Governance body ought to have 'greater control' of appointments and pay at corporation, trustee tells Oxford Media Convention
A BBC trustee has today argued that the much-maligned regulatory and governance body should have 'greater control' over appointments and pay at the corporation.
Patricia Hodgson, a former policy chief at the BBC, defended the regulatory body and told delegates at the Oxford Media Convention that it should have more powers over one of the most politically charged areas of the current debate. 'One of the powers that the trust needs and doesn't have is the power to set salaries,' Hodgson said.
The BBC Trust has directed the corporation to cut the senior management pay bill by 25% over three years. But politicians and rival media companies have questioned whether that goes far enough given that around 50 senior managers earn more than the prime minister.
The BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, who earned £834,000 last year, earlier this month argued that the corporation deserves more than council staff.
Hodgson was speaking today in Oxford in answer to a question that the BBC Trust should have the power of approval over senior salaries.
In a wider defence of the trust, she said it was the 'least worst option' compared with a regulatory model such as Ofcom and an integrated board usually employed in the commercial sector. 'I have one word [answer] to an integrated board: banking,' Hodgson said.
The decision to ditch the name governor when the BBC Trust replaced the board of governors in 2007 was 'politically disastrous' and ended an 80-year association with the notion of independence, she added.
Her view gained some support from Kip Meek, former partner at Ofcom, who is now a consultant at media finance specialist Ingenious Media. 'Having been at Ofcom I don't think it's appropriate' for it to be regulator of the BBC, he said.
The session on whether the BBC Trust was fit for purpose also saw the outgoing chairman of Channel 4, Luke Johnson, launch a sustained attack on the corporation and its management.
'The BBC has so much money it... can spend £1bn on something it already owns,' he said, speaking about the refit of Broadcasting House.
It is believed that a National Audit Office report on the Broadcasting House renovation, due to be published next month, will be critical of the BBC's handling of the project.
With both the Tories and the government, led by culture secretary Ben Bradshaw, criticising the model of governance provided by the BBC Trust, Hodgson and Johnson collided over whether or not the body was politically vulnerable.
Hodgson admitted that the questions over the trust would continue 'as long as it exists' but suggested that nothing would or should be done until the next BBC charter review in 2016.
Yet Johnson, who is chairman of the Royal Society for the Arts, said with a slight note of pleasure in his voice: 'If you want to get into power you won't be hacking off [BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael] Lyons and Thompson and co, but once in power it will change.'
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