MP’s anger at all-white boardroom
THE BBC pays only ‘lip service’ to diversity because its senior executives are still all white, a Labour MP said yesterday.
In a report on tackling injustice, David Lammy wrote: ‘The BBC’s ten-person executive committee is all white.
‘Yet we are supposed to be satisfied with our national broadcaster, paid for by each and every one of us, paying lip service to diversity in terms of hiring junior staff while letting diverse talent fade away further up the food chain, and the people who call the shots at the top remaining a closed club.’
The Tottenham MP said over two decades there has been a ‘consistent failure’ to make the broadcaster more diverse despite a series of strategies and initiatives.
He said recruitment of black and ethnic minority staff increased by just 0.9 per cent in the four years to 2015.
Seventeen years ago Greg Dyke, who was then the BBC’s director-general, described the corporation’s workforce as ‘hideously white’.