I have raised concerns about BBC commissioning processes in Parliament on a number of occasions over several years. At the core of this are the issues of transparency and fairness. For example I campaigned over a period of years for the salaries of BBC on screen figures in receipt of large salaries from the licence fee (public money in other words) to be published. Initially the BBC implemented a ludicrously wide salary ‘band’ concept where the public were left to guess if employees were paid anywhere in the range of £300,001 to £349.999 for example. Eventually they were forced to use narrower banding which gave a more precise figure of what we the licence fee payers are having to pay the BBC employees. If we the public are forced to pay for BBC services we are entitled to know how much its major employees earn, this is especially so when huge six and seven figure annual salaries are concerned.
One area of significant concern at the moment is that of programme making, especially where BBC employees are the owners of production companies and who seek contracts to make programmes for the BBC. Several employees, already on very high salaries are able to earn significant extra sums which we are not told about.
There remains a cloud over contracts awarded in the last decade. BBC commissioning contracts should be published after they have ended. There is also the very concerning issue of highly paid bbc employees who also have their own private companies that bid for, and get, commissioned projects which they can then advertise on their bbc programmes which obviously puts them at an advantage compared to independent programme makers who cannot avail of this ‘additional’ advertising. This can add listening and viewing figures to the commissioned programme which then places the same company/presenter in an advantageous position when the next bidding round of commissioning begins. In effect this makes it more difficult for independent production companies to compete on a level playing field when wanting to bring innovative and creative productions tour screens via the BBC.
The Corporation should be much more open and transparent about how licence fee money is spent. The Director General has already committed the BBC to openness regarding ‘outside earnings’ of already well paid employees. He needs to address this problem in the same context. I will continue to shine a light on its operations and demand the same openness from the BBC that it demands of so many other organisations.
BBC commissioning contracts should be published after they have ended, argues Gregory Campbell MP
