ITV is accused of refusing to pay for Phillip Schofield’s former lover’s private therapy ‘despite offering it to the ex-This Morning host’

• Schofield reportedly was offered a private therapy package following his exodus

ITV has refused to pay for Phillip Schofield’s former lover to receive private therapy, it has been claimed.

Mr Schofield reportedly was offered a private therapy package following his exodus from This Morning last month.

But the star’s younger lover, a runner who worked with Mr Schofield, was denied compensation for therapy when he asked, an insider told The Sun.

The source, slamming ITV for being ‘slightly hypocritical’, says the network told Mr Schofield it would pay for ‘any therapy’ but only offered the runner a ‘basic package’, which he is understood to have rejected.

An ITV Spokesperson said told MailOnline today: ‘We are offering duty of care support to both Phillip Schofield and Person X.’ 

ITV has refused to pay for Phillip Schofield’s former lover to receive private therapy, sources have claimed. Mr Schofield is pictured with Holly Willoughby and his former lover

Mr Schofield, 61, (pictured) resigned in May after admitting lying about a relationship with a young employee on This Morning

Mr Schofield, 61, resigned from ITV and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting to an ‘unwise but not illegal’ affair with a younger male colleague on the show.

ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall confirmed last week Mr Schofield is ‘receiving counselling’ since his exit and she is ‘very concerned’ about his welfare, adding that she felt he had been ‘hounded’.

Dame Carolyn told MPs last Wednesday that the ‘imbalance of power, the imbalance of dynamics’ made the relationship between Mr Schofield and his lover – whom is being referred to as Person X – ‘deeply inappropriate’.

She claimed ITV would have taken action, but no evidence of the relationship appeared during on-going reviews with ‘categorical denials’ made until the day Mr Schofield admitted the relationship and apologised. 

She also said if evidence had emerged about the relationship in the workplace ‘we would have acted very swiftly’.

‘It was inappropriate to have a relationship with someone so junior in daytime,’ she added.

Dame Carolyn also confirmed there is ‘no gagging order or NDA’ to stop his Person X from speaking out about the situation, but confirmed he had specified Mr Schofield was a ‘family friend’ on his work experience application form.

‘There were no alarm bells across ITV’, she said of his application form.

ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall confirmed last week that Mr Schofield (pictured) is ‘receiving counselling’ since his exit and she is ‘very concerned’ about his welfare, adding that she felt he had been ‘hounded’

Person X did work experience at This Morning age 19 for roughly two weeks and ‘impressed people’ before being put on a ‘runner pool’ and later offered a longer-term fixed contract, Parliament heard last week.

ITV has commissioned an independent review into the affair and if it finds the company should have acted differently, it will learn from that, Dame Carolyn said on Wednesday.

‘As we see it today, our understanding and our information so far, is that we could not have done this differently,’ she told MPs, noting that ITV already had processes in place that allowed employees to report matters of concern.

At the time of his resignation, Mr Schofield said he was ‘so very, very sorry’ for lying about the relationship.

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