12 BBC women set to sue over gender pay gap
‘Brave and determined’
A DOZEN women at the BBC are hoping to take the corporation to court over its alleged gender pay gap, it has been revealed.
BBC News presenter Carrie Gracie, who quit as China editor in 2018 following an equality pay row, says there are cases ‘in the pipeline’ and women have been trudging through internal pay grievance procedures for years.
She made the comments while attending an employment tribunal in London yesterday for BBC presenter Samira Ahmed.
Miss Ahmed, who hosts Newswatch, is taking the corporation to court over claims she was paid only a fraction of what Jeremy Vine earned for a ‘very similar job’.
She was also flanked by BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty and newsreader Maxine Mawhinney as she arrived at the Central London Employment Tribunal building. The tribunal, which was supposed to begin yesterday, was hit with delays as legal teams wrangled about the disclosure of evidence.
While lawyers debated in private, Miss Gracie, 57, voiced her support for Miss Ahmed and said: ‘I’m aware of about a dozen cases that are in the pipeline towards a tribunal now.
‘They’ve come out the end of the internal process and they are not prepared to give up at that point. These are extremely brave and determined people.’
Miss Gracie said she is ‘ dismayed’ that it has reached the tribunal stage for Miss Ahmed, adding: ‘For the BBC to consistently insist that it’s a different place, that things are better, that it’s addressing cases – it’s not doing any of that adequately or fast enough.’
Miss Ahmed’s case will focus on her contracts for Newswatch, which she has presented since 2012. The 51-year-old will argue that Jeremy Vine, who worked on Points of View between 2008 and 2018, was paid £3,000 per episode, whereas she received £440 for her own show. She will say that, although his fee was reduced to £1,300 in January 2018, hers was only increased in 2015 to £465 per programme – then reduced again when the BBC moved presenters on to employment contracts.
Media figures, including QI host Sandi Toksvig, Alan Rusbridger, ex-editor of The Guardian, and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, former chairman of the Conservative party, have voiced their support for Miss Ahmed.
Miss Gracie quit her £135,000a-year job as China editor after discovering the North America editor Jon Sopel was on a salary band of £200,000 to £249,000 for an equivalent role. She received a £361,000 payout. Miss Ahmed’s tribunal is expected to start tomorrow. Last night, a BBC spokesman said: ‘Samira was paid the same as her predecessor Ray Snoddy when she took on Newswatch – and later earned more... Points of View is a BBC One entertainment programme whose presenters have been well-known figures in light entertainment – it attracted two million viewers when Jeremy Vine started. ‘Newswatch is a serious news programme commissioned for the News Channel where it gets a much smaller audience.’