Corporation told to list staff pay deals for external jobs
THE BBC is facing calls to publish a register of presenters’ financial interests after two of its highly paid journalists pulled out from addressing an event for a controversial law firm.
Question Time host Fiona Bruce and BBC business editor Simon Jack had been booked to speak at a conference for Henley & Partners, a leading player in the quite legitimate business of “passports for sale”.
The practice has been criticised amid fears it can inadvertently help criminals escape justice through offering a golden ticket into other countries.
The pair pulled out of the line-up on Friday though, after hearing that they were potentially breaking BBC rules for speaking engagements. The BBC currently allows its employees to top up their pay packets with work for external companies but the corporation relies on them to self-police.
It means presenters such as Lauren Laverne and Jeremy Vine have the opportunity to receive generous sums for their bookings and work with charities, at panel events and for hosting award ceremonies on their days off, without breaking any rules.
The corporation says it will remind staff of the guidelines after Damian Collins, chairman of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee, said more needed to be done.
It follows calls for a public register of all presenters’ interests so their involvement and top-up income can be closely monitored.
Staff pay is already published by the BBC to provide transparency for licence fee payers. “There should be a register of interests so the public can see what they are doing,” Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the Daily Mail.
Henley & Partners is emphatic that it complies with the law of each of the sovereign states in which it operates and says all applicants “undergo the strictest due diligence prodecures”. It runs “citizenship by investment” programmes.