‘Closed club’ of BBC pays lip service to diversity, says MP

THE BBC is a “closed club” that has failed to improve diversity for two decades, David Lammy, the Labour MP, has warned.

He criticised the corporation for simply “paying lip service” on diversity and failing to promote talented junior staff from poorer backgrounds to the upper echelons of management.

The MP said there had been a “consistent failure” to make the BBC more diverse despite a host of strategies and initiatives.

Recruitment of black and ethnic minority staff increased by just 0.9 per cent in the four years to 2015, Mr Lammy said. In a report on tackling injustice, he wrote: “The BBC’S 10-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.”

Mr Lammy, a former minister who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on race and community, said the “big beasts” of the establishment like the BBC and Oxbridge repeatedly claim the “talent pipeline is not there so we will have to settle for incremental change”. He added: “The fact is that if social mobility is ever going to be more than Westminster jargon, we need to shake the roots of entrenched privilege and tackle social apartheid.”

A BBC spokesman said: “The BBC is diverse and getting more so all the time. We are committed to leading the way. We are well on the way to hitting a target of having 15 per cent of all staff from a BAME background by 2020. In fact, that figure sat at 14.5 per cent at March 31 2017.”

A source added that it was unclear why Mr Lammy had focused on diversity statistics from 2015 when those from 2017 were much higher.

Mr Lammy was one of 13 MPS from across the political spectrum to write for a pamphlet published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and Bright Blue think tank calling for action to tackle the “burning injustices” highlighted by Theresa May when she became Prime Minister.

Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, said the Tory party was “always playing catch-up on gender issues”.

She said reforms were needed in schools and colleges in order to help wipe out gender inequality.