£2m a year: No wonder Lineker backs BBC funding!
MPs attack the letter signed by 29 top names condemning shake-up plans
MILLIONAIRE BBC stars were accused yesterday of acting like greedy bankers.
MPs said their concerted attempt to halt BBC funding reforms was motivated by self-interest.
Stephen Fry, Claudia Winkleman, Miranda Hart, Graham Norton, Sir David Attenborough and Gary Lineker were among 29 celebrities who wrote to David Cameron warning the shake-up will ‘diminish’ Britain.
But yesterday the actors, presenters and writers were accused of lobbying for a regime that awards them substantial salaries and commissioning fees. Their letter came after the BBC’s annual report revealed a huge jump in pay for top presenters.
Tory MP Andrew Percy said: ‘ Given that many stars are in line for a pay rise, it may be seen as a bit rich and self- serving to be campaigning in this way.’
Douglas Carswell of Ukip said: ‘The BBC is able to get away with pay aggrandisement for precisely the same reasons that bank bosses do; those who manage the business are unaccountable to the punter. They think they are worth it, and as they help themselves to other people’s money there is no one around to say that they aren’t.
‘Do they really believe that the BBC must pay its director general, Tony Hall, a banker-style package of £532,000 a year?’
The BBC’s overall talent costs rose 7 per cent to £208million over the last year, while the bill for those on more than £1million – thought to include Mr Lineker and Mr Norton – surged by more than a fifth.
The BBC insisted it had nothing to do with the letter, even though it echoed Lord Hall’s own defence of the corporation yesterday.
‘The letter is from the signatories. It speaks for itself,’ a spokesman said.
But suspicions remained last night that someone senior at the corporation had given the green light for its publication in two national newspapers yesterday. The timing of the annual report could not have been worse for the BBC, which is facing a barrage of cuts by the Government.
Today, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale will unveil a consultation paper on the corporation’s future, and tell bosses at the BBC to stop chasing ratings and return to its public service roots.
This might put at risk the jobs of presenters such as Miss Winkleman, who co-hosts Strictly Come Dancing. There would also be less of the competition between the BBC and ITV that has driven salaries up.
Bill Cash, another Conservative, accused the letter’s signatories of being ‘defensive’ about salaries dished out by a ‘gargantuan quasi-monopoly’.
He said: ‘The BBC is supposed to inform, educate and entertain – but entertain at what cost?
‘I just don’t believe that someone, with respect to Chris Evans, deserves a fraction of what he’s getting, or any of the others. These sums are not calculated on any rational basis. They are gross overpayments for doing things that are on the margins of entertainment.’ Mr Evans, who hosts a daily breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 and will soon anchor Top Gear, is tipped to earn £5million over three years. He is closely matched by Mr Lineker, believed to be on £2million a year, and Mr Norton, who earned around £2.3million in presenter fees, production fees and royalties in 2013.
Mr Norton’s earnings are thought to include well over £1million from the corporation.
The stars themselves have cast doubt on their own lavish salaries.
Mr Lineker admitted last year that you can ‘never really justify wages in the entertainment business’, adding ‘it is what it is’. Miss Winkleman has claimed ‘any idiot’ could do her job. Sir David said in 2013 that it was a ‘huge embarrassment’ that so much money was paid to BBC executives.
Other stars to sign Tuesday’s letter include JK Rowling, whose book The Casual Vacancy was turned into a BBC drama earlier this year, and Professor Brian Cox, the physicist whom the BBC plucked from obscurity and made into a star.
Actors Rachel Weisz, Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, Mark Rylance, and Sir Lenny Henry also backed the campaign, along with presenters Michael Palin, Jamie Oliver, Simon Schama, Stephen Fry, Lord Melvyn Bragg and Clare Balding, writers Richard Curtis and Steven Moffat, and comedian Michael McIntyre.
They wrote of their fears that the BBC would be turned into a ‘ narrowly focused market-failure broadcaster’.
And they urged the Prime Minister: ‘Nothing should be done to diminish the BBC. In our view, a diminished BBC would simply mean a diminished Britain.’
The letter was made public hours after the broadcaster’s annual report exposed that staff costs have been spiralling, despite its repeated pledges to cut costs. The total wage bill for presenters on more than £1million rose a fifth to £5.1million. It cut back on mid-level managers only to add 31 senior managers on six-figure salaries. The BBC now employs at least 74 bosses who earn more than Mr Cameron’s salary of £142,500.
Yesterday, Mr Cash said: ‘Stars or no stars, galaxies or no galaxies, it has around £5billion a year – that is bound to create an atmosphere of profligacy. It has far too many people and far too much money.’
‘An atmosphere
of profligacy’