LEO MCKINSTRY: If we refused to pay BBC payment, may bosses complain?

Public discontent over BBC bosses’ arrogant and inept handling of the Huw Edwards scandal is growing every day. 

A ‘Defund the BBC’ campaign is attracting increasing support, with backers saying the Corporation ‘has serious questions to answer’ about why the promised reforms to prevent a repeat of the Jimmy Savile affair have not worked and why ‘the British people are still forced to pay for big-name salaries and cover-ups’.

It is completely understandable why so many licence fee payers are wondering why their hard-earned money is being used to fund the pension pot of someone convicted of sharing indecent images of children, and for the bloated wages of the management who indulged him.

There have been public protests against the BBC before and one-off campaigns to refuse paying the annual TV licence fee (currently £169.50). 

For example, the former newspaper editor Charles Moore refused to pay in protest at the BBC’s decision not to sack Jonathan Ross after he and fellow Radio 2 presenter Russell Brand were exposed by The Mail on Sunday in 2008 for leaving obscene messages on actor Andrew Sachs’s answerphone.

But the fallout from the Huw Edwards scandal could be much, much graver for the BBC and its future. 

Especially at a time when, as new figures revealed last month, the licence fee is being paid by 500,000 fewer people as viewers turn to other services and some are put off by what they see as the BBC’s culture of wokeness and Left-wing bias.

The brutal truth is that as the fallout from the Edwards scandal continues, the BBC’s moral authority lies in tatters.

It is no exaggeration to say that the whole future of the state broadcaster is at stake – with it already widely agreed that when the Corporation’s charter comes up for renewal in 2027, its arcane funding model will have to change.

If BBC bosses think they can brush the Edwards scandal under the carpet, they are naive in the extreme.

For the fact is that there is an object lesson on how the Corporation could be brought to its knees that is playing out in Ireland.

There, the state broadcaster RTE, also funded by a licence fee as well as by advertising, has become engulfed in a parallel scandal involving one of its biggest name presenters. 

The row, which has dominated headlines and been discussed in parliament, has exposed a rotten culture within the organisation.

 At the heart of the controversy was Ryan Tubridy, the host of the hugely popular Late, Late Show, an Irish institution and the longest-running chat show in European television.

Reflecting his perceived value to RTE, Tubridy was the station’s highest paid star, though his official earnings were secretly bolstered by an array of additional payments, channelled through a complex web of company accounts, many based in Britain.

These top-up bonuses, often disguised as payments for ‘consultancy services’, were estimated to be worth more than €345,000 (£294,000) in the five years from 2017.

They enabled the pretence that RTE bosses were guarding the interests of licence fee payers, while secretly paying their star above the official salary threshold. 

Once the deception was exposed, the public’s fury grew further as the truth about RTE’s financial practices came under intense scrutiny.

An audit of Tubridy’s salary arrangements shone a spotlight across the entire organisation. What emerged was a ugly climate of excess, greed and cover-up.

The accounts used to hide Tubridy’s pay were part of a wider pattern of abuse, with vast sums processed through dubious accounts and used for lavish client entertainment, corporate hospitality and overseas trips.

This greedy spirit of self-service flourished in part because RTE, like the BBC, had allowed an absurdly top-heavy management structure. 

In 2022, it had 119 staffers on basic annual pay of more than €100,000 (£85,000). During televised proceedings, the public heard tales of extravagance, talk of ‘slush funds’ and claims that taxpayers had been ‘defrauded’. 

A major consequence has been a significant drop in acceptance of the licence fee. In 2023, nearly 124,000 fewer Irish people paid the fee than the previous year, lowering the broadcaster’s revenues by 13 per cent – down from €157million to €132million.

Inevitably, in the wake of these revelations, heads had to roll, including those of director-general Dee Forbes and RTE chairman Siun Ni Raghallaigh, while Tubridy has moved to Virgin Radio.

Meanwhile, the Irish government has had to act to help fill the financial black hole and give RTE €725million in state funding over the next three years.

The BBC’s director-general Tim Davie must be well aware of this story. Indeed, he would do well to heed the words of Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, who has called for Edwards to return the taxpayer-funded £200,000 slice of his bumper salary which he was given five months after arrest.

It is not enough for Davie to meekly say that he will ‘look at all options’. Since heads rolled in Dublin, they should do so at BBC HQ, too. The decision to pay Edwards £200,000 after he was arrested was an outrage — and, in the name of accountability, the identities of those who took it should be made public.

When Davie was asked who was made aware of Edwards’s arrest last November, he explained that it was ‘a very small group’ and included BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness.

Paid up to £415,000 a year – at least £60,000 more than her predecessor – Turness joined the BBC from ITN in 2022. She has a moral duty to justify the six-figure sum her department paid to Edwards – and to explain why news of the arrest was kept from her colleagues in the BBC newsroom.

The same applies to other BBC executives who may have been consulted about this disturbing step. Leigh Tavaziva, the £440,000 chief operating officer, joined Davie and Turness in writing to all BBC staff to thank them for their professionalism amid the present furore, but what did she know of the payments to Edwards?

Several other top executives should make their positions clear – such as £330,000-a-year chief people officer Uzair Qadeer and £205,000 BBC News human resources director Irene Asare.

After the parade of BBC scandals involving Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall and Jonathan King, the public was assured ‘lessons had been learned’.

But that is patently not the case. Despite vast salaries, management remains flabby and weak, seemingly unwilling to challenge big-name presenters, even when they behave in a despicable manner.

Increasingly out of touch with its core audience and imposing a woke, liberal agenda that is worlds away from the daily lives of most Britons, the BBC finds itself at a very dangerous crossroad.

Those half a million households who cancelled their TV licence fee last year did so before the Edwards debacle.

If more of the remaining 23.9 million who currently pay for a licence decide not to renew, the BBC’s bosses will only have themselves to blame.