BBC: Unfair Pay

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am very grateful for that instruction. I have listened to everything that the noble Baroness has said, particularly with reference to her experience of being paid by the BBC. Of course, the BBC has not totally disregarded the situation—it knows that we take it seriously. I remember that we spent a long time discussing pay transparency during the charter renewal process. The compromise position that was reached—that we should make the BBC publish all salaries above £150,000—was not straightforward, and I cannot say that the BBC particularly wanted to do it. However, we made it do that and, as a result, we are talking about these issues today, whereas it is unlikely that we would be doing so had we not done that. As a result, the BBC committed to publish its gender pay gap data earlier than was required under the law, it carried out an independent audit of pay for the majority of its staff, and it is undertaking a separate review of on-air presenters, editors and correspondents, which will come out soon.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the stance that the women at the BBC are taking in demanding equal pay. I support also the fact that they have made it clear that they are not seeking pay increases, and are raising awareness of and concerns about high pay for some of the top presenters. Has my noble friend had the opportunity to reflect on the allegation in Carrie Gracie’s public letter at the weekend that the BBC often settles cases out of court—these are disputes about pay—and demands non-disclosure agreements? What is the Government’s view of the BBC, a public organisation, using NDAs?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That is a genuine issue to consider. These things have to be taken on a case-by-case basis, and there are times when non-disclosure agreements are right. However, the BBC has to remember that it is a mainly publicly funded organisation and has to set an example of how to treat male and female employees and all questions of diversity. We expect the BBC to do that and to be an example, and we will continue to make sure that it is.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 172C, which refers to Clause 164(3)(c). I have no interest to declare but it might be helpful if I remind your Lordships that, prior to joining this House, I worked at the BBC for the best part of 10 years. For the majority of my time there, I worked in the area of governance and regulation, advising three successive chairmen.

I just want to make a couple of simple points. I have not been involved in this Bill so far but, when it was highlighted to me that it would introduce a clause that would, for the first time, bring into statutory regulation a facility for the pre-transmission involvement of regulators in broadcasting in this country, I was surprised—indeed, I was very worried. This is a very big change to our current set-up. Broadcasting is a very heavily regulated sector but it is regulated post hoc, not ex ante—I know that your Lordships like a bit of Latin.

When I worked at the BBC under the old governance regime, before Ofcom was set up and before the BBC became subject to Ofcom regulation, there was only one editor-in-chief at the BBC and he had the final say editorially. We have a former editor-in-chief sitting in his place here today. The governors, led by the chairman, were very clear that their responsibilities prevented them ever interfering in any programming pre-transmission, so even the governors did not involve themselves in programmes pre-transmission. When they had done so in the past, the result had been absolutely calamitous.

We should remember that we demand impartiality from broadcasters in this country. We set very clear and rigorous codes for them to follow and they take them very seriously. However, in order to ensure that there is impartial broadcasting in this country and to give our audiences confidence, in exchange we give broadcasters their independence. I worry that a very simple clause in the Bill, which may look quite innocuous, could put at risk something that is very important to us. I understand that the media can sometimes be arrogant and that they sometimes get things wrong, but we should make sure that we tackle them when they get things wrong rather than try to interfere and put at risk something which, as I said, is very precious to us in this country.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I simply want to speak about my noble friend’s Amendments 185E and 185F, which relate to custodial sentences. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Black. I missed the opening part of his speech as I was looking up the reference to which I now want to refer—the ninth report of Session 2010-12 produced by the House of Commons Justice Committee, of which I was then chairman. As noble Lords know, we took evidence from the Information Commissioner on a number of occasions. We said in the report that we shared,

“the Information Commissioner’s concern and dissatisfaction that no order has been brought before Parliament to implement section 77 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which would have the effect of providing custodial sentences for breaches of section 55 of the Data Protection Act. Currently the only available penalty is a fine, which we feel is inadequate in cases where people have been endangered by the data disclosed, or where the intrusion or disclosure was particularly traumatic for the victim, or where there is no deterrent because the financial gain resulting from the crime far exceeds the possible penalty”.

The point was made earlier that in some quarters—this is not particularly a media matter; it refers to many kinds of illicit information-gathering—meeting fines, should they be imposed, can be seen as a “trade expense”. So we said:

“We accept the Information Commissioner’s argument that the issue of custodial sentences for section 55 offences is not exclusively, or even primarily, an issue relating to the media and that the issue should be dealt with by Parliament without waiting for the outcome of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry”.


That illustrates just how long the matter has been going on and how unsatisfactory it is, to the point of disgraceful, that what Parliament has previously enacted remains not in force because of the lack of commencement.