And it’s Goodnight from PSC

BBC starts its freelancer cull

The Telegraph has reported that the BBC has told some of its top TV presenters that they will have to accept large reductions in their salary to become members of staff.

The minimum starting point for negotiations is a 13% pay cut dependant on a presenter agreeing to join the rank and file and accepting the minimum statutory employment rights. Should any of them want enhanced BBC terms including a handsome pension, then this will come at a price, namely an axe in pay of 25%!

In 2012 accountants, Deloitte, identified 96 presenters, mainly newsreaders and current affairs broadcasters, who were being paid in excess of £50,000 p.a. through their own PSCs. These include the likes of Jeremy Paxman, Fiona Bruce, Emily Maitlis, Gavin Easter and Joanne Gosling and are being targeted as priority cases for being forced onto the payroll.

Following criticism from the Public Accounts Committee, chaired by that eminent tax expert, Margaret Hodge, the Corporation devised its own employment status test to be applied to those presenters that were being engaged via a PSC. The test centres around how much editorial control the presenter has over their work.

Almost 100 of the Beeb’s celebrities were shifted onto the books at the end of last year.

Agents to the stars involved are challenging Aunty but their clients do not wish to give the appearance of being greedy.

Sue Harris of the National Union of Journalists raised the interesting question of whether HMRC would seek to claim that the presenters should have always been treated as employees now the BBC has caved in to pressure and thereby seek PAYE and NIC arrears for earlier years. This however is doubtful and more likely that the Corporation has already sought assurances from the Revenue that this will not be the case.

The bitter irony of all this is that, according to the presenters, it was the BBC who forced them to set up PSCs in the first place! Who needs enemies with friends like the Beeb!