BBC TVLicence & Parliament

Lucy Adams on the recent BBC pay deal
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogaboutthebbc/posts/lucy-adams-on-the-recent-bbc-p?postId=112348499#comment_112348499

Comment 2. Andy Parsnip

Just to back up what Lucy and a few other members of the Payroll Sustainability Management Team have said.

The Director General completely understands your misery, his salary dropped from "£ Outrageous" to "£ Taking the p...." this year. As does the Director of Payroll Futures. His salary has been pegged back to "£ Holy f what does he do to earn that much". Even our very own Director for Procurement of Shiny Things took a pay cut to join the BBC and, as a result, had to sell one of her villas in Tuscany to break even last year.

Production staff have to understand that all 1,376 Directors here at the BBC are feeling your pain.

---

House of Commons Oral Evidence taken before the Public Accounts Committee
Wednesday 10 July 2013
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/uc476-i/uc47601.htm

---

Statement on BBC Severance payments
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/statement-on-bbc-severance-payments

A statement from The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts:

This update only hardens the conclusion that the BBC wasted licence fee payers’ money making unnecessary severance payments, in breach of its own policy.

The additional evidence sheds a worrying light on the mindset that seems to have prevailed at the most senior level at the BBC during this period.

---

MPs question BBC pay offs
This is the transcript of the Live Blog session ending at 18:04 on 9 Sep 2013.
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/liveblogs/2013-09-09-2

Senior BBC figures are appearing before MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee facing questions about pay offs given to departing executives. Former director general Mark Thompson has accused the trust which oversees the BBC of “fundamentally misleading” Parliament over severance payments at an earlier hearing.

Also set to appear are Marcus Agius, former chairman of the BBC Executive Board Remuneration Committee, Lord Patten, chairman, BBC Trust, Anthony Fry, BBC Trustee, Sir Michael Lyons, former trust chairman, Lucy Adams, BBC HR director, and Nicholas Kroll, a director of the BBC Trust

3:49pm
Robust exchange between Lucy Adams – BBC HR director – and Hodge who challenges Adams on her previous evidence.
Adams says suggestion she misled committee is “grossly unfair”

3:59pm
Thompson: I was under ferocious pressure from the BBC Trust to do something big and quick to cut senior staff to reduce costs.

4:07pm
Tension between trustee Anthony Fry who says he was told to get back in his box and Thompson who denis that he spoke disrespectfully

4:14pm
More insistence on lack of knowledge from Patten:
“I am in the position in which I’m accused of having misled the committee on something I didn’t know and couldn’t have been expected to know.”

4:43pm
Ouch. Anthony Fry says Byford was told about his redundancy package before the BBC Trust or the remuneration committee had considered the matter.

4:55pm
Former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Howard Davis says: Abolish the BBC Trust before it does more damage

5:08pm
Mr Kroll is pushed hard on why he was unable to find the document earlier – he says the code name meant it wasn’t found with normal searches. It was eventually found in Sir Michael’s personal email

5:25pm
Sir Michael Lyons admits the Trust is “damaged” as a result of this dispute

5:31pm
Hodge
The evidence suggests the governance of the BBC was broke

5:36pm
Richard Bacon, Conservative MP: the case for changing the BBC management structure has been overwhelmingly proven.
The bicycle is not working properly and it needs fixing now

5:58pm
We are back to the question of “sweetners” for Ms Adams after she says she doesn’t remember using the word, MPs quote a leaked email in which she is alleged to do so
Hodge says that Adams is developing the habit of changing her evidence – a charge she denies