Two BBC bosses have racked up the biggest pensions in the public sector, together worth more than £14m.Mark Byford, 51, the deputy director general, is to receive a pension of at least £229,500 a year from a pot valued at almost £8m. This could rise to more than £10m if he works at the BBC until the age of 60.Alan Yentob, 62, the arts presenter and creative director of the BBC, has accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life, according to new research.Until now it was thought that Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, had Britain’s largest public sector pension. His pension pot is valued at £5.7m, paying a retirement income of £198,613 a year.Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, said: “As more and more massive public sector pots are revealed, it only strengthens the case for reform. Taxpayers simply cannot afford to be paying lavish pensions for executives who are already extremely well paid.“For teachers and nurses these schemes can deliver an appropriate pension, but these figures show that they can deliver obscene retirement packages for senior executives.”This weekend it also emerged that the BBC has for the past decade rewarded senior executives with lavish receptions and leaving parties, with one farewell costing more than £150,000. The extravagant send-offs were not disclosed last month when executives’ expenses were published.The Sunday Times asked Hargreaves Lansdown, the financial services group, to analyse BBC executive pensions after the corporation rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) to disclose the size of pensions held by executives below main board level. The BBC said the scheme was exempted from FOI because it is managed by a third party.The analysis found that Mark Thompson, the corporation’s director general, has a second “hidden” BBC pension worth nearly £2.9m. No details of this pension, accrued between 1979 and 2001, appear in the BBC’s most recent accounts. They record only the pension rights he has earned since his appointment as director general in 2004, after a short spell at Channel 4.Members of the BBC’s final salary pension scheme contribute 6.75% of their annual salary to the pension. The full cost of meeting these pension benefits far exceeds the members’ contributions.
what is there left for anyone 25 - 45!? 6music?.......oh hang on......
BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said today if there was a big enough public response about the cuts then he would ask management to rethink its strategy."If we find that... there's massive public concern that we need to take account of then we will go back to the director general to rethink the strategy before it's approved," he said.
Email the trust!!!
Quote from: Jaspersharpe on March 02, 2010, 03:00:56 pmEmail the trust!!!Done.
More than 30 Labour MPs have signed a Commons early day motion saying it would be wrong to close 6 Music or the Asian Network and Tom Watson, the Labour former minister who tabled the motion, today urged the BBC to save the two stations.
John Whittingdale, the Tory MP who chairs the Commons culture committee, also said that the decision to close the two stations was "curious". He said the BBC should be "providing things that can't be found in the commercial sector".
Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat culture spokesman, also urged the BBC to think again about 6Music and the Asian Network."Today's report signals the end of the BBC roaming wherever it fancied. The decision to focus on high-quality UK content is welcome," he said."However, I am not convinced that using 6 Music and the Asian Network as sacrificial lambs to pay for it is the right approach. While the BBC has become overgrown in some areas and needs pruning, the licence fee payers must have their say about what's to go."
