ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall has denied clams Caroline Flack was treated as a "commodity".
Caroline Flack took her own life in February 2020
The broadcaster's chief executive appeared alongside managing director Kevin Lygo during a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday (14.06.23) to face questions from MPs about Phillip Schofield's exit from 'This Morning' and the channel's wider duty of care for talent after late 'Love Island' host Flack's mother insisted ITV had "learned nothing" from her tragic death.
Responding to the claims, Dame Carolyn said: "We genuinely feel deeply, deeply sad about what happened to Caroline.
"People knew her well at ITV, I spoke to a lot of people at ITV that worked with her and loved working with her on the show because she loved the show.
"The family are obviously grieving. I would say we never feel that we treat anybody, whether it's a presenter or a member of staff or a junior person that's coming in for work experience, we would really not treat anyone like a commodity."
Flack took her own life aged 40 in February 2020 after hearing that prosecuters would go ahead with an assault charge following an incident with her boyfriend Lewis Burton.
Also speaking during the same Culture, Media and Sport Committee session, Lygo said: "Because of things going on in her private life, she said 'I don't think I'm fit to do the next serious of Love Island'.
"We said 'OK, we understand that' but made it very clear it was her show, that we would get a stand-in, she could come back when she wanted to because she hadn't done anything wrong in our eyes.
"We were offering her work and all the rest of it. Nobody would agree that we treated her as a commodity."
Dame Carolyn - who pointed to the work ITV does with mental health charities like Calm and Mind - insisted it was a "gross misrepresentation of the show" to question how 'Love Island' is still on air after being linked to multiple suicides, including those of former contestants Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon.
She added: "One of the things I would say is these are deeply tragic things, no one wants to see anyone, whatever age, take their own life.
"We've thought about it a huge amount, as I said I don't think any of you can even understand how deeply distressing something like that can be for people who work at ITV.
"I've really looked at this in some detail ... and we've actually taken a lot of professional advice and I think the generally accepted professional opinion is that the causes of these types of tragedies are always complex and multiple.
"And both individuals you are referring to took their lives two years after they appeared on the show, and there would have been many, many, many events that would have been part of multiple causes."
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