my duty to to go my duty to go back to the was my duty to go back to the bbc and help sort out the bbc, which i hope i have done since i came back. and do you think the bbc is in crisis now over this? do think its reputation can survive, you can surround? the bbc has an amazing future, this is not the role of us versus netflix and so on. but the bbc stands for an enormous amount of creativity. as carrie was saying earlier, what it stands for in terms of journalism is ofjournalism is more essential than ever, and i profoundly believe in the values that people who work for the values that people who work for the bbc stand up for. i also believe in learning, i do not believe that any organisation gets to a perfect state. you've got to listen, learn, change, adapt and reform, to ensure the of things you believe in. this line of questioning requires a comment from the board. i think the

bbc that ijoined is open compared with any organisation i have seen, any other broadcast company, i regard it as very transparent. on the board we consider ourselves fortunate to have people of the tale nt fortunate to have people of the talent of lord hall and in the case of many senior management are very significant discount to what the michael owen if they worked in the private sector author of other public service broadcasters. no misunderstanding on that. these are people who are committed to public service broadcasting. aren't also committed to the principle of equality between men and women. —— and also committed. you can see that in many of the appointments made by lord hall. but we have heard that there has been no governance and no oversight whatsoever of the bbc

legal duties to pay equally. there are legal duties to pay equally. there a re clearly legal duties to pay equally. there are clearly has been a structure in place but under a different regime. the current regime, structures were in place with the bbc executive and with the trust which you quizzed many times. i think we all which the conclusion it was at effective governance system. the current syste m governance system. the current system has been in place from april la st system has been in place from april last year and is now clear where the accountability lies, and we are wholly in support of the work in progress which tony and many other senior people in the bbc are taking forward. let's look forward. lord hall, we've heard some good suggestions and sensible suggestions this afternoon about offers to help the bbc resolve what i would

describe as a crisis in terms of reputation. you're watching the bbc news channel. stay with us if you want to continue with full coverage of the parliamentary select committee, quizzing bbc director—general tony mole and deputy director—general anne bulford. we stay with this. until about 6:30pm tonight. a transparent and pay system is what everyone has said they want to see. an offer of help from carrie gracie and bbc women to unpick the problems and bbc women to unpick the problems and suggest solutions and trust them to find you some solutions. and you heard from the general secretary of the mu], the unions are more than willing to work with you to sort this problem out. how many of these

offers will you take up? the women's group at the bbc, we are talking to them and i hope that relationship will continue. i wanted to. yesterday we said here are the ideas, these buffer forms yesterday we said here are the ideas, these bufferforms we yesterday we said here are the ideas, these buffer forms we want to bring about and come now and joiners, filling the gaps, help us get that absolutely right. —— these are the reforms we want to bring about. we have been speaking to the nuj and the bbc women group, women in news, all these people. we are consulting them. and my view on this has always been that unless you have proposals out there, data out there, it is hard to consult. so on those points, absolutely. we are in active discussion of the moment with the

nuj and we have been pushing that quite hard. we believe that is a very good idea and some people in this top group are now part of the nuj negotiating machinery. i'm thinking about what independent and expert help we might have so i need to think about that quite hard. but what i want to do is to have a system going forward where people absolutely have trust in it and believe it is open and reflects the values i believe in, and staff in the bbc believe in. i think we all do. you have all said repeatedly this afternoon the bbc has no issue with equal pay for equal work or pay 95p~ with equal pay for equal work or pay gap. we spent two and a half hours

with carrie and she gave incredibly powerful and moving testimony to this committee and we applaud her bravery in taking the stance that she has done. 190 other bbc women said yes, i agree. i she has done. 190 other bbc women said yes, iagree. i have it all wrong and if so how are they all wrong? this is why i think consultation going forward, working together going forward, is really important. call me an optimist but i believe there are things which bind together what carrie was saying, what michelle was saying and what we also believe. i go back to the framework we have put out for consultation, we want to get that right and we want to consult on that and discuss it so we have a strong framework for the future. what i would like to know is how 190

intelligent women have got this so wrong in your opinion? i'm not quite sure what you mean by that. i of course support carrie and her stance andi course support carrie and her stance and i said at the top of this session but i admire what she has done. but what i'm interested in is how we convert the people who have raised issues about the way pay is determined in the bbc into action. so we can have a clear framework going forward for settling these issues. as i understand it this is not 190 women saying we support carrie but 190 women saying that she is spot—on and there is a systematic fundamental failure at the bbc in the way it pays women fairly. and if

thatis the way it pays women fairly. and if that is the case how are they wrong? let me try, this is what i believe, in the meetings we have had with the women's group for the bbc, and indeed with the mu] and it is there in the dossier published two days ago, my line on this has been clear. if you have cases which you know about, we need to know who they are, we need to understand the case and we need to understand the case and we need to deal with it. we need to make sure they are dealt with properly and fairly. that is what i think is also part of the process going forward. if we have issues, if people think they are treated unfairly, then we need to address theissues unfairly, then we need to address the issues and make sure they are dealt with properly and impartially. i will move on. yesterday when the pwc report was published you said we have important issues to tackle

particularly and i'm determined to get it right. this is your sixth yearin get it right. this is your sixth year in the job. why did it take report to tell you the problems that existed and what did this report tell you you did not already know? asi tell you you did not already know? as i think i said at the beginning i was brought in less than five years ago as it happens to sort out the bbc going through a crisis then post jimmy savile and then to put in place the basis for charter negotiations which finished about 16 months ago. we, the executive team, we re months ago. we, the executive team, were absolutely determined that, you cannot absolutely take on every issue all at once but we knew that we wanted a major reform of pay and conditions, of terms and the way we structure pay in the bbc. and we began that, began planning for that

two years ago and working on that and negotiating on that over a year ago. so it has been staged. so it is not right to say this is something we are coming to lately, we've been on the case of this for some time. but when was the pwc report or audit commissioned? in november. in light of what? the sequence was that we had been working on the framework for all staff, the disclosures in july raised these issues that we are talking about today strongly. we did our best to complete that career path framework so we could publish to the staff alongside publication of the gender pay report at the

start of september, working towards the end of september. it finished mid october. as we progress through that work we decided we wanted to also undertake an equal pay audits because many people have asked for that and we felt it would help. so this pwc report which was launched in november, it is unrelated to the situation of carrie? it moves on through, sorry, and when we completed the work we identified quite quickly that dealing with the on—airgroup as quite quickly that dealing with the on—air group as defined in the report was going to take longer and was going to need more time. as result we said we would look at that group, that important group, separately. because we had a different contract arrangement, different contract arrangement, different sorts of work patterns and

winded to combine, these were people who in many cases had been recruited at programme level. and therefore we said will be published in october, we carried on looking at the data, we carried on looking at the data, we used pwc to help with that and in november we decided them —— we wanted them to produce this report. so commissioned in november. work had been running, it was not that we we re had been running, it was not that we were not doing anything. what is the case and there are a number of exa m ples of case and there are a number of examples of this, alongside that we committed in july that where people had equal pay claims or questions about their pay or felt they needed about their pay or felt they needed a pay review, we would seek to resolve those as quickly as possible. so alongside that we were also and we continue to look at individuals and i think one of the

reasons it has been difficult to resolve some of these questions with individuals is in the absence of a framework, which says what is the fair rate for thisjob framework, which says what is the fair rate for this job based framework, which says what is the fair rate for thisjob based on framework, which says what is the fair rate for this job based on a job evaluation that we can talk to you about, it has been difficult to resolve. so i'm more hopeful that having got this now it will move smoothly. you can understand i'm sure why a report commissioned in novemberand sure why a report commissioned in november and reported in january, given all the background to it, it is not really an audit and you can see why people would see it more, little more than an exercise in post—justification of a system that you knew to be fundamentally wrong. ido you knew to be fundamentally wrong. i do not think it is true. i think the work of pwc on the hundreds of people we have been able to put into the career path framework, reflects

a pretty standard approach to equal pay auditing. and we, through the data and analysis we've been to understand what it is that is driving the gender pay gap and what needs to be done to fix that. as well as having more confidence on equal pay across the whole. for the .6%, at the highest—paid presenters, i think the way in which we need to evaluate those jobs makes an audit in that sampling more difficult and what pwc explained in their report is what you need to do is look at the distribution and look at patterns of pay and the gender pay through those bands. so they did do an audit. i think what we all agree,

it is one of their recommendations, there's a lot of different moving parts. and one of the things we want to do is as the parts settle, we wa nt to to do is as the parts settle, we want to rerun and equal pay audit. when we've made more progress with terms and conditions reform and more progress on some of these other issues. can you call it an audit when it within 24 people were taken from it. —— 800 24. when it within 24 people were taken from it. -- 800 24. it when it within 24 people were taken from it. —— 800 24. it seems a carefully selected group of people. and the agreed methodology, who decided on the methodology?m and the agreed methodology, who decided on the methodology? of this pwc report? that was decided by pwc. and that methodology follows the hrc

guidelines. the first group, the methodology they adopted i understand is that they looked at the distribution through the groups, looked at the pattern of the pay gaps as they saw them. they did not they chose to sample on the 3% variance rather than the higher level because of the smaller population and the distribution spread they saw which they felt merited further investigation. that is the methodology adopted. and you feel that gives you an adequate picture of the whole organisation then to be able to say we do not have a problem? i think that gives us have a problem? i think that gives us confidence that we have not seen systematic gender bias in how pay is

set. what it does not do either there or in the top group is absolute confidence that there are not equal pay problems in there. because there are cases that we have that we need to consider and the audit is not designed to do that. because it is so narrow, it was restricted in who it could speak to and analyse and it took out an entire tier of top earning bbc staff. no, there was a second piece of work which they speak about in the report looking at the top bbc staff. when you look at that data, the gender pay gap in that group is pretty much zero. but they did not stop at that point and said there is no sampling to be done. they then moved through into the distribution and then that was in that group what

they identified is exactly what we have been speaking about this afternoon, but there are differentials and there are reasons given for those differentials. but the differentials are too wide because the bands are too wide, and furthermore when you get to the most highly paid people you have a group of men and again there are reasons for why they are paid what they're paid, many of them the suruc, response to the market at a time when bbc was less reluctant to let people go. but that is the pattern that the bbc needs to do about. —— many of them historic. and you know how many women approached pwc over equal pay claims? what pwc have done, they did have access to the

feedback from the various consultations we have had. so the issues raised, many of the things that come from a dossier, those issues they were absolutely aware. so they were able to look and take into account the differences of contract into account the differences of co ntra ct we into account the differences of contract we spoke about, in normalising numbers. as i understand it the person making the claim about not being paid equally for equal value work is able to pick their comparator. have the women making claims against the bbc on the grounds of unequal pay been allowed to pick their comparator or has that been picked by them? they have been allowed to do that, that is how it works. something that came up

earlier which i asked carrie about was in her grievance report. the same report said a person had been inadvertently underpaid for the same time, the report says it was because she was in development. could you explain why the same grievance report would say someone had been mistakenly underpaid and tried to explain away by saying they are in development. as i understand it the grievance report is recommending that, it reaches the conclusion that carrie's pay should have been reviewed sooner certainly when jon sopel was appointed that was an

opportunity. it is not my report but my understanding of development is this was a new role but was established and as a result was appropriate to review the pay at that point in the cycle which is much earlier. i think we'll all agree that pepe should have been reviewed and one reason for that was asi reviewed and one reason for that was as i understand it, i'm not a journalist or editor, was that that new role in china was being established. i do not think it is a reference to her personal development but a reference to the development but a reference to the development of the role and its establishment and position in news—gathering. establishment and position in news-gathering. as you say it is written by a hearing manager but i think what they were trying to say here is that carrie was new to the role of on—air editor. no reflection of the fact that she did not have a

lot of experience of covering china but this was a different role. and her salary should have been looked at. just as anyone who has been doing thejob for a at. just as anyone who has been doing the job for a year or two would argue you know, i've been doing it for a year and surely it is time that we looked at how i have been doing in thisjob. and i eligible a pay rise accordingly. i think that is what the hearing manager was suggesting should have happened. it goes to the heart of this chaos surrounding this whole thing. and my final question is do you think the bbc have handled this farewell, do you feel the bbc are blameless in this whole affair and do you feel reputational damage could come from the fallout from it? asi could come from the fallout from it? as i said earlier i think i regret that we could not sort out this

issue earlier. and with more speed. and i am issue earlier. and with more speed. andiama issue earlier. and with more speed. and i am a big fan of carrie's journalism. clearly there were issues around how she was feeling about thejob, issues around how she was feeling about the job, how she was being managed. i can only say what i feel as human being which is a wish we could have sorted it out earlier. do you think you handle that as best you think you handle that as best you possibly could? you always wish you possibly could? you always wish you could handle things better than you could handle things better than you do. i'm self—criticalfor the organisation and for whatever we do. i think for me what is so important here is that going forward we have real clarity for people to see how they are paid and justify how people are paid very openly and in a constructive fashion. the 18,000 members of staff, notjust

constructive fashion. the 18,000 members of staff, not just with constructive fashion. the 18,000 members of staff, notjust with the 170 top people that we are employing. thank you. we're just going to take a short break and we will resume after that. so that parliamentary select committee pausing for a moment. that was tony hall, the bbc director—general and his deputy anne bulford and the head of news and current affairs at the bbc fran unsworth. all following on from a much longer than anticipated session earlier this afternoon with the bbc former china editor carrie gracie. she resigned of course from that particular post because of unequal pay and she was in a very long session alongside the head of the nuj. so we were listening at length to tony hall and his evidence there because that was in response to much of what carrie gracie had to say. that is in front of the digital

media sports select committee in parliament. our media editor is here. you have been listening to a lot of evidence this afternoon. there maybe people just lot of evidence this afternoon. there maybe peoplejust picking up on this who did not hear what carrie gracie had to say at the start of the afternoon. hard to do still a lot of evidence but some of the key points, the key issues that have stood out for you? well it was a strange afternoon, it started off with some explosive testimony from carrie gracie. and then this kind of bureaucratic lot of noise we've had from tony hall more recently and the senior executive team. carry —— carrie grace, she accused the bbc have several things. basically institutionalised discrimination over many yea rs. institutionalised discrimination over many years. of being less than honest with her in its dealings with and of having a lukewarm relationship with the truth. she said our trade is bbc staff is not

into space but in truth. that phrase has the potential to head the bbc because it has gone viral on social media. and the organisation is about public service journalism and to be accused of not being committed to the truth is dangerous. we also find out new information about her story, she said she'd been offered backpay of almost £100,000. but the bbc had settled on friday a particular grievance with on 89 of the 90 day window. and in its settlement the bbc acknowledged not only that it would offer her a total pay rise of £45,000 but there was the issue of backdated pay. which she rejected on the grounds that what she was after was not money but the idea of equality. and she said time and again that she was not doing this for herself but for the whole principle of equality and other people lower down the chain. and

then things changed because after two and a half hours of gruelling, much longer than had been allotted. then the bbc came forward and whereas carrie talked about her case, the bbc wanted to talk about the future and tony hall used the phrase, they wanted to talk about this new framework it is suggesting that came out yesterday in the pwc report about how to address the issue in the future. the specific issue in the future. the specific issue of the pay of carrie grace, going back to last summer, her pay as international editor, the bbc said that fundamentally it believes the china editor should not get paid what a north america editor gets paid because it has nothing to do with gender but things like how much you are on—air, the profile of the

role and productivity of the person in thatjob. a strong response to that of course from carrie gracie. so parallel conversations and explosive testimony and strong accusations. i do not feel the bbc we re ever accusations. i do not feel the bbc were ever pinned down by the select committee. and there's the issue of the law as well, equal pay for equal work. in terms of the industry, with us media editor, does this go further, do you get the sense that other broadcasters, newspapers, looking at this and this percolates further? i think so, the sense i got from senior people on the issue is the view that the bbc are way ahead of the curve on gender pay. now the legal requirement is for equal pay and for equal work but on gender pay, the average pay between men and women in an organisation, the bbc feels they're doing better than

others. it could have ripple effects, other parts of the industry could think we need to get our house and water because companies employing over 250 people are legally required to report on the gender pay gap. we had easyjet this week. on that issue the bbc feels it is doing well and wants to tell that story. but also the question of the ripple effect through the rest of the bbc. we heard a lot about bbc news but not so much about entertainment. now there is a lot of money moving into entertainment. i would also do not know a lot about some of the high earners at the bbc because they are paid by independent production companies. now tony hall says he is a convert to the idea of transparency and if that filters through the rest of the bbc it could change quite fundamentally. suddenly the people presenting strictly come dancing, big stars of drama, if their salaries must be disclosed the

bbc would say it is that a disadvantage. so we competitive disadvantage. so we could be talking about this months from now! that parliamentary select committee hearing is on a break, it is not finished. so there's more to come, if you would like to see the next element of the session after the short break, you can watch on the bbc news website. am i right in saying it is also on bbc parliament as well? it is not currently, it is on the bbc website. so that is the way to watch it. now we will pause, because here in the bbc news channel, we have a special edition of sportsday because it is transfer deadline day. so let's head over to programme. “— deadline day. so let's head over to programme. —— sportsday. hello, and welcome to sportsday. i'm holly hamilton. coming up on this transfer deadline day special —