Ahmed: Make-up time means I work harder
BBC presenter tells equal pay tribunal she put in more hours than higher earner colleague Vine
SAMIRA AHMED has cited the length of time female presenters need to spend in the make-up chair as part of her equal pay dispute with the BBC.
In a landmark case against the corporation, Ahmed is arguing that she deserves to be paid the same rate for presenting Newswatch as Jeremy Vine received for hosting Points of View, as the programmes are so similar.
Vine was paid up to £3,000 per 15-minute episode while Ahmed received just £465. The employment tribunal hearing Ahmed’s case was told yesterday that BBC bosses eventually halved Vine’s salary in 2018 and wanted to push it lower but feared it would “antagonise him”.
In her written submission, Ahmed said she put in more hours than her male counterpart, and had a more demanding role that included writing the scripts. Vine’s scripts were written for him. In addition, she said: “It is likely that [he] spends less time in make-up than I do. Women are more likely to be criticised for their appearance on air.”
Ahmed also suggested that Vine had been given an unfair advantage in his BBC career because he is male.
“I was struck by how Jeremy Vine was gifted the Radio 2 lunchtime show as a successor to Jimmy Young in 2003,” she said.
“That was a controversial appointment at the time and led to many complaints. Prior to that he had been a news journalist with no experience or profile as an entertainment star. The BBC stuck by him and he was eventually cemented in the role. Women are not gifted these opportunities.”
The equal pay claim covers the years 2012-18. In February 2018, Vine accepted a reduction to £1,500 as the overall Points of View budget was cut. Internal BBC documents disclosed as part of the case included one from the corporation’s business affairs manager, noting: “JV to date has received £3k for half day’s [sic] work. In light of the funding cuts that have been notified to him, that means re-basing him to £1,500… cutting further will antagonise him.”
Six months later, Vine left the programme. Another internal BBC email notes: “Jeremy didn’t think it was worth it when the fee went down to £1,500.”
Ahmed is claiming £693,000 in back pay, according to the latest figures. She pointed to her decades of presenting experience including working as BBC News’s LA correspondent, as a reporter on the Today programme and as a regular voice on Radio 4, plus a decade as one of the faces of Channel 4 News. Ahmed recalled getting her first BBC staff job in 1995 and receiving a message from Vine that read: “Congratulations! You are my bet for long term stardom.” Newswatch gets 100,000 viewers on the BBC News channel and a further 1.5million viewers when it is shown as part of Saturday’s BBC Breakfast.
But in an apparent snub to its own show, the BBC said that Newswatch was included in BBC Breakfast “to fill out the programme at the weekend, and it has no discernible impact on viewing figures”. The corporation is arguing that the two jobs cannot be considered equal because Points of View is an entertainment show and Newswatch is a “niche” news programme, and because Vine is “top talent”.
The BBC said Vine had been offered close to £1million by a commercial rival when he was given the Points of View job in 2008. It added that the market for light entertainment presenters had operated differently to the news market “from the days of Morecambe and Wise and before”. By contrast, the BBC said, Ahmed fitted the Newswatch brief of a “trained, serious news journalist, not a presenter with broad audience appeal”. It said Points of View presenters have always been paid more than Newswatch presenters, whether male or female, with Anne Robinson and Carol Vorderman among the highest paid names. The case continues.