Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
SIR MICHAEL
LYONS AND
MR MARK
THOMPSON
18 NOVEMBER 2008
Q100 Mr Evans: You would not go as
far as gross misconduct for what they did?
Mr Thompson: I have said that
I believe that what was broadcast was utterly unacceptable and
I believe that for the broadcasters, Russell Brand and Jonathan
Ross, as we have said already and as I have said and I have made
it very clear to Jonathan Ross whom I have spoken to personally
about this, that this was completely untoward and unacceptable
behaviour.
Q101 Mr Evans: If this had happened
in any other walk of life, they would have been sacked immediately.
Why did you not sack them, Mark, and show real leadership?
Sir Michael Lyons: Mr Evans, can
I help you because we do want to be as helpful as possible, but
I did say in my preface to this that we were not here to disclose
information which had not yet been fully considered by the Trust
and which will all be made public later. Let me just help you
a little bit on this issue by reflecting one of the issues which
the Trust has already received some information on, but has not
yet finished its deliberations before you bandy around terms like
`gross misconduct'. There can be no doubt at all that you should
not expect performers to either use the language or insult people
in the way that they did on that programme. However, the BBC has
a duty of care in terms of allowing that material to be broadcast.
The primary failing, and the failing that the Trust has focused
on, is not the antics of performers, it is the fact that that
was allowed to go out over the airwaves, and we must not avoid
that responsibility; that is the thing to focus on. Now, it will
have been contributed to, and there are a number of things which
we are seeking to explore, one of them being whether it is right
to leave a young producer implanted in a company owned by one
of the performers. That is one of the things the Trust is seeking
to explore and we have made that exploration public, but, until
we have finished this work, I would just be careful about terms
like `gross misconduct' which have contractual implications.
Q102 Mr Evans: But will you come
back to this Committee—
Sir Michael Lyons: When you have
had a chance to read our published results, if you want to discuss
it further, we will, as ever, make ourselves available to take
your questions.
Q103 Philip Davies: Just following
on from this and your responsibilities here, in a bloated bureaucracy
like the BBC the advantage for people like you is that there is
always someone else to blame. You can always sort of hang a few
people out to dry and you sort of get cover. You say that the
big problem is that this went out, but do you not think that there
is a bigger problem that you two are directly responsible for,
that you preside over the culture of the BBC, you set the parameters
for the BBC of the kind of thing that is acceptable? Do you not
feel personally responsible that people within your organisation
thought, under your leadership, that this type of thing might
even be acceptable? Do you not think that is a personal failure
of both of your leadership?
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, no, I
do not. What is the right test of leadership? It is not that there
will not be mistakes. Now, that would be an extraordinary state
to aspire to. It is not that you will not from time to time find
members of your organisation doing things which you would not
approve of, indeed which you have categorically disapproved of
and sought to control. It is how you respond when those circumstances
come about. What is a hallmark of the BBC under its current leadership?
Firstly, that it does not flinch from apologising when it has
got things wrong; secondly, that it does not rush, as some might
have encouraged it to do, to defend what, it subsequently becomes
clear, is indefensible, but it looks for the evidence before it
makes decisions; and, thirdly, and most importantly of all, it
holds to account the people who had the relevant responsibilities.
The Trust is holding the Director General to account and he, in
turn, has held staff and performers to account. Now, I think that
is the sign of a healthy organisation, but we are here to answer
your questions.
Mr Thompson: It is worth saying
that the scale of the BBC's operations and the many, many tens
of thousands of hours that we broadcast on television and radio
and the millions of pages on the web means that, even with, as
I believe we have in the overwhelming majority of the BBC, very
good and strong compliance procedures in place, there will sometimes
be human error. It is the nature of any activity and, I think
rightly, in the way we did, as Mr Evans mentioned, with BBC News
where BBC News is charged with independently, objectively and
fairly reporting what happens, including what happens in the BBC.
We have done a great deal over the last four years to strengthen
the professionalism and the independence of our journalism and
I think we have made enormous progress, but in journalism, as
elsewhere, you will sometimes get errors. If I believed there
were a pattern of a weakening of compliance across the BBC, I
think that would be absolutely a really serious systemic fault.
I have to say, I believe, and I think there is good evidence and
the Trust has done its own work to look at the compliance culture
inside the BBC, that this has been a period where actually across
journalism, across non-journalism, in the matter of some of the
other areas that have been the focus in recent years, for example,
the conduct of competitions and phone voting, we have seen a progressive,
widespread tightening and improvement and the BBC's editorial
guidelines are far more central to operations in the BBC now than
they were five years ago. Now, that is not to say that we should
not learn lessons from individual serious lapses, but you cannot
have the scale of television and radio broadcasting in journalism
and beyond journalism that the BBC does and not expect that sometimes
we will get it wrong. There is much, believe me, that the BBC
gets right, and we are at the moment a few days after Children
in Need, we have Little Dorrit on the air and I think
we had superb coverage of the US elections on our airwaves. This
is a very uncharacteristic, utterly unacceptable, but genuinely
exceptional, lapse, in my view. We need to find out why, we need
to put in place measures to make sure we absolutely minimise the
chance of it happening again, but it is not typical of the BBC
and it is not typical of the way our compliance systems work.
Sir Michael Lyons: Mr Davies,
can I just come back on the closing part of your question which
was about the culture because there, I think, you do have a point
which the Trust itself is interested in. Let me just underline
that we are on alert as a result of this incident to whether there
have been specific problems of editorial control and compliance
in audio and radio, and that is where we have focused the Director
General to do more work for us, but we have also asked him to
draw together all of his senior editorial staff to make sure,
because, without going into all of the details, there is evidence
there of senior members of staff not being clear of what falls
outside of the editorial controls, so we asked him to draw together
his senior staff to be clear that there are public expectations
here which prevail across the entire spectrum of content of the
BBC, and that is an exercise which we are looking at. I am very
careful with the word `culture'. It is used very widely to capture
those things which are not easily defined in rules and procedures,
and I am absolutely clear that there are important issues there,
but we have to be careful in regarding that as a sort of black
box though. The Trust wants to be surgical and that is the only
way that we are going to bring about changes to give us all confidence
in the future.
Q104 Philip Davies: But the point
is that you were talking earlier about how only two viewers were
offended and five by the end of the week, but surely that is irrelevant.
It was not about whether the viewers were offended or not, it
was about whether Andrew Sachs was offended or not. Presumably,
the viewers, the people listening to it, may well have presumed
that Andrew Sachs was part of it and in on this particular joke
and they could not believe that the BBC would do anything so crass
otherwise, yet, even when you apologised, you did not even check
your apology with Andrew Sachs to make sure that he was happy
with the wording of the apology that was broadcast on Radio Two.
How can you preside over such an arrogant organisation that does
not even check with the person who has been offended whether they
are happy with the apology that is being broadcast?
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, Mr Davies,
I concede that it would have been better if that final and very
fulsome apology had been checked with Mr Sachs, but let me say
that it is not the practice of any organisation that I have been
involved with, or, I doubt, of any which you and your colleagues
have been involved with, that it is a routine measure to check
the nature of an apology before it is broadcast.
Q105 Philip Davies: Well, I would
have thought it was.
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, let us
not go into this. Let me just say that I concede that in these
circumstances that might have been a good idea.
Mr Thompson: It is just worth
saying about this final apology, and it was an apology required
by the BBC Trust to be broadcast, that the first version of the
apology absolutely repeated the full and unreserved apology to
Andrew Sachs himself and indeed to Georgina Baillie, his granddaughter.
When Andrew made it clear that he also wanted his wife and other
members of his family to be included in the apology, we absolutely—
Sir Michael Lyons: We immediately
agreed.
Mr Thompson:—were happy
to agree to that, and the second broadcast of the apology included
other family members. That was the distinction between the first
version of the apology and the second.
Q106 Philip Davies: Finally on this,
you talk about systemic failings. Before, the BBC have been here
because of The Queen and the fact that things were rigged
on The Queen to make sure the programme broadcast was not
as it appeared, and we have had the thing about Blue Peter
and all of the phone-ins. This seems to me like systemic failure
of compliance within the BBC. Last time, we were told there were
a load of training courses because obviously the staff of the
BBC need to be trained on how not to lie to their viewers and
how not to jiggle their competitions! Are we now going to have
a new training course on the BBC on how not to launch into offensive
messages on people's answerphones?
Sir Michael Lyons: Let me, if
I can, just elevate this to a slightly more strategic level just
for a moment. It is in the nature of the BBC in the work that
it does that it takes risks. Which stories it chooses to cover
with its journalists, how it seeks to interpret those stories,
which programmes it decides to commission or make, which artists
it decides to retain, every day, every day the BBC makes thousands,
possibly hundreds of thousands, of decisions which are inherently
risky and which could prove to be wrong. Either the story is wrong,
and it has possibly been broadcast wrongly, information has been
assimilated wrongly or a performer goes beyond the bounds of what
you might expect, so there are inevitably risks. We cannot come
to you and say, or there is no regime that the Trust can impose,
nor can the Director General impose, that actually gives you a
guarantee that we will not take risks in the future and that things
might fail, and it is important that we all recognise that, otherwise,
it would be very difficult for us to have a civilised dialogue.
In terms of the way that this particular failing has been responded
to, it has certain hallmarks. As soon as the BBC Trust and the
senior management became aware of it, it was dealt with. It has
consequences for people within the BBC who have let the organisation
and the public down, consequences which, I would purport, more
clearly demonstrated than we find across most parts of the British
economy and certainly public organisations. We are here explaining
to you not only that those actions were taken, but reflecting
your view on the fact that there are lessons to learn perhaps
in our press-handling of the future. Yes, there are further steps
to take to ensure tighter editorial control. All of our discussions
so far suggest that they are not pan-BBC, but need to be focused
particularly in audio and music, that is where the Director General
is focused, and your proper comment about maybe there is a wider
issue of understanding culture is also addressed in the instructions
that the Trust has given the Director General.
Mr Thompson: The public tell us
very strongly that they want us to take risks, they want original,
challenging and brave programming, and that is a fact of life.
The second thing I would say, Mr Davies, is that it is genuinely
difficult to predict every single possible editorial issue that
could come up, and we currently have a debate about John Sergeant's
dancing in Strictly Come Dancing and whether he should
be continuing in the competition or not, and the scenario of whether
political correspondents or indeed politicians and their dancing
abilities shows up an underlying issue with the difference between
the judgment of the judges on the programme and the public at
large is a new topic. Our duty, I think, is, when a set of issues
arises and, yes, when we make mistakes, to try and understand
why, to try and put things in place to make sure that those things
do not happen again and to keep as alert as we can across the
entire spectrum of editorial matters, but to recognise that sometimes
a particular issue, the leaving of an offensive message on an
answerphone, will, to some extent, pose new questions for us.
Q107 Helen Southworth: We have explored
in quite some detail some aspects of the situation the BBC is
finding itself in at the moment, but could I ask you if you could
explore some other aspects of it which, I think, are extremely
important to the viewers and listeners, and that is around the
high level of creativity that we expect from the BBC. When we
have had evidence from you previously, one of the things that
you have lauded about the BBC in terms of its national and international
position has been the way it brings on new talent, that it is
able to take risks in bringing on new talent—
Sir Michael Lyons: Yes.
Q108 Helen Southworth:—and
that has given the UK some exceptional performances and some exceptional
performers. How are you going to make sure that you actually continue
to do that and that you protect your talent during those processes
in a proper way?
Sir Michael Lyons: I feel that
is a good and searching question for the challenge that faces
the BBC and, in part, conditions how we respond to these failings.
I think at one and the same time, and you have had this in public
comments both by the Director General and myself, we need to be
very clear that there is unacceptable behaviour here, including
unacceptable behaviour by the performers, but at the same time
it would be, I think, letting audiences down if we left a message
that we were in any way going to discourage risk-taking or innovation
in the BBC. Of course, putting those two messages together can
sound contradictory to some, and that is exactly the line that
we are trying to tread here of being clear that the BBC is not
losing its nerve, it absolutely has to serve all audiences, that
is its requirement, that is its Charter requirement, and the Trust
regards that as its primary responsibility, but that does not
mean that anything goes. We have standards, and it is quite appropriate
for us to listen carefully even to people who have not listened
to programmes if they feel their licence fee is being used inappropriately,
but Mark really ought to have a chance to come back on the issue
of nurturing talent, if you are happy, Chairman.
Mr Thompson: I think actually
that what Sir Michael has said covers the main point. It is difficult
to satisfy possibly everyone in the room, let alone everyone in
the country, but we have to act proportionately when we discover
problems and `proportionately' means pretty firmly and in some
cases, I am afraid, it does mean parting with important and able
colleagues, but at the same time we have to figure out a way within
the creative culture of the organisation of making sure that people
think they can take legitimate risks, and, I have to say, in the
end I believe that the clarity about the standards the public
expect and about the BBC's editorial guidelines actually, done
in the right way, can encourage the right kind of creativity;
it brings a kind of freedom when you understand where the boundaries
are.
Q109 Helen Southworth: Will you be
bringing in some of your big talents to get that message across?
Mr Thompson: We will be talking
to everyone, including on-air talent, of course.
Q110 Helen Southworth: But will they
be giving that message out as well?
Mr Thompson: I expect, as we go
through the process both of the broader discussion about the boundaries
of taste, but also in the more detailed work of trying to learn
the lessons from this particular incident, that key on-air talent
will be a part of that, helping us to come up with the rights
answers, but also helping to promulgate it, yes.
Sir Michael Lyons: If I could
just add a very short PS to that, the Trust will be ensuring that
this is not just a debate within the BBC, but actually it is a
public debate as well because it is very clear, if you look at
the letters column over that particular week of, I do not know
the right term for it, hysteria may be not right, but over that
week there were many people showing actually quite different views
about how one should react to these circumstances and what it
should mean for the future.
Q111 Helen Southworth: If I can just
ask you about one final point, you have been discussing how you
are going to manage pre-recorded shows and what the editorial
responsibilities and duties are going to be around those, but
how are you going to manage live shows?
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, clearly,
if this could happen with a recorded show, then we have to be
absolutely clear that the controls around live recordings are
even more stringent. I have to say, although I do not want to
have the final word on this, but, from what I see, actually the
controls tend to be tighter around live shows because the risk
is clearly understood, and that is something which we are looking
at again in more detail and we will publish our findings.
Q112 Mr Sanders: Was this not clearly
an incident just waiting to happen, given how much free rein you
give your best-known performers in allowing them to run production
companies that employ the people who are supposed to censor them,
and is it not unrealistic to expect the star to actually be held
in check by somebody that they themselves employ? Does that not
actually go to the heart of this?
Mr Thompson: Well, as you have
heard, we are going to look specifically at whether we need to
bring in additional safeguards or whether we change our practice
in relation to this particular scenario of programmes which are
commissioned by a production company where the stars either own
it or have an economic interest. What I would say though is that
the existing protocols and compliance arrangements recognise that
this adds potentially to risk and that, therefore, the compliance
procedures need to be followed particularly carefully in the context
of a programme made by an independent production company where
the artist has an economic involvement, and there is already across
television and radio particular programmes and these programmes
are regarded naturally as of potentially higher risk because of
that and, because of that, the compliance procedures are intended
to be stricter. Indeed, on the programme in question, The Russell
Brand Show, there is good evidence of tight compliance procedures
for previous editions of this programme. The programme had been
running for two years and won a Sony Gold Award because of its
quality and had proceeded for a long time without any issues,
so literally, if you just look at The Russell Brand Show,
although, my goodness me, it has got some quite edgy material
in it, the compliance procedures seem to be working. Now, the
compliance procedures in this episode of The Russell Brand
Show failed and they failed at a senior level, and there are
lessons to learn from that, but all I would say is that, even
if you look at The Russell Brand Show and the management
of this show, I do not think you can go back, as it were, through
the audit trail and say, even of this programme, that it was obvious
that it was an accident waiting to happen.
Q113 Mr Sanders: But have you not
actually been here before in 2007 with The Green Guide to Life
programme when Ofcom ruled that it exposed a weakness in the broadcaster's
compliance procedures? That was almost an identical scenario.
The only difference is that at that point The Mail on Sunday
did not feel it was under attack from the BBC Local and, therefore,
did not broadcast it disproportionately to its readership and
actually stir it up more than perhaps it deserved to be stirred
up.
Mr Thompson: I think what I want
to say, almost to state the obvious, is that every editorial lapse
that the BBC or any broadcaster makes at some level represents
a failure, small or big, in the compliance process, and the scale
of what the organisation does means that some editorial lapses,
I am afraid, with the best will in the world and with the best
systems in the world, are inevitable. What we try and do with
our compliance procedures is progressively improve them and strengthen
them. Clearly, it is disheartening, having spent so much work
on compliance, that an error of this size, the size of The
Russell Brand Show, should happen, but, as I have said to
you, I think that, although we are going to look at the topic
again, and I know this is about television as well as radio, already
we have identified, partly because of one or two issues in the
past, that there is a need for a special care on compliance on
these programmes. As I say, I believe that across television and
radio that compliance is generally working very well and that
manifestly, in the context of this edition of The Russell Brand
Show, the compliance system did not work well.
Sir Michael Lyons: Can I just
add a short postscript which might be helpful to you, Mr Sanders,
which is that one thing that you probably heard me say back in
the autumn of last year when we agreed the six-year plan is that
the BBC should do nothing that it cannot do well. Now, this issue,
I think, comes back to this hearing. If it is the case that the
organisation is stretched and that we find any evidence that these
failings are because actually it is too stretched, then the lesson
will be taken to heart very clearly that the BBC will have to
do less, that it can only do what it can control, and comply with,
adequately.
Q114 Rosemary McKenna: I think the
most important debate out of this will be about taste and the
balance of taste. As we have seen, I think, this morning and over
the last few weeks, the BBC performed a spectacular own-goal for
its enemies, and there are many to attack the BBC, but I think
the BBC can be held to account and that is really important. I
would contrast that with the hypocrisy of the print media who
actually have continued to report in detail the actual events
that have dragged the life of the young woman at the centre of
these awful events through the gutter in fact, and she is the
real victim in all of this and I have a great deal of sympathy
for her. I think we have to put the whole event into perspective,
I think it has got out of hand, but how do we address the concerns
of the vast number of people who say, "Yes, we have concerns
about broadcasting", and they are principally around taste,
they are around the use of bad language, swearing, and storylines?
How do we balance that? How do we get that debate going in public
without it being used to kick the BBC all over the place?
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, I absolutely
agree with you, and this is not something that you have from time
to time, but I think there has to be a continual debate about
what we, as a community, as a nation, as a group of nations, are
willing to see broadcast in our name, and that is a particular
responsibility for the BBC because of the licence fee and the
fact that it makes a universal charge. We cannot dismiss the interest
of any part of the licence fee-paying public, but I think you
have put it in the right terms, that it is important that this
is a debate that reflects all views and is not hijacked by a particular
view, and I think that is the challenge for us here, to make sure
that the BBC continues to be open to all opinions, understands
its responsibilities to the nation as a whole, does not falter
in its need to serve all audiences and, inevitably, takes risks
in doing that.
Mr Thompson: But within a context
of one or two very, very clear principles, for example, the watershed,
which is a rather old-fashioned way perhaps of thinking about
this issue. It is really important to households up and down the
country and they find it very, very useful, the idea that before
nine o'clock, in the matter of strong language, they can have
a very high confidence that programming will be suitable, in the
case of television, for children to watch in a family context.
We have tried even with initiatives like the iPlayer. There are
quite sophisticated parental controls on the iPlayer again to
give families a chance to make their choice about what, in particular,
they want their children to see and hear, so I think there are
quite strong controls in place and, if there is going to be strong
material in, for example, a late-night programme on Radio Two
or, for that matter, on BBC Two, we would again be very carefully
warning the public, and we do try and warn the public, about what
they are likely to encounter on a programme. Now, I am not saying
that closes the debate off. I think the right thing for us is
to listen to the public and to enter into the debate, and the
Trust will certainly have a view on all of that, but I think you
should see, and it is not always perhaps covered in the print
media, that this is not some sort of Wild West where anything
goes, but there are already widespread and careful controls in
place.
Sir Michael Lyons: Could I just
add a short addendum to that, and it is very important that this
debate is not just conducted in terms of which expletives are
permissible and at what time of the day because, frankly, if you
had taken this programme and taken all of the expletives out of
it, it still would have been way beyond the boundaries, and the
danger with just focusing on the expletives, and to some extent
that is the story that we might unfold here, is that actually
you miss the much bigger offence of a lack of respect for both
the wider audience and for individuals.
Q115 Paul Farrelly: Mistakes were
definitely made and resignations followed pretty swiftly both
at the senior level and at broadcast level, and, Sir Michael,
you have highlighted some structural problems in terms of standards
and controls when independent production companies are involved,
and those issues were also evident in our inquiry into controls
over companies running quiz shows. If I can just turn to Mark,
Mark, you are the Director General, but do you think there has
been a witch-finder general in the pursuit of this affair?
Mr Thompson: I do not quite understand
the question. Are you suggesting that I might have acted as the
witch-finder general or that somebody else has?
Q116 Paul Farrelly: Well, is there
a feeling within the BBC that some of the coverage of this affair
has been pursued as a broader witch-hunt against the BBC?
Mr Thompson: To be honest, I think
that is, if I may say so, for others to judge. What I would say
is that we come here, I come here today to reflect on a serious
editorial lapse for which I have personally apologised publicly,
the organisation has apologised publicly and I have also apologised
personally both by telephone and in writing to the key people
who were the victims of it. I think how that happened and what
we are going to do to try and make sure it does not happen again,
that is what, I said, helps here. I think the broader debate about
the BBC and about the various understandable agendas of the rest
of the media and how they might play into all of this is really
for others to comment on. I have said that I do not think it was
unreasonable for newspapers, in particular The Mail on Sunday,
but subsequent newspapers, to point to this as an editorial error
because it manifestly was. I think it was very extensively covered
on our own news bulletins. I was interviewed and, I have to say,
anybody who thinks that the Director General gets an easy ride
from BBC interviewers really should wake up and smell the coffee.
I was interviewed and Michael also had his moment and doubtless
will again. I thought, I have to say, speaking personally, that
I was interviewed fairly, toughly but fairly, and I think that,
if other people get treated in the way I was treated by my colleagues
both on the BBC, Sky, ITN and so forth, they would have little
to complain about.
Sir Michael Lyons: Could I just
say that I think the BBC should aspire to better standards, higher
standards, than others. I think that is part of its contract with
the public, that is the basis on which I and the Trust work and
I believe that is the basis on which the Director General works.
In the same ten-day hearing, the discussion about whether our
apology was adequate or not, two other media offences, one by
a newspaper and one by television, in one case dating from 2006
and one from 2007, both were dribbled out into the public domain.
I do not think it is possible for the BBC to believe that it could
work in the same way. We need to expect to account for what we
do and for it to be a matter of public debate in this country.
Q117 Chairman: It is worth observing,
and I think you would probably agree, certainly in terms of the
expressions of anger which were expressed afterwards rather strongly
that some of the strongest which came to me, and, I suspect, to
you, were from employees of the BBC.
Sir Michael Lyons: There is no
doubt that, as with earlier transgressions, folks who observe
the rules and understand the public expectations of them feel
desperately let down, and I think it is absolutely right that
both the Trust and the Director General understand that, and that
is why in our communications we have both emphasised a message
internally to recognise that this is not a brush which should
tar every BBC employee or even most.
Q118 Mr Evans: Since it came out
that Jonathan Ross was earning £6 million a year, I have
not come across one person who thinks he is worth that money;
quite the contrary. Do you think that it is right that the BBC
pays £6 million for one of its stars, Mark?
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, I will
have the first crack at that because my answer is, surprisingly,
yes. One of the things that I do, as Chairman of the BBC Trust,
which is actually, if anything, slightly more testing than coming
in front of yourselves, is regularly to hold public meetings,
and in the middle of a debate in the South West where there were
many, many people railing against the Jonathan Ross salary as
being inappropriate, actually there were people who were willing
to stand up, even in that context, and say that he was the reason
that they watched the BBC. Now, I only tell you that because you
have asked a question which needed a precise answer and let me
now go into the payment of large salaries in the BBC. As you know,
the Trust responded to public concern which was very widespread,
I absolutely acknowledge that, about the payment of what is referred
to as `top talent', and Oliver and Ohlbaum did that piece of work
for us. The primary question was: is the BBC paying more than
it needs to pay for this talent? There was a clear and unequivocal
response from the research that no, it is not, and sometimes it
pays less than competitors, but nonetheless, the Trust gave the
Director General a very clear message that he should manage these
contracts into the future to absolutely make sure that we do not
pay any more than we need to, that we need to bring on extra talent
so that the BBC always has choice, and, I have to say, I was pleased
to hear his comment in public last week that in different economic
circumstances it will be possible for the BBC to drive a much
harder bargain still in terms of recruiting talent to our screens
and airwaves.
Mr Thompson: The only thing I
would add to that is that I think the public do want outstanding
entertainment talent on the BBC's airwaves and, although we do
seek to get, and the evidence of the Trust is that we succeed
in getting, good value and typically to get top talent for less
than even other public service broadcasters pay for them, if the
BBC is to have top talent, I think you have to accept that, although,
I hope, the market is going to change in the next couple of years,
you are going into a labour market where there is intense competition.
Even when you grow your own talent, amazingly quickly of course
other people are on the phone and you are having to pay something
which relates to the market level for talent. Last Friday, we
had Children in Need, a record year, and we went over £500
million raised for charity by Children in Need. If you
look at Children in Need or Comic Relief and not
just the programmes, but the whole way in which the BBC gets behind
it, I think it is too simplistic to separate off comedy or entertainment
or popular drama from the BBC's public service mission. I think
if you spent Friday evening watching what we do on Children
in Need, you can see how these household names and their commitment
and their passion, from Sir Terry Wogan down, makes a big difference
to the British public, and the public, although understandably,
when you ask them the question, "Is anybody worth X now?",
I think there is a lot of support from the public for the idea
of a BBC which has got entertainment alongside information and
education as part of what it does.
Q119 Mr Evans: Do you think the public
might think you were a bit out of touch, both of you, for thinking
that he is worth £6 million a year?
Sir Michael Lyons: Well, the answer
to that of course is that the public has many and varied views,
as reflected in this Committee.
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