The BBC Charter established the BBC (or British Broadcasting Corporation). An accompanying Agreement recognises its editorial independence and sets out its public obligations in detail.

The most recent Charter was granted to the BBC on 19 September 2006. It took full effect from 1 January 2007. (The text of the Royal Charter and Agreement are available on the BBC Trust site).

A number of important changes were made in the latest Charter to the Corporation's management and purpose:

Anne Margaret Diamond (born 8 September 1954) is an English radio and television presenter and journalist. She hosted Good Morning Britain for TV-am and the similarly titled Good Morning... with Anne and Nick for BBC1, both with Nick Owen as her co-presenter. Currently Anne presents a phone-in show on BBC Radio Berkshire on weekday mornings from 10am to 1pm and makes regular appearances airing her views as a panelist on The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 and BBC London, and is a regular columnist for the Daily Mail. She is most well known for her successful campaigning for research into cot death following the death of her third son Sebastian. A campaign which she co-founded in 1991 was reported to have cut the incidents of cot death in the UK from 2,000 a year to close on 300.

Diamond's parents were of Irish ancestry, although her father was raised in Scotland. She was born and grew up in Malvern, Worcestershire, and she attended Worcester Grammar School for Girls. She is the cousin of Scots singer-songwriter Jim Diamond.

Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007. She was on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. The British girl went missing from an apartment, in the central area of the resort of Praia da Luz, a few days before her fourth birthday, and has still not been found. Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have said that they left the children unsupervised in a ground floor bedroom while they ate at a restaurant about 120 metres (130 yards) away.

The initial investigation by the Polícia Judiciária (PJ), the Portuguese criminal investigation police, was based on the assumption that the child had been abducted. After further investigation, the PJ stated that there was a strong hypothesis that she might have died in her room. During the investigation there were a number of unconfirmed sightings of Madeleine in Portugal and elsewhere, and additional scientific evidence was obtained. The investigation involved the co-operation of the British and Portuguese police and demonstrated the differing methodologies employed by each, with regard to such aspects as the amount of information released to the public and the legal status of those involved in the case.

Andrew William Stevenson Marr (born 31 July 1959) is a British journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005. He began hosting a political programme Sunday AM, now called The Andrew Marr Show, on Sunday mornings on BBC One from September 2005. Marr also hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week.

In 2007 he presented a political history of post-war Britain on BBC Two, Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain, followed by a prequel in 2009 - Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain focusing on the period between 1901 and 1945. In 2010 he presented a series, Andrew Marr's Megacities, examining the life, development and challenges of some of the largest cities in the world. In early 2012 he presented The Diamond Queen, a 3 part series about the 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Marr was born on 31 July 1959 in Glasgow, Scotland to Donald and Valerie Marr. His father was an investment trust manager and Marr was educated in Scotland at the independent High School of Dundee, Craigflower School and at Loretto, also an independent school in Musselburgh, East Lothian, where he was a member of Pinkie House. He went on to study English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge gaining first class honours.