By Nigel Evans MP, who was until recently a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee
There is nothing like waking up to the Today programme to listen to John Humphrys berating some Government Minister for flagrant spending, or Jim Naughtie sticking the boot in on excessive banking pay and bonuses. It sort of makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
The one area that they constantly overlook is their own pay. The BBC creams over £3,500,000,000 from telly watchers in licence fees. We have no choice to pay. If you have a receiver you must pay the tax. Currently it is £142.50, and rising.
The BBC is a national institution and makes some terribly good programmes (7 Ages of Britain for example). Its news coverage is second to none with its news web page the default page for many surfers.
I don’t come to bury the BBC, but I do want to see radical changes which will make it more accountable, and less predatory.
The Director General earns £816,000 whilst his deputy rakes in £513,000. The Director of BBC Vision bagged £536,000 whilst 382 staff raked in more than £100,000. (A quarter of them were on more than £160,000 and 58 managed to snaffle more than the PM).
It is little wonder with these sorts of salaries that the BBC lost control over what their on screen talent were earning. It wasn’t so long ago that Mark Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons (Chairman of the BBC Trust) were knocking back my questions to them over their stars' super league payments. Clearly I didn’t understand what I was talking about and I was missing the bigger picture.
Sir Michael thought they were all worth the money otherwise he would have piped up ages ago.
Well, they are all piping up now. Jonathan Ross is to go because finally the BBC bosses decided that a single star's contract of £18 million over 3 years might be excessive (allegedly). The fact is that we don’t know who is earning what because the BBC is hiding behind a wall of secrecy. Slowly, and bit by bit, we are finding out how much the executives are earning, but as far as the talent is concerned that is of no concern to us - we are just paying for it.
The Director General is clearly feeling our pain. His solution to the public anger is to freeze the pay of the top 20 executives for the next 3 years.
Now let’s see if I’ve got that right. The top 20 BBC executives are on eye-watering salaries and because the licence fee payers are starting to revolt these salaries should be preserved at the eye watering level for 3 years, presumably before being given a hefty catch-up.
The BBC now needs to get into the real world. Top salaries need to be cut and brought into line with the private sector. There needs to be greater transparency as to who earns what, and what they do for it. Top talent salaries must be declared in bands, including, if they own the production company that is making the programme, or own other rights or interests relating to the making of the programme. The BBC Trust is totally ineffective. Sir Michael Lyons works a 3-4 day week for £142,800 but always seemed to me to defend the BBC rather than the licence payers. He must go and so must the Trust.
ITV has been crippled by the recession and has had no TV tax to featherbed it during the recession. Other commercial competitors find it impossible to compete when the BBC move onto their territory. Mercifully they have been prevented from entering the local TV route which would have decimated the local and regional newspapers already reeling from austerity Britain.
We need a new look, streamlined, efficient and accountable BBC. Nothing should be sacrosanct in investigating a new model which will take it forward over the next 20 years. The BBC should not be in the position of being a monopoly provider of public service television and this will entail radical reforms.
The BBC has allowed nation to speak peace unto nation for generations. As technology moves on, but preserving this mission statement, so must the BBC.
