NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE REPORT

BBC executives who authorised severance payments amounting to £369 million to their own staff may be investigated by the police. The warning came from Conservative MP Rob Wilson who has written to the National Audit Office (NAO) and BBC director-general Lord Hall asking for full disclosure of the names of those responsible. Mr Wilson has promised to take evidence of fraud to the police.

MPs who sit on the influential Public Accounts Committee have called for ‘full accountability’ and castigated the ‘greedy and excessive payments’ paid by a ‘self-serving elite’ at the head of the BBC.

As corporation bosses insisted there was no need for a ‘witch-hunt’, pressure is growing on those responsible to face internal disciplinary action and to meet the full force of the law if any of the deals proved to be fraudulent.

In a report published this week, the NAO found pay-outs were made to 7,500 staff over eight years, including £61 million to 401 senior managers. The report states that the corporation had paid staff more than they were entitled to in almost a quarter of the cases it reviewed, putting ‘public trust at risk’.

It is understood that a £680,400 farewell payment was made to the BBC’s former chief operating officer and a £949,000 payment to another former senior executive.

Evidence will be taken next week before a special hearing of the Public Accounts Committee. Former director-general Mark Thompson, who is cited as being personally involved in several of the biggest deal payoffs, will not attend. Mr Thompson says he has a ‘diary commitment’.

Writing to the NAO’s head, Amyas Morse, Mr Wilson asked whether it had unearthed any evidence of fraud, collusion in fraud, misuse of public funds, or other wrongdoing in relation to severance payments at the BBC in recent years. Mr Wilson says, that, based on the reply received, he will consider whether there are grounds to refer the matter to the police.

The BBC’s newly appointed director of news and current affairs, James Harding, has claimed that licence fee payers did not want the corporation to be ‘apologetic’.

Mr Harding, a former editor of the Times, said:

… The BBC has rightly made its fair share of apologies over the past year. I, both as a licence-fee payer and a future employee don’t want an apologetic BBC, I want an ambitious BBC. You don’t want to be apologetic about the BBC, you want to be ambitious about the BBC, that’s the essential choice.

The BBC’s director of strategy and digital, James Purnell, is the only member of the corporation’s executive committee to have given an interview on severance payments since the NAO report was published.

Mr Purnell, a former Labour minister, appeared on BBC2’s Newsnight programme on Monday evening, and has resisted calls to point the finger of blame at individuals responsible for agreeing the payments. He said:

… It was a collective decision. On things like this you can have a witch-hunt or you can learn from your mistakes and that is exactly what we are going to do.

But Conservative MP, Richard Bacon, who also sits on the public accounts committee said that unless (and until) people are named you will not get accountability. Mr Bacon added:

… At the top of the BBC there is a self-serving elite who just look after themselves. These payments were greedy and excessive.

The NAO report also revealed that the BBC still plans to make 15 further severance payments of more than £150,000, even though Lord Hall is on record as saying that such deals would be scrapped in April. Mr Purnell said it would be illegal to ‘unpick’ them because those involved had been sent letters setting out their severance terms.

Labour MP Margaret Hodge, who chairs the committee, urged Lord hall to scrap the deals. She says he needs to be very firm and should not be allowed to back down on these payments.

The NAO has stressed that it had not found any evidence of illegality during its investigation of severance deals to senior managers.