Sir Michael Lyons on the BBC Trust, the licence fee and how it’s spent

Below a Wordle of last night’s speech from Sir Michael Lyons, chair of the BBC Trust, to the Royal Television Society, in which Lyons defended the Trust’s role as a guardian of the BBC licence fee:

“In my book, ‘guardianship of the public interest in the BBC’ includes seeing off opportunistic attempts to spend the licence fee on things that have nothing to do with the BBC’s public purposes. Any proposal to spend any of the licence fee has to be judged against the public value it delivers. That’s the acid test.

“Let’s not forget whose money we are talking about here. Not the government’s, not political parties’, not other regulators’ and ultimately not the BBC’s. It’s the public’s money. It’s licence-fee payers’ money. People would do well to remember that licence fee payers give us their money in good faith, believing it will be spent on BBC services and content.”

Wordle of Michael Lyons' speech on the BBC licence fee

1 thought on “Sir Michael Lyons on the BBC Trust, the licence fee and how it’s spent

  1. J.Condron

    I think we ought to know:
    (1)Why do BBC executives of all size(from bottom to top) need to get bonuses & perks like commercial orgs?
    (2) the amount should be made public.
    (3)BBC World Service language dept heads used to be given a car.(There are 38 language depts),as perks. Is that still the case?
    (4) Why do news readers on BBC24 get £92,000 a year.Why so many newsreaders in BBC than say Sky?BBC is still overstaffed.

Leave a Reply