BBC: Unfair Pay

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Baroness Bakewell

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am certainly not going to get into the details of whether she outperformed her male colleagues. People should be paid equally for doing the same jobs, but that does not mean that two people, be they men or women, will be paid exactly the same at different levels, as there are different levels of experience. The fact is that, if somebody does not believe that they are receiving equal pay for gender reasons, under the Equality Act they can go to an employment tribunal.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak as a long-term employee of the BBC, which, I have to say, has taken a long time to obey this law. The BBC is not above the law. It is good at arguing a very complicated case, which in fact is very simple: people should be given equal pay for doing an equal job. The BBC will say, “Ah, yes, we need until 2020 to sort it out. It is very difficult”, but it is not very difficult. The BBC tries to feed off the difference between information and entertainment. Different entertainers receive entirely different fees. Graham Norton is not paid the same as Jonathan Ross, and Sandi Toksvig is not paid the same as Sue Perkins. They are entertainers, but journalists are something else. An absolute condition of their job is that they are efficient and able in the same sort of way. Four people called foreign editors in different zones of the globe are not identical. Who could claim that the reporter, Jon Sopel, who works out of Washington, has a more difficult job than Carrie Gracie, who works out of China? It may well be said that she has a tougher job trying to penetrate the news situation there than he has in Washington, which is abundant with news, leads, leaks and so on. Therefore, I invite the Minister not to be confused by the BBC’s strategy of, and skill in, confusing the issue, which is very straightforward: women want equal pay for equal work, and they have waited too long to get it.

[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.