Pensioners at risk of jail – as BBC pays 100 backroom staff more than PM
THE BBC has earned a reputation for being profligate over the years, lurching from spending scandal to spending scandal.
Last year alone it spent £148million on presenter pay, with Match of the Day host Gary Lineker topping the bill by taking home £1.8million.
It also lavished licence fee payer cash on behind-the-scenes staff. More than 100 of them are paid more than the Prime Minister, according to the most recent annual report.
Some of its biggest earners have such nonsensical job titles that most members of the public will have little idea of what they actually do. In 2017, the corporation said it had paid between £150,000 and £200,000 a year to its ‘integration lead’ Richard Smith and ‘identity architect’ Colin Brown.
BBC bosses defend its spending on talent, arguing that it needs to compete with rivals for the best staff.
However, they would be hard-pressed to justify many of the other costs they rack up. The BBC wasted £200,000 of licence fee payer’s money on taxi, train and hotel bookings that were never used between 2015 and 2018. According to the Sun on Sunday, bosses paid £172,000 for 3,418 rail tickets, £15,000 on 944 taxi trips and £32,000 for 233 hotel rooms that were cancelled.
The BBC was unable to claim refunds on any of them. The corporation also seems to be remarkably bad at finding flights that are good value for money. Last year, an unnamed BBC boss spent £9,000 on a return flight to Miami – which wasn’t even first class.
Business class flights costing £3,000 less than this were easily found by reporters at this newspaper. The Miami trip was one of 20 eye-watering fares for back office staff for the 12 months to December, which together cost nearly £100,000. The BBC claims that a lot of its travel arrangements have to be made last minute to accommodate its executives’ busy schedules.
But they keep some spending strictly under wraps. They refuse to disclose how much it costs for the army of hundreds of staff that cover Glastonbury festival every year, claiming it would breach EU human rights laws.
However, it has admitted to lavishing money on holidays for its stars. In 2016, it spent around £5,000 on a pair of business class flights for Undercover actress Sophie Okonedo and her boyfriend. They used them to go wine tasting and whale watching in Cape Town after she had finished filming in Johannesburg.
However, these sums pale in comparison to the huge sums the corporation has overspent on landmark projects.
In 2013, it was forced to cancel its ‘Digital Media Initiative’, having spent £100million. It also blew £12.5million on the BBC Store, a download service supposed to bring in millions by cashing in on viewers’ nostalgia. It closed after just over a year.
Its building projects have also been a disaster for the coffers. In 2015, the NAO censured the BBC over its £1billion London headquarters, which went £107million over budget. A BBC spokesman said: ‘The BBC is assessed as one of the most efficient telecoms and media companies and by significantly cutting running costs we’ve made sure as much money as possible goes straight into programmes which audiences love.’