Review of reviews

Nicholas Hellen in The Sunday Times thinks the BBC is about to announce yet another review of the way it's been paying people. Put that alongside the review to produce a new framework for top presenter pay; the Donalda Mackinnon Culture review looking particularly at women's pay and working practices; the Tim Davie fast-track diversity review; the Naomi Ellenbogen review of the PWC plans to make pay fairer, and you might think BBC senior management hasn't been paying attention to reward issues for a decade or two. The agonisingly slow process of replacing Grades with the ludicrously-named Career Path Framework (=not quite as many Grades) seems to have distracted them into thinking they were on top of things.

Tuesday DCMS Select Committee may not just hear tales of BBC talent being offered no other option than payment through personal service companies; sadder tales of the reverse ferret are surfacing. After Margaret Hodge's outrage at the practice, and with the HMRC playing hardball over IR35, the BBC insisted that freelances who only freelanced for the BBC moved to staff and PAYE and fast. Some say their landing salary on PAYE was reduced to allow the BBC to cover anticipated claims for back tax.

Not much evidence of 'do as you would be done by' from some very well-paid managers of the recent past at Auntie.