Industry | 2010.02.08
Trust chair rules out excessive BBC pay
Sir Michael Lyons says trust is reasserting grip on BBC finances, and hits out at political and Murdoch interference
The chairman of the BBC Trust has ruled out "excessive salaries" for BBC talent and senior executives, as the governing body attempts to tighten its financial and editorial hold over the corporation.
In an interview with Media Guardian, Sir Michael Lyons said: "The BBC relaxed both its editorial grip and its grip on value for money. And to some extent the challenge of recent years has been to reassert that grip and that focus on value for money, particularly in how much you pay to top managers and onscreen talent."
Future pay deals would be much tougher, he warned. "We are simply not going to see what the public regard as excessive salaries, so [the BBC] must be harder in negotiations and much more willing to walk away ... The BBC needs to be more confident that people will accept the most extraordinary discount to come and work for it."
There has been public anger over pay deals awarded to performers such as Jonathan Ross, who is to leave in June at the end of a three-year, £18m contract, and to BBC executives, 47 of whom earn more than the prime minister.
A strategic review to be published by the director general, Mark Thompson, as early as next month is expected to reassess the BBC\'s size and shape two years ahead of the next licence fee settlement. The timing of the review has raised suspicions that it is designed to head off political interference in the run-up to a general election – suspicions denied by Lyons.
The former local government chief was embroiled in a row with the Conservative party last week amid reports that the trust would be one of the first casualties of a Tory administration. Lyons, who gave up membership of the Labour party to lead the trust, took issue with any government interfering in the governance of the BBC midway through a 10-year charter agreement that ends in 2016. "It may have had a short life but the trust is not going to be bullied," he said.
Lyons also took aim at James Murdoch, the head of News Corporation Europe and Asia, a role that includes oversight of the Sky satellite platform and the Times newspaper, which led on the Tory attack on the trust last week. The review, he said, was "starting from the point of what the BBC\'s mission is rather than the interests of a very successful satellite broadcaster wanting to get us off its turf".
Lyons blamed a more relaxed culture at the BBC in the early noughties for some of today\'s troubles. Greg Dyke, the director general during that period who is now leading a creative review for the Conservatives, denied that "controls had been thrown out of the window" during his tenure. He joined those who attack the trust as neither an effective regulator nor a champion of the BBC. "We all said when the system was proposed that it wouldn\'t work and it doesn\'t. In all the work we\'ve done, I cannot find anyone who supports the trust other than members of the trust themselves," he said.
The corporation has also come under attack from Luke Johnson, former chairman of Channel 4, in his first column on the media industry after six years in the job. "I failed to properly understand that the BBC is the single most influential lobbying organisation in Britain.
"Whether it is backbench MPs on BBC local radio, print journalists on its payroll, ministers on the Today programme, tickets to the Proms or Wimbledon or Glastonbury, when its £3.5bn \'jacuzzi of cash\' is threatened, the entire machine dedicates itself to seeing off any rival – rather like Doctor Who and the Daleks joining forces to destroy the ultimate enemy," he writes in today\'s MediaGuardian.
His only regret was to spend so much time trying to convince partliament that Channel 4 should share the licence fee, something that the Trust and the BBC are implacably opposed to.
Taking aim at a "preposterously over-regulated system," Johnson also claims that "bureaucracy and politial correctness is gradually asphyxiating the BBC".
In words that may cheer the BBC\'s commercial rivals, Lyons suggested that the corporation should co-operate more and recognise that it cannot keep adding on services. "You\'ve got to make room in the budget if you want to bring on new services," he said, adding that plans to make a digital version of the BBC\'s archives would have to be accommodated.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/07/bbc-trust-lyons-pay-deals
