The National Audit Office must be given unfettered access to the ‘profligate’ BBC’s books to ensure it isn’t squandering public money, say MPs.
A succession of spending scandals has ‘dented’ public faith in the broadcaster, their report said, and confidence needs restoring..
The NAO has already censured the BBC over the £2billion it has spent on three costly building projects, including its £1billion London headquarters, which was delayed by four years and went £107million over budget.
Broadcasting House now costs £89million a year to run – a third of the cost of running the total BBC estate – yet it houses just a fifth of its staff.
Meanwhile, the Corporation has written off nearly £100million on a Digital Media Initiative technology project, so badly mismanaged that director general Tony Hall decided to scrap it three years in.
The BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, also squandered public funds.
In 2007, it bought the travel publisher Lonely Planet in a deal worth £130million.
However, it failed to make a success of the business, and sold it off at an £80 million loss six years later.
The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee said: ‘The Digital Media Initiative was found to have been mismanaged on a large scale and was dropped having delivered few benefits at a loss of £100million.
‘BBC Worldwide’s move into risky commercial activities, not in line with the BBC’s core public service remit, led to a similar loss.’
It added: ‘Given the financial problems in the current charter period which dented the BBC’s reputation, the NAO must now be given unrestricted access to the BBC if it is to provide assurance that the Corporation is spending money wisely and trading fairly.’
MPs also slammed the BBC over the £369million in pay-offs it has handed to departing staff.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘The NAO already has extensive access to the BBC’s affairs and recently produced a report commending the savings we have made on our properties.’
- The Public Accounts Committee yesterday separately raised questions over Rona Fairhead’s role as chairman of the BBC Trust, as she has also sat on the board of the scandal-hit HSBC bank since 2004.
BOSSES SHOULD ADMIT ERRORS
THE BBC should own up to its mistakes and end a culture where bosses try to blame others for their errors, the report claims.
It says the Corporation is ‘beset by problems of its own making’, but instead of dealing with them openly, its senior managers point the finger at other people.
‘[There have been] notable failures and underperformance in certain areas which the BBC has not always been ready to acknowledge until well after the fact,’ it said.
The BBC and the BBC Trust should also stop attempting to bury information that could cast the Corporation in a negative light, it added.
‘In our view, the BBC Trust and the BBC Executive have often tended to highlight favourable performance figures over the less favourable…The BBC should aim to be a better, more transparent, self-critic.’