BBC gender pay row: Carrie Gracie accuses bosses of 'adding insult to injury'
The corporation are still not saying they were guilty of "pay discrimination", their former China editor has told MPs.
Wednesday 31 January 2018 21:02, UK
A senior journalist at the centre of a gender pay row has accused the BBC of adding "insult to the original injury" as she revealed she has been offered 拢100,000 in back pay.
Carrie Gracie, who dramatically quit her role as the BBC's China editor earlier this month in protest at pay inequality, offered a damning verdict of the corporation's bosses in evidence to MPs on Wednesday.
Speaking to the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Gracie described how - after she submitted a grievance over her pay last year - the BBC told her she had been "inadvertently underpaid" since 2014.
That was the same year Jon Sopel was appointed the BBC's North America editor, who earns between £200,000 and £249,000, compared to Gracie's salary of less than £150,000.
Gracie revealed she believed she had "won a commitment to pay parity" when accepting the China role in December 2013.
She explained this was why she got "such a shock" when the BBC was forced to reveal Sopel's pay and the salaries of other top-earning stars last year.
Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen was listed with a salary of between £150,000 and £199,999, but neither Gracie or fellow international editor Katya Adler were among the BBC's best paid.
Gracie told MPs the BBC have said her pay discrepancy "was not pay discrimination", adding: "They haven't called it pay discrimination either.
"I'm not an employment lawyer but it sounds to me like a tacit admission that it is pay discrimination in that they want to pay me now nearly £100,000 in back pay.
"The thing that is very unacceptable to me is they have basically said in the previous years - 2014, 2015, 2016 - I was in development.
"It is an insult to add to the original injury. It is unacceptable to talk to your senior women like that."
Gracie said she doesn't want the back pay and accused the BBC of "trying to throw money at me to resolve the problem".
Admitting at one point she was "getting emotional" as she delivered her evidence, Gracie spoke of her admiration for her male colleagues at the BBC.
"I've been proud to stand alongside them as an international editor for four years," she said.
"What I want to talk about more is the sense in which my case is just an example of a bigger problem.
"I was a senior person who they really wanted to keep in position... if the BBC can't sort it out for me, then how can it sort it out for more vulnerable people who don't have a public profile."
Attacking the BBC's "corporate machine" for their handling of the row, Gracie said: "We're not in the business of producing toothpaste or tyres at the BBC. Our business is truth. We can't operate without the truth.
"If we're not prepared to look at ourselves honestly, how can we be trusted to look at anything else in reporting honestly?"
She also spoke of a "very strange day" last Friday when the BBC reported four and then, later, six male presenters - including Mr Sopel - had agreed to have their salaries cut.
Gracie won support for her testimony from senior politicians on Twitter, with former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman praising her "heartfelt, compelling words".
Also appearing before the committee was BBC director general Tony Hall, who denied there is an "old boys' network" at the corporation.
Lord Hall said: "The idea of some old boys' club, I abhor. That is not the way I believe the BBC should be or is."
Earlier, he said the BBC had not discriminated against Gracie but that there were "differences in the work" between her post and that of the North Africa and Middle East roles filled by men.
"We will not discriminate on gender between anybody but there are differences in the work, the nature of the work and the amount of work between say North America and China," he said.
"The range between those two has been too big and I'm sorry about that but there is a difference in the scope and the scale of the two jobs."
It came as the UK's equality watchdog announced it will be meeting with a group, made up of more than 170 female BBC presenters and producers, after they dismissed an audit that found "no evidence of bias in pay decision-making".
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has previously written to the BBC over Gracie's resignation, said in a statement: "We received a response from the BBC yesterday and are now in the process of analysing it before we take any further action.
"We are also looking seriously at the concerns of BBC Women and will soon be meeting the group to discuss them in more detail."