BBC
Debate between Daniel Kawczynski and John McDonnellWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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John McDonnell
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely spot-on. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said that there are high salaries at the top of the BBC, and low salaries at the bottom and on the front line. That issue must be addressed, and can be through the remuneration committee, which should include staff and listener representatives. That way, pay could be controlled.
Daniel Kawczynski
The hon. Gentleman said that three members of staff were being made redundant on “Newsnight”. Our understanding is that Mr Paxman earns about £800,000 per annum. If he were prepared to receive a measly £200,000 per annum, we could save those other three jobs.
John McDonnell
I look forward to the hon. Gentleman putting that to Mr Paxman in his next interview. Having said that, he makes a valid point about high salaries overall; we all agree on that issue.
However, we are not just talking about BBC salaries internally. What I find amazing is how much is being spent on consultants. The unions have produced their own figures on that subject, and they say that £3 million went to Deloitte’s alone in 2010-11. In fact, £8 million was spent on consultants that year, despite the 20% cuts overall within the BBC. There is a profligacy that must be addressed by management, and it would be best addressed if they take their staff with them in examining these issues.
Some bizarre and wasteful projects have gone ahead. The new Broadcasting House building in central London cost more than £1 billion, and the Public Accounts Committee has criticised the BBC’s flawed digital media initiative, which wasted £26 million. There are real issues that the BBC must address.
At the end of the day, however, the reality is that for every £1 spent on the BBC, another £2 is generated in income right the way across the economy. That is not the case with Sky. For every £1 spent on Sky, only 90p comes back to the rest of the economy; the rest goes out of the country. So, we must recognise the asset that the BBC is and, therefore, the need for continuing investment.
That is why I support the continuation of the licence fee, but the licence fee debate does need to be reopened. There was a fix at the height of the Murdoch influence, during that weekend in October 2010, and there was a lack of transparency, as has been demonstrated by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s criticism of that process. If we do not reopen the licence fee debate, my fear is that we will see a gradual erosion of BBC services and that it will lose some of its core functions. In the long term, that could undermine that generation of creativity—particularly in entertainment—that is helping us to rebalance our economy away from an over-reliance on finance and back towards manufacturing, thereby protecting the long-term future of the creative industries.
That is why I would welcome the Secretary of State reopening the dialogue and discussion about the future of the BBC in a creative way, and his engaging today with the unions, whose report is an incredibly constructive contribution to this debate.