BBC bosses past and present are locked in a war of words about who knew what about hefty pay-offs to senior staff ahead of a showdown in front of MPs next week.
Former director general Mark Thompson, who left the corporation last year to take over at the New York Times, has accused BBC Trust boss Lord Patten and trustee Anthony Fry of “fundamentally misleading” members of a parliamentary committee. His attack on his former colleagues comes in a written statement submitted to the Public Accounts Committee ahead of Monday’s hearing.
At their last appearance before the committee, Lord Patten and Mr Fry, told MPs that members of the Trust were not always included in decision-making.
Mr Fry said there was ‘‘some disconnect’’ between what Mr Thompson had written in a letter to the Trust about deputy director general Mark Byford’s pay-off, in which he apparently declared it was within contractual arrangements, when the National Audit Office (NAO) found it was not.
Mr Byford departed the BBC with a total payout of £949,000.
Mr Thompson’s written evidence describes Lord Patten and Mr Fry’s committee appearance as containing “important inaccuracies” and being “fundamentally misleading”.
He said: “The insinuation that they were kept in the dark by me or anyone else is false.”
Speaking yesterday, Lord Patten said he was “looking forward” to coming back before the committee and had “no concerns” about what Mr Thompson has said.
He told ITN: “There is one aspect of this very long deposition by Mr Thompson which I’ve found very curious, which is the focus on Mark Byford and his payoff because as anybody that works at the BBC knows that happened before I became Chairman of the Trust so it’s slightly difficult to see how I could have been responsible for that.”
Members of the BBC Trust were not always included in decision-making
A Trust spokesman described Mr Thompson’s evidence as “bizarre” and said the organisation rejected “the suggestion that Lord Patten and Anthony Fry misled the PAC”.
Rob Wilson, Conservative MP for Reading East, said anyone shown to have misled Parliament without proper justification should resign immediately or be sacked.
In another development, under-fire HR boss Lucy Adams admitted making a mistake in her evidence to the committee.
Ms Adams, who announced last month she was quitting the BBC, initially told MPs she had not seen a note detailing plans for pay-offs to Mr Byford and marketing boss Sharon Baylay – but now admits she helped write it.
It also emerged the BBC wrote to four former staff, whose pay-offs were investigated by the National Audit Office, to tell them they could be named to the committee.
Head of corporate affairs Andrew Scadding said the four had “resigned at the time of well-publicised operational incidents at the BBC”.
They are believed to include former BBC1 boss Peter Fincham who reportedly got a £500,000 pay-off when he left the corporation in the wake of a scandal sparked by misleading footage of the Queen.
Mr Scadding said the corporation “needed to balance the data protection and privacy rights of the individuals concerned against the interests of transparency and the public interest.”
Ms Adams is due before the committee on Monday alongside Lord Patten, his predecessor Sir Michael Lyons, the former chairman of the BBC Executive Board Remuneration Committee Marcus Agius, Mr Thompson and Mr Fry.
A statement from current members of the Trust, who were in post in September 2010 when Mr Byford’s severance pay was agreed, said they were “not asked for approval of the financial package – formally or informally – nor did we give it”.