HOW one’s heart bleeds for the BBC as it struggles to get by on just £5.4 billion a year, a miserly sum when you have 102 on-air presenters paid more than £150,000 a year.
The BBC’s income last year, bleats the corporation’s latest report, is 30 per cent down in real terms over the past decade.
GettyHuw Edwards received nearly £200,000 from the BBC between his arrest and his resignation[/caption]
BackGridDisgraced Edwards has still not paid back a single penny to the corporation[/caption]
AlamyThere is no better example of unfairness than licence fee prosecutions – three quarters of which are of women[/caption]
But I know where it could get £200,000 from, if it helps.
When disgraced former newsreader Huw Edwards was convicted of offences involving child abuse images last summer BBC Director General Tim Davie admitted that he had known about his arrest the previous November.
Yet between then and April 2024, when Edwards finally resigned from his job, he had continued to receive his full salary.
He wasn’t working at the time because he had been suspended and then signed off sick when he was caught paying £35,000 to a young male fan in return for naked pictures.
Given that Edwards was paid a whacking £475,000 it meant that he received nearly £200,000 between his arrest and his resignation.
That is more TV licence fee revenue than the BBC takes annually from a thousand households.
No matter, said Davie. The BBC would demand the money back. And if Edwards was uncooperative, it would look at legal action.
Guess what? It appears that Edwards has still not paid back a single penny.
Edwards was lucky to have been spared jail. There are plenty of seedy men like him who have spent time behind bars for downloading child pornography.
Instead, he has been allowed to withdraw into genteel retirement in his native Wales courtesy of you and I.
What many hard-working people would give to have had the chance to amass a pension fund of £200,000. But that, of course, is only what Edwards was paid during the last five months of his employment.
His pension pot is worth far, far more – according to some estimates he could be enjoying a pension of around £300,000 a year.
There seems to be no chance that he will be stripped of that pension. Davie said last year that it would be “nigh on impossible” to claw it back.
On the other hand, what about the £200,000 Edwards was paid during those last five months of his BBC employment when he wasn’t working and was known to have been charged with serious criminal offences?
Perhaps it is too much for him to do the decent thing and return the money voluntarily. If you are going to look at sexual images of children, clearly there is something wrong with your moral compass.
But why the feebleness on the part of the BBC?
Easier targets
It is outrageous that the salary was paid in the first place. And how ironic, given the mercilessness of the contractors charged with collecting the licence fee on behalf of the BBC.
I don’t have much sympathy for people who are deliberately evading paying the licence fee, but many of the nearly 50,000 people prosecuted last year for evasion do not fall into that category.
They include seriously ill people who have forgotten to pay while they undergo treatment, and people on low incomes who have been struggling to pay rent as well as utility bills.
You can’t listen to the BBC long without being lectured to about some grave injustice when women are claimed to be getting a poor deal, yet there is no better example of unfairness than licence fee prosecutions – three quarters of which are of women.
Perhaps TV Licensing finds them easier targets.
The last government tried to put things right by promising to decriminalise the licence fee so that it would become just like any other utility bill – TV Licensing would have to send you multiple reminders to pay before collecting the money through the civil courts.
That would have spared people on low incomes the crushing blow of receiving a criminal conviction for being late in renewing their TV Licence.
But the BBC complained bitterly that it would reduce their income, and the Conservatives were too pathetic to follow through with their promise.
The BBC should never have been paying Edwards £425,000 a year in the first place
It has been the same with every government over the past generation.
They have known that the licence fee is an anachronism – a hangover from the days when the BBC was the only channel available on television.
But they have seemed too frightened to reform it.
The BBC should never have been paying Edwards £425,000 a year in the first place. It says it needs to compete for talent with commercial stations.
But surely the whole point of being a public service broadcaster – which would be the only justification for the licence fee – is that you are not competing with commercial broadcasters.
The BBC has tried to have it both ways for far too long.
The Huw Edwards scandal must be the moment of realisation when the government finally does away with the licence fee and makes the BBC earn its keep, like any other broadcaster.
GettyMany of the people prosecuted last year for evasion include seriously ill people, or those on low incomes[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
