The pay of household name stars including Tess Daly is not known
The BBC was accused of betraying the public last night as the pay of many of its top earning stars was kept secret in a process that came under fire from MPs.
Despite the broadcaster’s repeated pledge to be more transparent, yesterday’s list of those earning more than £150,000 included 32 fewer names than last year.
Many of them have been moved to the organisation’s secretive commercial arm with the result that the public may never be able to learn their pay again.
Highly paid stars including Strictly Come Dancing’s Tess Daly and The One Show’s Matt Baker have now vanished from the rich list, despite earning six-figure sums.
As the corporation battles an ongoing gender pay crisis, only 22 out of 64 people on the list were women and none was in the top 12 earners.
Eight new female presenters appeared on the rich list after protests last year and the high-profile resignation of China editor Carrie Gracie, but the top woman was still paid £1.4million less than her male counterpart.
Director general Lord Hall was heckled by his staff at a Press briefing during which workers accused the BBC of being ‘disingenuous’ and providing ‘unsatisfactory’ answers to questions. And some staff were said to be furious that their pay had been revealed while the pay of others had been kept private.
Gary Lineker has become the BBC’s top earner, raking in up to £1.76million a year
Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans and talkshow host Graham Norton were the second and third best paid
Only 64 people were included in the report for 2017/2018 compared with 96 in the list for 2016-2017. An unknown number of salaries have been wiped from the figures because rules allow the broadcaster to withhold figures on anyone being paid through the organisation’s commercial arm, BBC Studios.
Of those on the list last year, 24 have now had their pay hidden because the programmes they work for moved to BBC Studios. Others have left the corporation.
Anyone working through a production company is allowed to have their pay kept secret and BBC Studios was spun off last April so the corporation could start selling shows to rival broadcasters and compete more effectively with giants such as Netflix.
Shows created by BBC Studios include Strictly Come Dancing, The One Show, EastEnders and Casualty.
DJ Steve Wright and newsreader Huw Edwards make up the all-male top five
Claudia Winkleman is still the top-paid woman, on up to £379,999. Mary Berry is one of eight women who have joined the list
It emerged that Mary Berry, who is a new entry on the rich list, was handed up to £199,999 just to agree to work with the BBC, it was not a wage for any of her shows.
The 83-year-old TV cook fronted three BBC shows – including Classic Mary Berry and Britain’s Best Home Cook – in the last tax year, but all were made by independent production companies, meaning her pay for them was not on the list.
Instead, her fee is what she receives for being ‘talent that you would associate with core BBC programmes,’ a spokesman said.
The total bill for the BBC’s executive committee rose by £500,000 to £4.1million for 11 staff. Last night Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘Given that we’ve got the football today and the furore over the Brexit White Paper, it’s a brilliant day to bury bad news for the BBC.’
News presenters Emily Maitlis and Sarah Montague are among the women to have made the rich list for the first time. Ms Maitlis is on up to £229,999, Ms Montague up to £169,999
Damian Collins, chairman of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee, said: ‘It is hard to say what meaning we should place on the figures the BBC have announced at all because we are just not getting the full picture, either on the amount people are earning or the disparity of pay between men and women. There are a load of key people who have been taken off the books.’ Gregory Campbell, Democratic Unionist Party MP, said the new format ‘negates the entire process and betrays what they promised the public last year’.
He added: ‘Opening up a diversionary route through BBC Studios to keep income of some presenters secret negates the whole point [of this].’ But Lord Hall, who is paid up to £459,999, said: ‘We are not hiding anything. On the public service side we are going to degrees of transparency that we’ve never been to before. The other side of what we do is in the commercial sphere and we want to have a BBC Studios which is really adding value by bringing in money, which means the licence fee goes even further.’
He added: ‘You don’t ask of ITV studios… you don’t ask of someone of the American companies.’
Who are the BBC stars whose pay we DON’T know?
The pay of household name stars including Tess Daly is not known
BBC stars paid by BBC Studios, a TV production and distribution company, do not have to have their salaries disclosed.
The company makes many of the BBC’s popular programmes, but has been a commercial entity since April 2017 and is not funded by licence fee payers.
Stars of programmes including Top Gear, Strictly Come Dancing, Planet Earth II, Doctor Who, Mrs Brown’s Boys, EastEnders, Casualty and The One Show – all created by BBC Studios – are off the list, or have just portions of their salaries shown.
For example, Strictly Come Dancing presenter Claudia Winkleman was last year in the £450,000 – £499,999 pay bracket, but in the 2018 report, she is in a £370,000 – £379,000 pay bracket for hosting a weekly show on Radio 2 and a ‘range of programmes and series’ on BBC.
Her fee for hosting Strictly now does not appear.
Casualty actor Derek Thompson, EastEnders star Danny Dyer and Strictly Come Dancing judge Dame Darcey Bussell are among those who were featured on last year’s list, but have now dropped out.
Some of the stars no longer the list:
Zoe Ball, who made up to £300,000 in the last pay list, does not appear as Strictly: It Takes Two is made by BBC Studios
Matt Baker and Alex Jones are also no longer on the list because The One Show is made by BBC Studios