The Sun has revealed that the BBC paid MPs more than £200,000 to appear on TV and radio programmes in the course of the last five years.
That doesn’t seem excessive or overly surprising, but the article is given a big show in today’s newspaper. It states, gasp, that 65 MPs received money for their appearances. And it gleefully tells readers that Labour members got the lion’s share by “trousering £141,260 of the £203,132 between them”.
The paper names former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson as the highest paid, receiving £58,767 between the start of 2010 and the end of 2014. Labour’s Diane Abbott was second, getting £43,380.
Both are regular guests on Andrew Neil’s This Week show on BBC2 and would therefore receive more than the nominal sums paid to MPs for other appearances.
The Sun’s political editor, Tom Newton-Dunn, explains that he obtained the information through “an extensive trawl of the register of members’ interests” in which MPs declare their extra earnings.
He writes: “The vast majority of the controversial payments appear to go very close to breaching the BBC’s own guidelines, as most of the MPs profited from spouting their own political views”.
To underline his argument, he quotes from the BBC’s rules on payments to politicians, which states:
“We should not normally pay MPs for appearances or other contributions to any BBC output in which they are speaking as a member of their party or expressing political views.
“They can, where appropriate, be paid a limited and realistic disturbance fee and/or any reimbursement for genuine expenses”.
But I’m not so certain that the majority of the payments listed by Newton-Dunn can be said to breach those rules.
On Neil’s entertaining show, for example, Johnson and Abbott - and others who also appear in that slot - rarely indulge in serious party political point-scoring.
Similarly, relatively high fees (about £1,500 a time) are paid to people who appear on Have I Got News For You. But it is a comedy show and MPs, who tend to be the butt of jokes, do not make political statements.
It’s possible to argue that MPs who review newspapers for the BBC News Channel are able to make party political points. So the BBC might like to consider whether the payment of the standard fee for such reviews (£150) is appropriate if the person is a sitting MP.
Even more pertinently, the £150 fee paid to MPs who appear on Radio 4’s Any Questions may be a cause for concern. The whole point of them doing the show is to push their party’s political agenda.
Given that their travel and accommodation expenses are covered by the BBC, is it really necessary to give them a fee?
Needless to say, the Sun found “incredulous” rent-a-quote critics. Sorry, it found one critic. Let’s be honest: it’s a double whammy for a paper that despises both the BBC and elected politicians.
But its scattergun approach, appearing to condemn every MP who was paid fees for BBC appearances that were not specifically related to their work in parliament, was unjustified.
Why shouldn’t Michael Gove be paid for non-partisan appearances on Newsnight’s Late Review slot? What’s wrong with Tristram Hunt, David Davies, Rory Stewart and Peter Hain being paid for making documentaries?
Newton-Dunn did quote a BBC spokeswoman at the end of his piece, and if readers got that far - beyond the headlines and display - they would have discovered that she undermined the entire foundation of his article.
She said: “In general, the BBC does not pay the dozens of elected politicians who appear on its news programmes.
“However, we do make payments to MPs who are involved in presenting or appearing on programmes where their primary purpose goes beyond promoting a party political viewpoint.
“In common with other broadcasters, we sometimes cover travel costs and pay a small ‘disturbance fee’ where appropriate”. Exactly.