As well as hospitality tickets, Sir Michael Lyons claimed £29,000 for personal expenses in six months
As chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons is expected to do his share of pressing the flesh. And last summer was no exception, with his engagements including Glastonbury, the Spectator summer party – and a visit to Lord's to watch the Ashes, as a guest of Channel Five.
Details of Lyons's BBC-related social engagements for the summer are included in the trust's hospitality register for the six months to the end of September, published today.
The BBC Trust also today published details of trustees' personal expenses for the period, showing that Lyons claimed £29,000.
Last year the trust also ran up almost £6,500 in expenses on lobbying lunches, co-hosted by Lyons, for the three main political parties during party conference season.
According to the BBC Trust report on individual trustees expenses a total of £63,054 was claimed by 13 individuals in the six months to the end of September, down from the £78,394 in the six months to the end of March and the £77,137 for the same period last year.
The hospitality register shows that Lyons attended the first day of the Lord's Ashes Test on 16 July last year, as a guest of the Five chief executive, Dawn Airey. He would have seen the England captain, Andrew Strauss, score a century against Australia in a match the home side went on to win.
Other corporate hospitality invites Lyons accepted over the six months included lunch and access to the directors' box at the Grand National in April, courtesy of the chairman of Aintree.
Lyons also took a production pass for Glastonbury in late June, attended the Spectator's annual summer bash a few days later, and was a guest at the 800th anniversary of the Cambridge University Prom on 22 July.
On a more serious tack, Lyons co-hosted a three lunches for representatives of the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties between 21 September and 5 October last year, which cost the trust £6,415.
The Labour lunch, co-hosted with trustee Diane Coyle, proved the most expensive, coming to £2,869. The Liberal Democrats ranked second on the trust's lobby lunch bill at £1,820. Lyons co-hosted this with trustee Janet Lewis-Jones.
The Tories were the cheapest lunch dates, at £1,726. Lyons co-hosted with trustees Anthony Fry, Alison Hastings and Jeremy Peat.
Included in the cost of each of the lunches, paid for by the BBC Trust as a whole, was venue hire and hospitality with attendees described as a mixture of 'invited external guests and stakeholders'.
Overall, the trustees claimed about £24,000 on accommodation, £12,000 on cabs and 'long distance cars', £16,000 on rail travel and £7,000 on flights.
Lyons's expenses were the biggest – coming in at £29,604. Of that figure, £8,485 was for hotel rooms and £14,517 went on cars. Within this the cost of a car and driver for Lyons during the period was £13,493. Taxis, most commonly to and from his home to Birmingham railway station, came to £1,025. Train travel, comprising mostly trips from his home station of Birmingham to London, hit £5,540.
The trustee with the next biggest expenses was Peat with £9,376, followed by Hastings with £8,764, and Rotha Johnston with £7,625.
Hastings spent the most of any trustee on cabs, at £1,887. Johnston spent the most of all trustees on flights at £3,250, all from Belfast airport in Northern Ireland where she lives to London, closely followed by Peat on £3,141, mostly on flying from his home in Scotland to London.
Mehuda Mian was the most frugal BBC Trust member, claiming just £513, with four trustees in total claiming less than £1,000, including David Liddiment, Coyle and Fry.
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly 'for publication'.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment