BBC chairman to tackle 'toxic' pay issue

Lord Chris Patten has said that moves will be announced this week to tackle the issue of executive level salaries at the BBC, while he also refused to rule out axing a corporation service to cut costs.

The new chairman of the BBC Trust said that executive pay is "one of the most toxic reasons for the public's lack of sympathy for the BBC". He revealed that pay of top bosses on £150,000 or more would be addressed.

Speaking yesterday on The Andrew Marr Show, Lord Patten said: "There are four aspects which we will be making announcements about in the next few days.

"First of all there's the pay level at the very top; secondly there's the number of people who get more than £150,000; thirdly there's the number of people who are deemed to be senior managers; and fourthly there's the whole issue of fairness across the board, with senior managers getting some deals which don't apply to others.

"We can deal with all that and if we do so, we will deal with one of the most toxic reasons for the public's lack of sympathy with the BBC as an institution, even though they like enormously what it does."

Lord Patten, Britain's last governor of Hong Kong, praised the research conducted by Will Hutton into a government proposal to limit senior public servant's pay to no more than 20 times that of the lowest-paid employee.

"I will be looking very closely at what Will Hutton said about top pay in the public sector - there were some very good ideas," he said.

"You look at the relationship between top pay and median pay and I would like the BBC to be the first organisation in the public sector which gets into implementing some of Will Hutton's ideas."

Measures have already been taken at the BBC to curb executive pay, including a 25% cut to the senior wage bill announced in 2009 and the BBC executive board surrendering a month's pay both this year and last year.

However, the corporation is facing cuts of between 17% and 20% under the new licence fee agreed with the government last year, along with further funding responsibilities such as BBC World Service.

Lord Patten said that he wants the BBC to become "flexible, lean, more confident and self-challenging", but he also noted that it would have to "learn to live with a flat budget".

He refused to rule out the prospect of axing a BBC service in order to cut costs, with previous speculation that BBC Three and BBC Four could be under threat.

A number of ideas are being reviewed in the BBC's Delivering Quality First (DQF) initiative, including the "main relationships" between the corporation's TV channels.

"We are looking at how much we can get through greater efficiencies, through greater productivity and how much will involve us stopping doing things we would like to do but which are probably expendable," said Lord Patten.

However, the former Conservative MP also praised the often-criticised BBC Three for two "brilliant" documentaries recently aired on the channel.

Lord Patten added that the DQF review is "looking at everything", but any proposals are unlikely to be agreed until at least September.