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BBC Mark Thompson

Ex-BBC director general Mark Thompson clashes with Trust over excessive payoffs

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By John Glenday, Reporter

July 12, 2013 | 2 min read

Former BBC director general Mark Thompson has hit back at the BBC Trust for suggesting responsibility for a number of excess payments made to departing executives lay with him, with a stinging counter attack in which he accused the Trust of misleading MPs.

The war of words erupted a day after Trust chair Lord Patten told the public accounts committee that he had not been shown details of a £949k severance pay out to former deputy director Mark Byford when he was made redundant in 2010.

Quizzed my MPs as to whether he should have had any prior knowledge of this lucrative deal Patten said: “Yes, and if you call in due course the previous director general of the BBC I will be as interested as you are as to why we didn’t know.”

Subsequent to this statement a series of emails have emerged which cast doubt on this version of events, including one in which Thompson said that Byford and departing HR chief Lucy Adams would receive ‘maximum payments’.

Patten now concedes that the Trust had been made aware of the bumper pay off but added that assurances had been given that the largesse was ‘within contractual terms’.

BBC Mark Thompson

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