As it emerges today that Met Police Fraud Squad officers are considering investigating BBC pay-offs, I can reveal that director-general Lord Hall has now been asked to widen his own inquiries into the growing allegations.
Tory MP Steve Barclay, a member of the Commons Public Accounts Select Committee, has written to Hall asking him to investigate secret pay-offs allegedly made to two BBC executives who resigned under a cloud, Lesley Douglas, the ex-Radio 2 controller who quit over Sachsgate in 2008, and Ric Blaxill, ex-head of Radio 6 Music, who left in 2007 over rigged phone-in competitions.
In a letter to Hall, Barclay writes: “Typically, the BBC has been willing to pay its executives up to two years’ salary following a resignation, meaning that Mr Blaxill and Ms Douglas may have secured hundreds of thousands of pounds of licence fee payers’ money despite the serious breaches for which they took responsibility. There is clear public interest in the BBC opening its books and being candid about [this].”
Hall is already investigating why ex-BBC1 controller Peter Fincham, who quit over “Crowngate” in 2007, apparently accepted a £500,000 pay-off in what critics say was reward for failure.
Hall’s predecessor Mark Thompson would have had to authorise all pay-offs made between 2004 and 2012.
Thompson, now CEO of the New York Times, is returning to London for a grilling by the Public Accounts Committee on September 9 about the pay-offs scandal. Hall and BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten will join him. Should be a fun inquisitorial.
