Maitlis reveals she went on strike in BBC pay gap row

SHE’S hailed as a star of the BBC and was chosen as the lead presenter of newsnight, but Emily Maitlis has revealed she had to take drastic measures to be paid the same rates as her male colleagues.

Maitlis, 48, has disclosed that she went ‘on strike’ after discovering that fellow BBC presenters, such as Jeremy Vine, were being paid far more for similar roles at the Corporation.

‘i knew that, for example, Jeremy

Vine and i were literally doing the same job [during election coverage],’ she says.

‘i was standing in front of a touch screen, he was in front of a [virtual-reality] screen and we were doing the same job with the same preparation. Yet there was a massive disparity in salaries.

‘A colleague on the team said: “You’ve got to sort this out.” And i went in and tried, and i got told it couldn’t be sorted out.’

Maitlis (right), who attended a state comprehensive in Sheffield before winning a place at Cambridge, reveals:

‘I went on strike, actually. I was like: “I’m just going to quietly stay away until you sort out the contract,” because it seemed like a more efficient way of doing things. ‘I never made a big deal of it, never told anyone, it was just between me and them.’ BBC high- ups were apparently so worried about the imminent publication of their top presenters’ salaries in 2017 that they soon caved in and offered Maitlis a huge pay rise. ‘You know, sunlight and disinfectant and all that sort of stuff,’ she says. ‘What’s that amazing phrase: most people don’t work against their interests if they don’t have to.’ Her then Newsnight colleague Evan Davis gave her ‘an extraordinarily generous’ and ‘quite faith- restoring’ phone call, ‘where he basically said: “This is all wrong and we must put it right.” ’

Maitlis’s salary has now been raised from below £150,000 to £229,999, making her the joint highest- paid woman at BBC News.