Top BBC stars would face substantial pay cuts under a Labour government, as Jeremy Corbyn would impose a maximum ratio of 20:1 ratio between the pay of the highest and lowest-paid staff in public sector organisations, his spokesman has confirmed.
The Labour manifesto included a commitment to “roll out maximum pay ratios of 20:1 in the public sector and in companies bidding for public contracts – because it cannot be right that wages at the top keep rising while everyone else’s stagnates”.
Data revealed by the BBC on Wednesday for the first time showed that the corporation paid presenter Chris Evans at least £2.2m last year, Gary Lineker more than £1.75m and Graham Norton more than £850,000.
A Labour spokesman confirmed that the party’s policies for tackling excess pay, including in the public sector, would apply to any employee working directly for the BBC.
“We’ve said again and again that there’s a problem with excess pay,” he said.
That would mean the top earners would pay more tax, but would also force the BBC and other public sector employers to narrow the gap between their highest and lowest-paid workers, either by cutting the salaries of the highest-paid or raising the incomes of the lowest-paid.
“We had in our election manifesto a very clear position about tackling excess pay at the top end, in a number of ways,” said the spokesman. He added that for public sector organisations, including the BBC, that would mean a “direct limit”.
If the lowest-paid BBC worker earned £25,000, just above the average UK wage, for example, then Lineker, the former footballer who presents Match of the Day, would see his pay capped at £500,000.
The spokesman added that contractors hoping to win government contracts would also have to comply with the rule, signalling, “a phased-in process of restricting public sector contracts to those companies that are prepared to implement the 20 to one pay ratio”.
The spokesman added that Corbyn was concerned about the gender pay gap among BBC staff. The new figures showed that only a third of the 96 top earners are female and the top seven are all male.
“It’s obviously wrong, and we’re committed to gender equality audits enforced through law,” he said.
A government spokesman had welcomed the publication of the report, telling journalists after prime minister’s questions that “we are very pleased that the BBC has published this information today; it is as a result of the changes that we put in place as part of the BBC charter, around transparency”.
“It’s an important thing that licence fee payers know where their money is going,” he added, saying that the government concurred with the BBC director general’s professed desire to address the gender gap in pay. “As Tony Hall has said it has thrown up some interesting information with regards to the gender pay gap that he wants to see tackled. We also want to see it tackled, and we think in order to make that happen, this is a very important tool.”
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