BBC, Government, National Audit Office

£369m severance payments at the BBC. A probe is possible…

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.

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Business, Government, Scotland

Accenture lands IT contract with Police Scotland…

POLICE SCOTLAND IT PROJECT

A FIRM at the centre of one of the world’s biggest public sector computing disasters has been handed a Scottish police IT contract.

Accenture will be in charge of developing a crime-fighting computer system – currently costing £60 million – for Police Scotland.

The project was already under fire as the projected bill has risen about £15 million in recent weeks.

Accenture was involved in the disaster-prone development of a £12.7 billion computer system for the NHS in England and Wales.

In 2006, it pulled out of the contract – then one of the world’s biggest IT projects – at a time when it was running about two years behind schedule. The entire project was eventually abandoned in 2011.

The IT and technology giant, with its Headquarters in the Republic of Ireland but with offices around the world, has also faced questions over alleged moves to minimise payment of UK corporation tax, although there is no suggestion of wrong-doing.

Graeme Pearson, a Scottish Labour justice spokesman, said that changing the entire IT system for Police Scotland is going to be massive, and says it’s right that the very best advice is available. But Mr Pearson also pointed out that before this contract had even been announced, costs have continued to spiral. He says that the contract has been awarded to a company with a chequered track record of delivering major change programmes in our public sector.

Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), the civilian body which oversees it, selected Accenture to develop and maintain the new IT system – called i6 – for the single force, which is still using the eight systems inherited from the old regional forces.

The contract will run over ten years but with a possible two-year extension. It is worth £39 million out of the projected £60 million total budget.

Police Scotland says it can now start its journey with Accenture that will allow it to have (national) policing processes that are supported by a modern IT solution.

Accenture’s industrial experience in providing support to global policing, along with the company’s strong local expertise in Scotland, is believed to have been central to its selection by Police Scotland.

Accenture generated global net revenues of £21 billion in 2011-12. But in May the firm faced claims it was one of a group of internet and technology companies allegedly minimising UK corporation tax payments by sending some revenues to Ireland.

A spokesman for the firm, said:

… Accenture pays UK tax on all of its UK business. It reports revenue under those contracts and files accounts in the UK annually.

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Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Society

Opinion: Inclusive democratic governance in Egypt must be a priority…

The prospect of a military intervention in Egypt looks inevitable given the country’s chaotic transition.

If the generals do seize the mantle of leadership that others have failed to effectively grasp, their move would suggest something much deeper than crass opportunism. Paradoxically, any military coup would underline one of the most striking features of Egyptian politics since the January 25, 2011, uprising: the absence of a political vision that should have been central in unifying the country.

The popular revolt that has seen millions of people take to the streets maybe a catharsis of empowerment that the Tamarud (or Rebellion) Movement has generated, but by itself this will not produce new leaders capable of deflecting the military’s renewed efforts in shaping the course of political change. In any event, the generals will be sailing against the headwinds of widespread public dissent.

To appreciate the challenges facing Egypt we should be clear who bears the most responsibility for this crisis. That responsibility sits firmly with the Muslim Brotherhood and its Justice Freedom Party. The Brotherhood has failed to grasp the important task of how elected leaders in any society should define a new basis for democratic national unity. Central to that is the need to create a symbolic language that promises both inclusion and reconciliation. Language is not merely about a perfunctory readiness to share power with rivals, but, along with reconciliation, must be pivoted around public acts and rhetoric that reassures those who have the most to fear from the type of democracy unfolding in Egypt.

It has been on this level that President Morsi of Egypt has failed, and why so much of the post-mortem analysis of the transition misses the point. The defenders of the Muslim Brotherhood have portrayed a story of efforts to include non-Islamists in the Cabinet of Mr Morsi and of the assembly that was drawn up to write a new constitution. They have, though, been carefully selecting their details.

Mohammad Morsi promised on his inauguration day to represent ‘all Egyptians’. Yet, in the year that followed, Brotherhood leaders communicated intolerance and arrogance to both their secular rivals and their Salafi competitors. Such language has only reinforced the commitment of the Brotherhood’s rank and file to marginalise and humiliate their rivals.

This humiliation came to a head in December 2012 when secular activists were taken hostage by Brotherhood radicals and tortured. The Internet videos of Brotherhood extremists delighting in the pain and degradation of their prisoners destroyed any basis of trust there might have been.

But if the Brotherhood bears most of the responsibility for the current crisis, the leaders of the Tamarud Movement must also face some tough questions. Having brought millions of people into the streets, what is its game plan? How, too, will the Tamarud avoid signalling to all Egyptians that the price its followers must now pay for two years of bad leadership is yet another form of political exclusion or a political process that might ultimately end up being controlled by the military?

Under Hosni Mubarak the Muslim Brotherhood had been prisoners of a system that denied them any hope of exercising any real political power. Freed from such shackles by the January 25 uprising, they sought immediate political vengeance.

But if the Brotherhood is at fault by taking revenge, the leaders of the Tamarud must now face the challenge of putting aside their own desires (or that of their followers) for score settling and focus instead on building a grass-roots political party that can help Egypt back to inclusive democratic governance.

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