopoulos told peers that his channel had received 50 inquiries from Ofcom over the past three years and said the channel had cooperated fully with each one.

       He also argued that audiences have “different expectations” for impartiality from different channels and GB news is “part of ecosystem” of news and maintained that “our brand has trust”.