Editor | 10-09-2013
The head of the BBC Trust, former and current executives and a former have been slammed by a UK Parliamentary Committee investigating the recent payoff scandal at the corporation.
At the heart of the investigation was a report by the UK’s National Audit Office in July 2013 which criticised the corporation for breaching its own guidelines on severance payments and wider benefits for senior executives over the last 12 months.
The NAO, which scrutinises public spending on behalf of the UK Parliament independent of government, concluded that “weak arrangements” has led to the BBC breaching its own policies on severance too often and without good reason, exceeded contractual entitlements and put public trust at risk. In an excoriating summation chairman of the public accounts committee Margaret Hodge condemned the saga as grossly unedifying and something which has caused serious damage to the reputation of the BBC. She added: “At best what we've seen is incompetence, lack of central to control, a failure to communicate for a broadcaster whose job is communicating. At worst we may have seen people covering their backs by being less than open."
At the heart of the excruciating proceedings was a clash between former Director General Mark Thompson and BBC Trust Chairman Chris Patten and other directors as to who knew what and when about the payoffs, in particular the £1 million given to former deputy director general, Mark Byford, signed off by Thompson, a friend for over three decades.
Patten has denied any responsibility for this payoff which was agreed before his tenure and for which he claimed no prior knowledge of, a claim flatly denied by Thompson. The Committee heard other senior executives admit to knowledge of the huge payoff but conceded failure to act or challenge it.
Current HR Director Lucy Adams,admitted to giving an incorrect statement in her previous appearance before the committee but denied misleading parliament. Adams added the BBC had made an error in making a payoff to calculating the nearly £700,000 payment to former director of vision Jana Bennett.
Expressing exasperation with what he had witnessed, committee member Chris Heaton-Harris called the scenes "the most bizarre game of whack-a-mole I've ever seen in my life where you hit something down and it throws up another load of questions".
Hodge concluded that all that the witnesses had shown was that the current structure of BBC governance was broke. In an earlier statement before the meeting she had said that The BBC seemed more preoccupied with finding ways to maximise the payment to Byford while minimising the negative publicity that the settlement would attract.