Patten and Hall Accused of 'Cronyism'

[Teddy Bear]

A taste of things to come, or same ol' same ol'.

Crony fear after new BBC chief gives £395,000 salary job to ex-colleague

Anne Bulford tipped as the corporation's first female director-general

By Paul Revoir

New BBC director-general Lord Hall has appointed a former colleague to a top post at the corporation on a £395,000 salary.

Channel 4 chief operating officer Anne Bulford has been handed the role of managing director of BBC finance and operations without the job being advertised.

Her appointment comes shortly after the new director-general announced that he had hired former Labour culture secretary James Purnell to be its strategy and digital chief on a £295,000-a-year salary.

Like Miss Bulford he was appointed without the role being advertised.

Lord Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, formally takes up his BBC post in April. Before joining Channel 4 in 2005, Miss Bulford spent three years with the Royal Opera House as director of finance and business affairs.

Lord Hall knows her from their time together at the Royal Opera House and also from his time as deputy chairman at Channel 4.

Her appointment is bound to trigger fears of cronyism.

Miss Bulford had previously worked at the BBC as head of internal audit and then finance director of BBC Productions. She will replace the BBC’s outgoing chief financial officer, Zarin Patel.

In her new job, which begins in the summer, she will also take on some of the responsibilities of former chief operating officer Caroline Thomson, who left the BBC last year. Miss Bulford is already being tipped as the corporation’s first female director-general.

There was some disquiet within the BBC yesterday about how this and Mr Purnell’s appointment had happened without any formal job application process.

Tory MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said: ‘At a time when the BBC are saying they are having to cut back on programme budgets because of the squeeze on the licence fee, it is extraordinary that they think this is an appropriate amount to pay in public money to an individual, however good.

‘Secondly it demonstrates they are still completely out of touch with the world in which most people have to live today.’

In an email to staff, Lord Hall said Miss Bulford was a ‘direct appointment rather than an advertised one’ because he believed her talent and experience ‘make her the best person for this role’.

Her salary is not far off Lord Hall’s pay of £450,000 a year, but the BBC claimed it was a net saving of about £250,000 from the combined salaries of Miss Patel and Miss Thomson.

Miss Bulford’s salary at Channel 4 was £375,000 but she earned a total pay package of £456,000 there last year.

She said: ‘I am really looking forward to returning to the BBC. I have such great respect for the organisation.

‘I am also very pleased to be working with Tony [Lord Hall] once again.’

[Teddy Bear]

BBC Trust Chairman Chris Patten, and the new Director General have both been summoned before the Commons Culture Committee to explain why they've awarded top jobs at the BBC without going through any open interview process or even advertising for the positions.

These are the people who like to tell the public that trust and transparency are their main concerns, while they are anything but.

Patten in jobs for the boys quiz

By Richard Kay

A BBC cronyism row is threatening to erupt after MPs revealed plans to grill new Director-General Lord Hall and BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten over why three senior Corporation appointments worth more than £1  million a year were not advertised.

On Thursday, Hall and Patten are due to give evidence to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee.

It will be the first time Hall has been called to Parliament since taking up his post on April 2.

In what committee members are describing as a 'wide-ranging session', Patten will be questioned over how Hall appears to have avoided an open interview process to gain the £450,000 job.

Hall will then be quizzed over why he subsequently appointed former Labour Cabinet minister James Purnell to a £295,000 strategy role and Anne Bulford, his former colleague at the Royal Opera House, to a £395,000 finance post. Between them, the trio have been given three of the most senior positions at the BBC with a combined salary of £1.14 million without apparently having to go through the normal channels of applying for their jobs and being interviewed.

A source tells me members 'want to get to the bottom of the controversy', adding: 'The committee certainly wants to ask Patten about the circumstances of Hall's appointment, and to ask about the two unadvertised appointments Hall himself later made.

'These are questions of great concern, so it is right that Patten and Hall are coming.'

Hall's appointment as BBC chief was rubber-stamped by Patten last November at the height of the crisis triggered by the Jimmy Savile scandal and the Lord McAlpine debacle.

David Elstein, former head of Channel 5, tells me: 'There are a whole lot of questions that ought to be asked. The biggest relates to Tony Hall's appointment.

'It remains puzzling and obscure that the BBC, a publicly funded organisation, is able to ignore its well-established selection processes for three of the most senior jobs in the Corporation, including the top job.'

[Teddy Bear]

Quentin Letts at the Mail comments on the appearance of Hall before the MPs.

At the Beeb, humiliation is a good career move

By Quentin Letts

Next! Here was the BBC’s fourth director-general in a year to sit down in front of the Commons Culture Select Committee.

It has been a bit like watching an England batting collapse: Thompson (not exactly dismissed but he left the crease unhappily), Entwistle (stumps sent cartwheeling before he had barely taken his guard), acting DG Davey (not out) and now Hall. Could the new man stop the rot?

Tony Hall. LORD Hall. Now there’s a bit of heft. To be a parliamentarian helps when in front of a parliamentary hearing. They know the pace of the wicket. Is there a sense of what we used to call the fast bowlers’ union? Perhaps not, but it did subtly help the newcomer to have that peer’s title.

The MPs could not do that belittling thing they sometimes try by emphasising the ‘Mister’.

He began with a prepared statement necessitating dark-framed spectacles. These made him look like the late 1970s newscaster Kenneth Kendall.

One almost expected him to say: ‘And in other news, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Denis Healey, drove back from Heathrow airport...’

The specs were whipped off once he had finished his script. Are we maybe a little vain? A boyish countenance with occasional flashes of a smile which were more convincing than the grins of gaseous terror poor Entwistle used to pin on his bean. And how good, after stubbly Thompson, to have a DG who is clean-shaven.

Some of the trickiest moments concerned Lord Hall’s decision to keep former BBC News chief Helen Boaden in a top job, kerching-kerching. She has been parked at radio (head of). The MPs were not impressed.

Paul Farrelly (Lab, Newcastle-under-Lyme) had an awkward analogy about the likes of Boaden being ‘chiefs’ and lesser BBC mortals being ‘Indians’. Watch it, Paul, the race relations police will be after you.
Beside Hall, BBC chairman Lord Patten seemed to have lost a few ounces of bombast

Beside Hall, BBC chairman Lord Patten seemed to have lost a few ounces of bombast

Lord Hall said Beeb suits had suffered enough during the Jimmy Savile scandal. ‘The public humiliation was enough for those people – they had been through a period of huge discomfort,’ he said. Humiliation, it’s a good career move.

Ex Labour Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) didn’t think much of this answer. ‘No one lost their job after Pollard,’ he said (the Pollard inquiry was one of those Maoist purges at Broadcasting House after the Savile hoo-hah). Mr Bradshaw noted that Miss Boaden had kept her six-figure salary and it began with a three.

A Thompson or Entwistle at this point would have started ab-dabbing ‘but, but, but’. Lord Hall listened pleasantly, heard Mr Bradshaw’s concern, and offered some gloopy assurance about how ‘outstanding’ Miss Boaden was. On that money, one should hope so!

Hall had age on his side – older than the committee’s sprats. Beside him, BBC chairman Lord Patten seemed to have lost a few ounces of bombast. Perhaps he trusts Hall more. Perhaps he owns him less.

Lord Hall defused a skilful bomb from Conor Burns (Con, Bournemouth W), who outed himself as a Thatcherite who actually supports the BBC.

‘I fear you may have damaged yourself and your mission’ with the Boaden decision, said Mr Burns. Lord Hall, employing the disguised caution of a circus lion tamer, said that he ‘understood’ Mr Burns’s words – but thought he was completely wrong.

He had ‘spent time’ with Miss Boaden and ‘talked to her’ (it was almost as if she was under sedation in intensive care). We should realise what ‘trauma’ (pronounced like ‘trousers’) the BBC had undergone. Hankies, Petunia.

As for the appointment of arch-Blairite James Purnell to some top executive position, Lord Hall affected paternal pride in the lad. ‘He’s hung his boots up at the door and left politics behind two or three years ago. I think he’s outstanding.’

A football manager talking about a teenage centre forward? No, this was the new DG of the incorrigibly Leftist Beeb, talking about a former Cabinet minister who was lined up to be David Miliband’s chief of staff had he become Labour Leader, but is now on a stonking BBC salary.

BBC journalists would treat this sort of claim with cackling scepticism. So should we.

[Teddy Bear]

Another example revealing precisely the mindset of Tony Hall regarding no aversion to paying high salaries courtesy of the licence fee payer, and hiring his mates.

What a cosy world

How very cosy. BBC director general Lord Hall wants a management consultant, so for a mere £600,000 he hires his old friend Lady Heywood from the Royal Opera House, who also happens to be the wife of Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood. What a very small and incestuous world we live in.

[Teddy Bear]

It's worthwhile looking a bit deeper into the above latest story.

First let's look at how Hall describes the need for creating this new position in the first place, and why this particular woman. (highlights mine)

BBC chief Hall gives 'crony' a £600,000 deal: Wife of Britain's top civil servant called in to make corporation a 'simpler place to work'

• Lady Heywood and director-general of the BBC Lord Hall have worked together before
  
• Threats to call Lord Hall before MPs to explain the employment
  
• Second time he has appointed a former colleague to a high-rise position at the BBC

By Alasdair Glennie

The head of the BBC handed a £600,000 contract to a friend, it emerged last night.

Tony Hall has appointed Suzanne Heywood to lead a two-month review into making the corporation a ‘simpler place to work’.

He worked with Lady Heywood, who is married to Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy, at the Royal Opera House before he joined the BBC as director-general.

Her study with global management consultants McKinsey is not expected to cut the BBC’s headcount or save money.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs the Commons public accounts committee, said the links between the pair raised very serious questions as to how McKinsey beat its rivals to the contract.

Threatening to call Lord Hall before the committee’s next BBC hearing in September, the senior Labour MP said: ‘If these questions are not adequately answered we will have to investigate them ourselves.

‘It’s a lot of money. If you are going to pay consultants you have to go through the appropriate mechanisms and not use your friends.

‘With all eyes on the BBC at the moment I can’t understand why they don’t appreciate that everything has to be visibly above board.’

Conor Burns, a Tory MP on the culture, media and sport committee, has written to Lord Hall asking him to publish all the documents relating to the McKinsey contract.

‘Tony Hall was brought in as director-general with a clear mandate to put the days of murky relationships and mutual back scratching at the BBC behind them,’ he said.

‘It is vital if his credibility is to be upheld that the BBC now urgently publish the tender documents relating to the awarding of this contract, so the licence fee payer can see beyond doubt that this contract was awarded on merit and not on the basis of personal favours.’

He added: ‘It seems extraordinary when you have so many highly paid executives that you need to bring in highly paid consultants to do a job they should be able to do themselves.

‘It is a very poor use of licence fee payers’ money. The only way it will be good value for money is if the consultants recommend firing one of the BBC’s senior managers. One of their salaries could pay for the whole exercise.’

A partner in New York-based McKinsey & Company, Lady Heywood is also a director of the Royal Opera House in London, where Lord Hall was chief executive from 2001 until his switch to the BBC in April. The BBC insists McKinsey was hired ‘after a competitive process’.

Announcing the plan, Lord Hall said: ‘I want, as far as I can, to turn more of the organisation toward the programmes and our services, and less on the other things a big organisation like this does.

‘We all know that working in matrices is a very complex way of operating. We can make it simpler for people to take responsibility for what they do.

‘I hope that by this time next year, I will be standing before staff and licence fee payers with a simpler organisation, where responsibilities are much clearer.’

McKinsey was on a shortlist of four management consultancy firms before Lord Hall made the final decision to award it the contract.

Earlier this year, he was criticised for appointing another former colleague to a top post at the BBC on a £395,000 salary. Anne Bulford, who was Channel 4’s chief operating officer, was handed the role of managing director of finance and operations without the job being advertised. Miss Bulford spent three years with the Royal Opera House as director of finance and business affairs before joining Channel 4 in 2005.

Lord Hall knows her from their time together at the Royal Opera and also from his time as deputy chairman at Channel 4. When he appointed her, he sent an email to staff saying she was a ‘direct appointment rather than an advertised one’ because he believed her talent and experience ‘make her the best person for this role’.

Her appointment came shortly after Lord Hall announced he had hired former Labour culture secretary James Purnell as strategy and digital chief on £295,000 a year.

Like Miss Bulford he was appointed without the role being advertised.

Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘There’s no doubt that the BBC needs to simplify its labyrinthine structures, but licence fee payers will be dismayed that yet again McKinsey is raking in a massive sum in consultancy fees.

‘Given the vast sums that the BBC top brass are paid, you could be forgiven for thinking that they ought to be best placed to take a lead in sorting out their own organisation.’ At a public accounts committee hearing into the BBC severance payments scandal this month, MPs said the corporation’s financial management was akin to ‘corporate fraud and cronyism’.

In 2011, the BBC was criticised for spending more than £8million on management consultants in just one year.

Last year, former director-general George Entwistle hired accountancy firm Deloitte to help slash the number of managers at the corporation.

A BBC spokesman said: ‘McKinsey & Company were appointed because they were the best organisation to do the job.

‘A number of companies took part in a competitive tender process and were assessed and shortlisted before the director-general was involved.

‘The final decision was then unanimously taken by a committee comprising representatives from the BBC’s strategy and finance divisions and the director-general.’

Anyone would imagine that making life simpler for BBC staff was Hall's role, which he is more than adequately rewarded for. But in the BBC world you can pay whatever you like for somebody else to make those decisions.

So far not much has been made of the fact of just who her husband is. Here's an excerpt from the Mirror in March 2012 describing him:

The most powerful unelected man in Britain... and you will never have heard of him

He is one of Britain’s most powerful men – but you would probably pass him in the street without a second glance.

Sir Jeremy Heywood has advised three chancellors, three prime ministers and as Cabinet Secretary he is one of David Cameron’s key advisers.

Now he has increased his hold over the Government after seeing off the Premier’s controversial blue sky thinker Steve Hilton in a bitter No10 power struggle.

Sir Jeremy, the mandarin’s mandarin, has intimate knowledge on how Whitehall works. Each time Hilton sought to accelerate policy or make radical change, the bespectacled civil servant was there to say “no”.

So who is Sir Jeremy, now the most powerful unelected man in Britain?

An unwelcome spotlight was shone on him last year when he was dragged into the Southern Cross scandal.

During a break from the civil service in 2006, he was a senior executive at bankers Morgan Stanley when it advised on the flotation of the care homes provider. Although he did not work directly on the deal, he was the ultimate boss of the team which ran the float.

Sir Jeremy, 50, was accused by the GMB union of being “up to his neck” in the disaster which saw 31,000 elderly people put at risk of being made ­homeless. The firm’s 750 homes were later rescued in a new deal.

Downing Street was forced to defend his City career robustly, and he survived – but not without a bashing from his critics.

Political commentator Peter Oborne wrote: “Heywood is a perfect manifestation of everything that has gone so very wrong with the British civil service over the past 15 years.”

In 2010, after journalist Andrew Rawnsley alleged then Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell had warned PM Mr Brown about bullying staff, it emerged Mr Rawnsley had had dinner with Sir Jeremy months before.

Mr Rawnsley refused to confirm or deny whether his source was Sir Jeremy. Inevitably, Sir Jeremy’s finely-honed survival instincts helped him shrug off his problems. This inner steel was evident from an early age.

A former teacher remembers that even back in 1980, the blond 18-year-old schoolboy cricketer stood out as a determined team player.

“He was very confident,” recalls retired Bootham School deputy head Michael Allen, who taught Sir Jeremy history and ran the cricket team. “He could have made a decent club cricketer. But he was also extremely bright.”

As head boy, Sir Jeremy would often be consulted by senior staff on any problems faced by the school.

Mr Allen says: “I suspect he rather enjoyed it. Just as I suspect he rather enjoys being in 10 Downing Street.”

Even before becoming Cabinet Secretary, GQ magazine named him as Britain’s third most influential man – ahead of both Prince William, 29, and George Osborne, 40.

No major decision is made by Mr Cameron without consulting him. Sir Jeremy is the PM’s chief adviser, confessor and guide.

He attends the daily 8.30am strategy meeting – a select group that includes Chancellor Mr Osborne, chief of staff Ed Llewellyn and spin doctor Craig Oliver.

He sits next to Mr Cameron at the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Officially, he keeps the minutes, but his power extends far beyond taking notes. It is thought to have led to Mr Cameron’s strategy guru Hilton announcing he is leaving the UK for a year to take a job in California.

Speculation was rife Hilton was frustrated at the slow pace of change and the PM’s reliance on Osborne and Sir Jeremy.

Despite being the top unelected person in Government, few outside Westminster have heard of Heywood. Downing Street does not have an official picture of him and he is referred to only twice on its website.

Are you smelling rat, or is it fish?

With Hall facing a grilling by MP’s over his recent appointments, who better to have sitting next to the Prime Minister than a man, with apparently few scruples, and who’s wife is now £600,000 richer.

We see you Hall!

You might look like a clown – but you’re quite evil.

[Teddy Bear]

According to the Sunday Times yesterday, the BBC are looking for ways to heal the public mistrust in the wake of the Savile scandal.

So what do they do to try and achieve this?

They hire a spin doctor that used to work for Blair, without advertising the post to the general public. So that Tony Hall could avoid further charges of cronyism, he gets former Labour MP James Purnell, who he had hired in February, also without advertising the post to the general public, to do it.

This is what the BBC see as the first step to regain trust.



Never going to happen, so long as they can milk the public purse.

The Blairite Broadcasting Corporation: Ex-PM's spin doctor handed £100,000 deal... by a Labour former minister

• Godric Smith hired by James Purnell, who recently joined BBC
  
• Conservative MP says leftist appointments will exacerbate political bias

By Alasdair Glennie

The BBC was accused of ‘stuffing its senior ranks with ex-Blairites’ yesterday after it hired one of the former prime minister’s spin chiefs as a key PR adviser.

Godric Smith – Tony Blair’s official spokesman between 2001 and 2004 – was handed a contract thought to be worth at least £100,000 by former Labour minister James Purnell, who himself joined the BBC in February.

The latest appointment reignited concerns over the corporation’s links with the Left leaving it open to charges of political ‘cronyism’ and prompting one Tory MP to brand the BBC the ‘Blairite Broadcasting Corporation’.

Mr Smith’s public relations agency Inc – only founded in April – has been hired to ‘provide external perspective and expertise’ to the BBC’s own communications team.

The deal was signed off by the corporation’s new strategy chief Mr Purnell, a government whip under Mr Blair before becoming culture secretary and then work and pensions secretary.

Former Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz was also appointed editor of Newsnight in May.

Last night MPs warned that Blairites are ‘very rapidly infiltrating’ the BBC and criticised the corporation for failing to run an open recruitment process.

It is also believed Mr Smith’s agency, Incorporated London, was hired without a formal tender.

In February, the BBC came under fire for handing Mr Purnell his £295,000 job without interviewing any other candidates. Tory MP Philip Davies, who sits on the culture, media and sport committee, warned the new appointments would exacerbate political bias.

He said: ‘The BBC is indulging in Blairite cronyism. Lord Hall [director general] has recruited his New Labour friends and they are recruiting their New Labour friends. The BBC is biased enough as it is.

Now it is becoming the Blairite Broadcasting Corporation. It’s a joke. The only problem is it’s not funny.’

John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the same Commons committee, said Mr Smith’s contract ‘looks like another old pal appointment’, adding: ‘When there have already been concerns expressed about the left-wing leanings of the BBC, I do think this appointment certainly adds to the impression that the BBC is staffed by a centre left, Blairite clique.

‘It was an unwise appointment for the BBC to make.’

Tory MP Rob Wilson added: ‘It is deeply worrying the BBC is stuffing its senior ranks with ex Blairites and Labour sympathisers.’

Although Mr Smith was a civil servant rather than a Labour Party employee, he was a key figure in Downing Street during Mr Blair’s time in office. After succeeding Alastair Campbell as the PM’s official spokesman, he became head of strategic communications.

His appointment follows a string of recent top jobs for left-wing officials at the BBC. When Mr Purnell was appointed in February, critics said it was ‘unprecedented’ to hand such a job to a partisan figure.

A BBC spokesman insisted that the contract to Mr Smith’s agency complied with its own guidelines.

He added: ‘The BBC has appointed Inc to provide external perspective and expertise on a number of marketing and communications projects. This is a vital part of the way in which the BBC manages its reputation.’

[Teddy Bear]

With the BBC assuring us that they have dramatically cut the number of senior managers, although not without the controversial pay-off scandals, yet somehow they feel the need to increase the number of staff in their PR department.

Now why does an organisation that presently receives £3.7billion from the public, whether the public likes it or not, need such an inflated public relations department. One would think that if they produced programmes and material of good quality, and reported news according to their charter, that would do admirably.

But as we know the BBC doesn't.

Any wonder therefore that the BBC, Strategy Director and former Labour minister James Purnell (£295,000 a year) has appointed yet another old mate to join its bloated PR department, which already employs an astonishing 140 staff.

How much is he paying former Blair spin doctor Godric Smith? A cool £150,000. Or rather, that’s how much we are paying him – and only for a part-time job.

It will only get worse - that we can be sure of.

It’s only our money

Three months after pocketing £1million in redundancy payments from the NHS, married couple Chris Reed and Karen Straughair are back on the same public payroll, earning six-figure salaries again.

Welcome to austerity Britain 2013!

Incredibly, Mr Reed and his wife are among more than 2,200, mostly bureaucrats, who have been re-employed by an NHS trust after accepting pay-offs averaging £48,000 since the election.

Indeed, all over the public sector it’s the same story, with fatcat managers moving from one council or quango to another, pausing only to pick up lavish pay-offs as the revolving door spins.

Meanwhile, at the BBC, Strategy Director and former Labour minister James Purnell (£295,000 a year) has appointed yet another old mate to join its bloated PR department, which already employs an astonishing 140 staff.

How much is he paying former Blair spin doctor Godric Smith? A cool £150,000. Or rather, that’s how much we are paying him – and only for a part-time job.

Will public-sector managers never understand that the money they dish out so liberally among themselves has to be earned by hard-pressed workers who could never dream of such sums to spend on their own families?

After five years of belt-tightening by the huge majority, in the most severe income squeeze for decades, this country remains saddled with terrifying debts.

They won’t be paid until the State shakes off its monstrous culture of entitlement. But then it’s only our money, so who cares?

[Teddy Bear]

Only a week since the last one, and it's been revealed that James Purnell, one of the cronies hired by Hall, has himself hired yet another of his mates, without advertising the position to the public. Although the BBC, nor the new appointee, are not saying just what this appointment is for, one insider estimated that the BBC has been paying the consultancy firm, which describes itself as the world’s leading adviser on business strategy, about £14,000 a week.

Business strategy? I would suggest that considering the present situation for the BBC and the list of highly questionable practices they have been engaged in, that the first thing they should be telling the BBC is don't hire us.

A Corporation spokesman said: ‘We are always conscious that we are spending public money, and consultancies are appointed through a fair tendering process.’

Clearly an outright lie.

Blair crony hired by the BBC on £295,000 gives key role to ex-colleague within weeks of his arrival

• James Purnell worked with Jean-Paul Petranca at Boston Consulting Group
  
• Alun Cairns MP said the appointment raised serious questions about the corporation's employment practices

By Miles Goslett

A former Labour Cabinet Minister hired by the BBC on a £295,000-a-year salary is spending thousands of pounds a week employing an outside consultant he used to work with.

James Purnell, who resigned from Government in 2009 after an attempt to oust Gordon Brown, joined the Corporation as a director in March.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that within weeks of his arrival he recruited 34-year-old ex-colleague Jean-Paul Petranca.

Mr Purnell and Mr Petranca worked together at Boston Consulting Group, a global management consultancy, as recently as January.

Last night the appointment was criticised by Conservative MP Alun Cairns, who said it raised serious questions about the BBC’s employment practices.

Neither the BBC nor Mr Petranca’s company was willing to discuss the nature of his work for Mr Purnell, which is believed to be coming to an end after six months.

But one insider estimated that the BBC has been paying the consultancy firm, which describes itself as the world’s leading adviser on business strategy, about £14,000 a week.

Mr Cairns said: ‘This sort of situation undermines recent commitments made by the BBC to be more transparent. There have already been questions about the manner of James Purnell’s own appointment.

‘For us to find out that he secretly recruited someone from his former company gives the BBC a bad name and raises further doubts about its openness and transparency.’

The news of Mr Petranca’s BBC work comes weeks after it was revealed Mr Purnell had recruited another ex-colleague. Godric Smith, 48, one of Tony Blair’s former spin doctors, is being paid £150,000 a year by the Corporation as a part-time PR adviser. The appointment infuriated Tory MPs as the BBC already has 140 staff in its PR department, with a salary bill of around £5 million.

Mr Smith was hired to help restore the BBC’s reputation after the scandal over Jimmy Savile and a £25 million redundancy bill for senior managers.

Mr Petranca declined to discuss his BBC role. ‘I’m afraid I can’t talk about that,’ he said. Boston Consulting Group said Oxford graduate Mr Petranca was a ‘principal’ in the company’s London office ‘and remains a permanent employee of the firm’.

£5M BILL FOR ONE CONSULTANT FIRM

The BBC was under scrutiny last night after paying a management consultancy firm £5.7 million during the first eight months of this year. Figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday show that Deloitte receives an average of £163,000 a week.

Margaret Hodge, chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘If the BBC is dishing out these amounts of money, it has to be transparent as to why.’

The Mail on Sunday obtained the figures under a Freedom of Information Act after a whistleblower raised concerns.

The source said: ‘The whole finance and operations department is crawling with Deloitte consultants. The bill must be in the tens of millions in recent years.’

A Corporation spokesman said: ‘We are always conscious that we are spending public money, and consultancies are appointed through a fair tendering process.’

[Teddy Bear]

If you read back in this thread you will see here that when it was revealed that Hall had hired one of his crony's, Anne Bulford on a massive £395,000 salary the BBC claimed that it would actually save money since she was going to perform 2 tasks that hitherto had cost far more.

We were told In an email to staff, Lord Hall said Miss Bulford was a ‘direct appointment rather than an advertised one’ because he believed her talent and experience ‘make her the best person for this role’.

Her salary is not far off Lord Hall’s pay of £450,000 a year, but the BBC claimed it was a net saving of about £250,000 from the combined salaries of Miss Patel and Miss Thomson.

So why now are the BBC advertising for a new chief financial officer estimated to be a salary of £300,000?

Because they can!
And will our hitherto spineless politicians do anything about this blatant corruption while still sending people to prison for not supporting it?

What a seedy farce!

RICHARD KAY: Now BBC 'cut' costs an extra £300,000 a year

By Richard Kay

No sooner does blonde TV supremo Anne Bulford settle into her newly created position as both chief operating and chief financial officer at the BBC than more changes are afoot.

At the time of her appointment it was claimed to be a money- saving move because it combined two senior management posts.

But just ten months after her £395,000 role was announced, the BBC is advertising for a new chief financial officer.

And far from saving the Corporation money, whoever gets the job is likely to be paid an annual package of more than £300,000.

Ms Bulford began her job in June, having previously worked for three years with the new BBC director-general, Lord Hall, at the Royal Opera House.

Her appointment followed the damaging fallout from the departure of director-general contender Caroline Thomson, now the chief executive of the English National Ballet, who received a hugely controversial pay-off of £680,000 of licence fee-payers’ money. The Bulford appointment, the BBC boasted at the time, was supposed to save the taxpayer a small fortune by combining Thomson’s old job of chief operating officer with that of chief financial officer (CFO).

Previous CFO Zarin Patel, who left the BBC in the summer, was paid an annual package of £337,000.

Now, with no intended sense of irony, the latest advertisement for Ms Patel’s old job declares on the BBC jobs website: ‘The CFO will play a key leadership role in ensuring the BBC is driving best value from the licence.’

A BBC spokeswoman says: ‘Anne Bulford has responsibility for all the BBC’s finance, operations, technology, legal, risk and assurance and property functions.

‘This combines the responsibilities held by Zarin Patel with many of the responsibilities formerly held by Caroline Thomson.

‘This new role will report to Anne and will consolidate responsibility for a number of the finance functions.

‘It is a result of a departmental reorganisation and will not increase senior manager headcount.’

[Teddy Bear]

Several disturbing facts in this story.
First, why is the BBC involved in selecting who will be head of the BBC Trust? We can understand why they'd just love to have that power on top of all that they already have, but to actually be doing it.

Then the obvious one, Hall using his wife's company to headhunt somebody for that position.

The 'insult to injury' analogy is boys pissing through a letter box, then knocking on the door and asking how far up the wall it went.

'Conflict of interest' row as BBC boss's headhunter wife seeks its new chairman

• Headhunter Cynthia Hall, wife of Director General, earns six-figure salary
• Her firm Saxton Bampfylde being paid thousands to replace Lord Patten
• MPs have blasted set up as a 'catastrophic waste of public money'

By Glen Owen and Miles Goslett

The BBC’s Director General was at the centre of a conflict of interest row last night after it emerged that his wife’s company has landed the lucrative contract to recruit a new chair of the BBC Trust.

Tony Hall’s wife Cynthia earns a six-figure salary at headhunters Saxton Bampfylde, which is being paid tens of thousands to find a successor to Lord Patten.

Last night MPs reacted angrily, with one claiming it was a ‘catastrophic waste of public money’.

Lord Patten, the current Trust chair, announced a month ago that he was standing down, triggering speculation about his successor.

Tory peer Lord Coe has been identified as an early front-runner, while other sources have said the Prime Minister would ‘prefer a woman’ to fill the position.

The successful candidate, who will be paid £110,000 a year for the four-day-a-week job, will take over at a delicate point in BBC history – leading negotiations over the renewal of the BBC’s Charter while still dealing with the fallout from the Jimmy Savile sex abuse storm, in addition to scandals over executive pay and perks.

Lord Hall, previously chief executive of the Royal Opera House, became Director General in April 2013 on £450,000 a year.

He joined the BBC as a graduate trainee in 1973, becoming Director of News twenty years later.

His wife is former head of girls’ public school Wycombe Abbey and joined Saxton Bampfylde’s 18-strong team last year. The couple have two grown-up children.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has paid a five-figure sum for Saxton Bampfylde to ‘define the scope of the role and identify the best candidates’.

But critics say the appointment means Lord Hall could be privy to information about candidates – breaking down the ‘Chinese wall’ between the Trust, which represents the licence payer, and the rest of the BBC.

Culture Secretary Sajid Javid’s team are already thought to have assembled a list of runners and riders after soundings from senior broadcasting figures.

Apart from Lord Coe, candidates may include Dame Marjorie Scardino, former chief executive of the company behind the Financial Times, and Colette Bowe, former chair of regulator Ofcom.

Figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal the BBC spent almost £500,000 on headhunters to recruit senior staff from November 2012 to March 2014.

Tory MP Philip Davies, of the Commons media select committee – which must approve the new BBC Trust chairman – said: ‘I don’t see why they need to hire headhunters. It’s a catastrophic waste of public money – this is a job that people can apply for.

'And if they are going to hire headhunters, you’d think they’d be able to find a firm that didn’t have the Director General’s wife working for it.’

A spokesman for Mr Javid denied a conflict of interest on the grounds that Lady Hall will not be involved in the recruitment process.

[Teddy Bear]

We have covered the cronyism prevalent at the BBC fairly extensively on this thread. To the latest accusations the BBC's response was to say

The BBC said today that it does sometimes not advertise posts to avoid expensive recruitment processes.

The spokesman added that one in three of all executives are Oxford or Cambridge graduates, which is lower than some other sectors.

She added: 'These appointments were widely reported on at the time. We appoint the best people wherever they come from. Sometimes where people are uniquely suited to the role there is no need for a lengthy and costly recruitment processes.'

Clearly they forgot about this story BBC pays headhunters £350,000 to fill two top jobs - then gives both of them to its own man

As for the subsequent quality in output of those chosen for these and other positions. can you remember the last time you were impressed by it?
Only for the lack of it!

BBC failed to advertise FIVE top executive jobs with pay totalling £1.8million-a-year sparking claims of cronyism

• Lord Hall brought in as Director General and appointed four other staff
• Critics said today that corporation 'is a self-serving old boys' network'
• BBC says not advertising jobs can help avoid 'lengthy and costly' process

By Martin Robinson for MailOnline

Five of the BBC's most senior bosses were handed jobs with pay totalling £1.8million-a-year without the roles ever being advertised, it was revealed today.

Lord Hall, who earns £450,000-a-year as Director General, did not have to apply for his job and then brought in several other executives in the same way.

The majority of his senior management team are also graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, with critics saying it shows the BBC is run by 'an old boys' network'.

As a result of the Savile scandal, Helen Boaden was forced out of her previous job, head of BBC news because she dumped the Newsnight investigation into his abuse. She was appointed BBC radio chief instead on £352,900.

Lord Hall's former Royal Opera House colleague Anne Bulford was given the managing director for finance and operations on £395,000 without the job being advertised.

And former cabinet minister James Purnell was offered the £295,000 job of director of strategy and digital have previously worked at the BBC as head of corporate planning from 1995 to 1997 under former director general Lord Birt, a friend of Lord Hall.

Tim Davie was acting director general during the Savile crisis and was then became CEO of BBC Worldwide and Director Global, on £400,000, earning £670,000 in total last year.

It came after it emerged the BBC pays 11 of its most senior bosses twice as much as the Prime Minister and a further 80 executives take home more than David Cameron’s £142,500-a-year salary.

Conservative MP Philip Davies, who sits on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said: 'The BBC is a self-serving old boys' network.

'The BBC has recently said they have cut their senior management to the bone and there are no more savings to be made there but it’s only at the BBC where you could cut senior management to the bone and end up with more people paid more than the Prime Minister than before you started.

‘It’s just extraordinary and goes to show how much fat there is.

‘What the BBC should do is be cutting out all of these managers, most of who if they disappeared no one would notice, and start delivering some value for money to the licence fee payer.’

The BBC said today that it does sometimes not advertise posts to avoid expensive recruitment processes.

The spokesman added that one in three of all executives are Oxford or Cambridge graduates, which is lower than some other sectors.

She added: 'These appointments were widely reported on at the time. We appoint the best people wherever they come from. Sometimes where people are uniquely suited to the role there is no need for a lengthy and costly recruitment processes.'