So why not make the change explicitly? I'm not against a change in the rate of LIBOR, nor am I against people making profits, as long as it's done fairly.
The problem was: how do you combat fear? The LIBOR submissions were pretty transparent and investors were using it as a way to guess which banks would be the next to fail. I guess the BoE either thought they needed a short term solution / didn't have the time or appetite to change the way LIBOR was submitted. Or they thought that if they were hidding individual bank submissions (which they ultimately did), it would only aggravate fear.