16-07-2013, 06:53 PM
Just like the Catholic Church, the BBC has spent a fortune on lawyers in the aftermath of the child sex abuse outrages conducted by high profile BBC stars.
If the Beeb continues following the Vatican's path, it will soon be taking out insurance policies against future law suits...
If the Beeb continues following the Vatican's path, it will soon be taking out insurance policies against future law suits...
Quote:BBC spends more than £5m on Jimmy Savile-related inquiries
Investigation into shelved Newsnight report cost £2.8m, with more expenditure to come from Stuart Hall review
Mark Sweney and John Plunkett
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 July 2013 11.00 BST
Jimmy Savile: the BBC has spent £5.3m on inquiries related to the disgraced presenter. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
The BBC has spent more than £5m of licence fee payers' money so far on internal investigations and inquiries relating to the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal.
On Tuesday the BBC revealed that it has spent £5.3m on Savile-related inquiries in the year to 31 March, as it published its 2013 annual report.
The BBC spent just over £2.8m on the Pollard review, led by former head of Sky News, which looked into the handling of the shelved Newsnight investigation into Savile and how management dealt with the scandal once the story broke last autumn.
Costs included Pollard's fee, £81,600, while the BBC paid £893,501 to law firm Reed Smith for legal advice relating to the review and a further £492,437 for "external legal support".
Witnesses' legal costs amounted to a further £391,121, including £107,000 for former director general George Entwistle, £101,000 for ex BBC News director Helen Boaden, who is now radio director, and £86,000 for Entwistle's predecessor Mark Thompson.
Separately, the BBC was also forced to pay Lord McAlpine £185,000 in damages over false child abuse allegations made by Newsnight.
Two other Savile-related inquiries the Respect at Work review led by Dinah Rose QC and Dame Janet Smith's review into the culture and practices of the BBC in the Savile years takes the total the BBC spent to £5.3m to 31 March.
The BBC said that there will be more costs to factor in for the latter two reviews, which also includes Dame Linda Dobbs's review into Stuart Hall, that will be published in due course.
BBC director general Tony Hall has pledged to eliminate bureaucracy and regulation at the corporation, which he says is "inhibiting its creativity".
Hall will take personal charge of a corporation -wide review to "simplify our organisation" following the Pollard review into the Savile crisis which identified the need for cultural change.
Hall said he had already implemented change at the top of the organisation where the emphasis, he said, was "on working as a team and the most important and difficult issues discussed openly and candidly".
He identified "unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation" although he is not the first director general to pinpoint such issues and said he wanted to see "less duplication of effort and more personal autonomy".
"I have been struck by the complexity of the organisation and the inhibiting effect that has on creativity," Hall said in a letter to BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten, published on Tuesday.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war