Allison Pearson Pay BBC presenters less so pensioners can get more
Gosh, it seems like only last week that we were honouring D-day veterans and saying what a huge debt this country owes them. Maybe that’s because it was last week. A fact that seems to have escaped the BBC, which thinks now is a good time to announce that, actually, it’s a million veterans who owe them a debt. One hundred and fifty-four quid and fifty pence a year, to be precise.
From June next year, people aged 75 and over will no longer be entitled to a free television licence. That’s up to 3.7 million viewers and listeners, many of whom are hard-up and isolated and who rely on television and radio for a connection to the outside world. Only low-income households with someone in receipt of the means-tested pension credit will be able to claim a free licence.
“Copying the current scheme was ultimately untenable,” according to BBC chairman David Clementi. “It would have cost £745 million a year (about a fifth of the BBC budget) by 2021-22 and risen to over £1 billion by the end of the next decade.”
The BBC claims that maintaining the universal scheme would have necessitated the closure of BBC Two, BBC Four, the News Channel, Radio Five Live and BBC Scotland.
Phooey to that! Cuts in the vast remuneration bill for BBC staff would have been a good place to start. As would a vigorous slashing through the thickets of middle management. It’s not
like they’re short of a bob or two. The total income of the BBC from licence fees in 2017-18 was £3.83 billion, of which £655.3 million
(17.1 per cent) was provided by the Government through concessions to pensioners. The licence fee made up the bulk (75.6 per cent) of the Beeb’s total income, a truly staggering £5.063 billion.
I’m afraid that such humongous sums have encouraged the BBC to behave like a dazzlingly successful, profligate global corporation. If it paid the appropriate rates for public-sector workers, which is what BBC staff technically are, it would have retained much more control over its ballooning finances.
Instead, there are now more than 100 “non-talent” staff being paid salaries of more than £150,000 a year. Tony Hall, the director general, earns £550,000.
Meanwhile, BBC stars and presenters command vast sums that only very few could expect to receive in the commercial sector.
How on earth did we get to the situation where hundreds of BBC staff members earn more than the Prime Minister, who should be our most highly paid public servant? The truth is that, for years, the BBC has behaved like a private company, although, as it has a guaranteed annual income, it runs none of the risks of a commercial business.
Entirely unjustified empirebuilding, like the recent launch of BBC Scotland, a sop to the SNP that “costs millions” (and is “watched by hundreds”), would never be allowed in a real company with an eye on the bottom line.
The BBC is dangerously out of touch with the public whose support it relies on for its very existence. Consider this. It will take the licence fees of 11,360 pensioners to pay just one of the Beeb’s top salaries.
Anger at the shabby treatment of vulnerable elderly people will only intensify the growing pressure to abolish the licence fee altogether. Look out for protests next year as redoubtable octogenarians, who refuse to pay the licence fee, are carted off to jail.
All the pensioners dependent on our publicservice broadcaster deserve much better. If the BBC doesn’t care about its most vulnerable viewers then it shouldn’t be surprised when viewers cease to care about the BBC.
I do love the spirit of that elderly person who said brightly that at least non-payment of the licence fee would get them a stint in prison, “with three meals a day, heating, lighting, social care”. And free TV, of course. Free TV would be marvellous.