Libby: Beeb women shouldn’t take big payouts

WOMEN striving for equal pay at the BBC should not take large payouts, the veteran radio presenter Libby Purves has said.

‘Programme-making money… will go up in smoke’ if female staff accept back pay for years when they got less than men in comparable jobs, she argued.

Her comments came as it emerged that former Radio 4 Today presenter Sarah Montague received £400,000 after an internal investigation over equal pay.

The issue first came to prominence after

Carrie Gracie resigned as BBC China editor in January 2018 when she found out she was taking home tens of thousands less than US editor Jon Sopel.

Miss Gracie was given a £361,000 payout by the broadcaster, opening the floodgates to a flurry of claims from other female BBC employees unhappy about their pay.

Earlier this month Samira Ahmed won a landmark employment tribunal against the

BBC, which found she should be paid the same as fellow presenter Jeremy Vine for doing ‘very similar’ work.

She claimed she was owed almost £700,000 in back pay, having been paid £440 an episode for the BBC Newswatch programme compared with Mr Vine’s £3,000 an episode for Points of View.

Suggesting Miss Ahmed had less entertainment ‘gold dust’ than Mr Vine, Miss Purves, 69, told Radio Times her claim amounted to ‘a lot of money’.

She also cited the cases of Miss Gracie and Caroline Barlow, former head of product in the BBC’s design and engineering division, who won a £130,000 settlement.

Miss Purves said 100 other women had claims, while ‘zeros multiply before the terrified eyes of BBC accountants’.

She added: ‘Thousands upon thousands of licence fees: programme-making money, news and fun and wisdom money, will go up in smoke. It may be virtuous feminist smoke, but it still chokes creativity.’

Miss Purves admitted she is often asked if she is one of the ‘BBC women claimants’ but said: ‘Nope, couldn’t bother complaining. I liked the job, it was fun.’