Differences between the chairman of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten, and a former director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, were less dramatic than the anger of lawmakers over the apparent inability of BBC executives and regulators to understand why the size of the severance payments was so shocking.
Chris Heaton-Harris, a Conservative legislator, described the three-hour hearing before the Public Accounts Committee as “the most bizarre game of Whac-A-Mole I’ve ever seen in my life, where you hit something down and it throws up another load of questions.”
Chairwoman Margaret Hodge of the Labour Party called it “a grossly unedifying occasion which can only damage in my view the standing and reputation of the BBC.”
In particular, the decision in 2010 to pay the deputy director of the BBC, Mark Byford, nearly £950,000, or $1.5 million — two years’ salary, half of it paid in lieu of notice that he would be let go — and then retain him and pay him for eight more months was discussed at great length.
The payments were made largely when Mr. Thompson, now the president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, was the director general of the BBC. Mr. Thompson ran the BBC from 2004 to 2012.
Mr. Thompson said the deal for Mr. Byford was done to move ahead with staff reductions under public pressure, while keeping Mr. Byford on hand to continue handling important tasks. He insisted that the BBC Trust was fully informed and that his position had the support of the executive remuneration committee.
While some severance payments were high, he said, the rapid reduction in senior management — as many as one-quarter of positions — initially saved the BBC £35 million, or $55 million, and reduced its future salary and expenses by as much as £19 million a year, or about $30 million.
“I was under tremendous pressure from the trust to do something big and quick,” Mr. Thompson said. “We were focused on getting the pay bill down, and we did that.”
But Mr. Patten and others said members of the trust, which did not have responsibility over severance payments, had not been fully informed, in that Mr. Thompson had told them that Mr. Byford’s severance was contractual, without making the full arrangements clear.
Because Mr. Byford was given formal notice only in June 2011, Mr. Thompson argued that his settlement was contractual, while others said that it was beyond the terms of the contract because Mr. Byford knew the previous October that his job was disappearing, and that his salary for those eight months ought to have been deducted from his year’s pay in lieu of notice but was not.
While there was much discussion of this issue, Mr. Thompson said that both The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph had details of the size of Mr. Byford’s settlement in October. “Why would we brief The Daily Mail and not the trust?” Mr. Thompson asked.
The National Audit Office has found that, of 150 senior executives who left in the three years ending December 2012, which cost the corporation £25 million, or $39 million, the BBC paid more salary in lieu of notice than contractually mandated in 22 cases, for an extra cost of £1.4 million, or $2.2 million.
The chairwoman, Ms. Hodge, was incredulous. A typical British worker would have to labor “40 years,” she said, to get the sum Mr. Byford was paid for leaving the BBC. The size of the payments, she said, was “offensive.”
Michael Lyons, Mr. Patten’s predecessor as chairman of the trust, said he largely supported Mr. Thompson. The trust was pressing the executive to reduce senior managers quickly, he said. He told Ms. Hodge: “The sums for the ordinary person in the street look eye-watering; of course they do. But actually that goes for many other places, whether in civil service or in private industry.”
Ms. Hodge said bluntly, “You could have done it for less.” Mr. Lyons answered, “I’m not personally convinced that that is the case.”
Asked if he would support a similar payment to Mr. Byford today, Mr. Thompson said no, that the context now was different and that the BBC was less top-heavy, so there was less urgency and there were smaller savings to be gained.
The BBC is a delicate issue for Britons, since everyone who watches television pays a license fee that represents about 72 percent of the corporation’s income.
Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura contributed reporting.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/world/europe/bbc-severance-dispute-goes-to-parliamentary-panel.html?partner=rss&emc=rss