Former BBC chairman contradicts Thompson in £1m payout row


  • Former BBC chairman contradicts Thompson in payout row

    Sir Michael Lyons says he was not fully briefed on Byford's severance terms, as five current trustees distance themselves from Thompson's claims that they were involved in the payout
    • BBC ordered to disclose details of payoffs to 150 managers
      Sir Michael Lyons says he was not fully briefed on Byford's severance terms, as five current trustees distance themselves from Thompson's claims that they were involved in the payout
      Former BBC director general Mark Thompson
      Former BBC director general Mark Thompson says Lyons and the BBC Trust were "fully briefed, orally and in writing" about the payment. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
      Former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons has contradicted the 13,000-word account given by former BBC director general Mark Thompson about a controversial £1m payout to a departing executive.
      As the public row over the payoffs scandal intensified, Lyons told the Guardian he was never briefed on "the full, final terms" of the £1m severance package handed to Mark Byford, the outgoing BBC deputy director general, in 2011.
      Lyons said Thompson, now CEO of the New York Times, knew the seven-figure payout to Byford was sensitive because, he claimed, the former director general told him: "I want as many fingerprints on this as possible".
      The row over excessive payoffs for BBC executives continued on Friday as Lyons and several BBC trustees rounded on Thompson over his tersely worded attack on the trust chairman, Lord Patten.
      Lyons, who was chairman of the BBC from 2007 to 2011, contradicted Thompson's claim that both he and the BBC Trust were "fully briefed, orally and in writing" about details of Byford's £1m severance arrangement and a £390,000 payout to Sharon Baylay, the former BBC marketing director.
      "I do not think I was ever told the full, final, terms of the deal," Lyons said .
      He spoke to the Guardian ahead of his hotly anticipated appearance alongside Thompson and Patten in what will be a combative interrogation before MPs on the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) on Monday. Witnesses including Thompson and Patten will be interrogated, while sitting next to each other, as a way of flushing out the truth. "If they are going to accuse each other of lying, they are going to have to do it to each other's faces," a committee source said.
      In a submission to the committee published on Friday, Thompson accused Patten and the BBC trustee Anthony Fry of telling "specific untruths and inaccuracies" in their evidence to the PAC on 10 July and "fundamentally misleading" MPs. "The insinuation that they were kept in the dark by me or anyone else is false and is not supported by the evidence."
      Thompson claimed that evidence he provided showed Patten was wrong to tell MPs he "didn't know" about crucial details of settlements made with Byford and Baylay.
      "In fact, Lord Patten was himself fully briefed, in writing as well as orally, about the Mark Byford and Sharon Baylay settlements soon after his arrival as chairman in 2011," wrote Thompson.
      Lyons indicated that the BBC Trust only saw one document, a memo sent by Thompson on 7 October 2010, that summarised the Byford deal and described the seven-figure sum as in line with his contractual entitlement.
      Byford's £1m deal, which has long proved a lightning rod for controversy over senior pay at the BBC, was found not to have been in the best interests of licence fee payers in a National Audit Office (NAO) report published in July.
      The NAO, which triggered the current row with its initial report, revealed this week in a supplementary note that £2.9m in payments by the broadcaster between 2006 and 2012 went beyond contractual entitlement.
      Five current members of the BBC Trust broke cover to distance themselves from Thompson's claims that they were involved in the Byford payment.
      "We were not asked for approval of the financial package – formally or informally – nor did we give it," said trustees Richard Ayre, Diane Coyle, Anthony Fry, Alison Hastings and David Liddiment. "The trust was assured that the package was within contractual terms and that the chairman of the BBC's executive remuneration committee had agreed to it being approved.
      "The trust's concern throughout this period was to ensure that the director-general met the strategy set for him by the trust: to reduce radically both the number of senior managers and the cost of the management pay bill, and he achieved both."
      Speaking to television cameras outside his house , Patten said: "I'll deal with it next week [at the PAC] and have no concerns at all about the remarks which Mr Thompson has made, except that at the end of the day I don't want to say or do anything which damages the BBC."
      The rare episode of mudslinging is a dramatic departure for the television grandees who are more used to keeping their counsel in public.
      On Friday the PAC also ordered the BBC to disclose the names and details of 150 senior managers who received severance payouts in the three years to the end of 2012.
      Citing data protection issues, the BBC had fought attempts to divulge the names, but has now written to the former managers alerting them that the nature of their severance arrangements may now be made public.
      In the letter sent to all 150 former BBC executives to give them the opportunity to raise any concerns, the corporation said: "PAC has recently confirmed in writing to the BBC that it is applying its Standing Order power to call for the 150 names and details of the 150 recipients of severance payments cited in the [National Audit Office] report, which includes you." The BBC added that the PAC had to decide whether it was in the public interest to publish the information.One former senior BBC manager who received the letter, told the Guardian on Friday: "The concern I would have is that a senior manager such as myself – whose redundancy settlement was perfectly in order – will be lumped together with the very small number of senior managers whose deals seem to have been rather more generous. I cannot see myself giving consent for my name and details to be released."
      The BBC's under-fire HR director, Lucy Adams, was also brought into the controversy when it emerged she had to correct evidence to parliament about her involvement in agreeing the £1m severance payment for Byford.
      Adams admitted in fresh evidence released by the MPs on the PAC that she was involved in drafting a memo to the BBC Trust that detailed the terms of the payout, having earlier claimed that she was not aware of the document.
      Ben Bradshaw, the former culture secretary and ex-BBC journalist, said the saga highlighted a need for the BBC Trust to be scrapped and for the corporation to be regulated by Ofcom.
      "I think this does raise a deeper and more fundamental problem which some of us have been banging on about for quite a long time, and that is the essential unsustainability of the current governance structure of the BBC and the fact you have this organisation, the trust, which doesn't really act as an effective regulator nor as an effective cheerleader because it's expected to do both jobs in one," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One on Friday.
      "I do hope that the government will use this shambles as another reason for looking again at the governance of the BBC when it comes to our charter renewal.
      "The BBC should have nothing to fear from independent regulation. It could be regulated by Ofcom – then it could have its own board, which would do the job the boards of most organisations do, and that would be a much more healthy settlement."
    • copy http://www.theguardian.com
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