£500m (of your money) is at stake in a legal case over BBC pensions

Even at the BBC, with its licence fee income guaranteed by the Coalition for the next five years, £500m is still a lot of money. And that is the amount of BBC cash that could be at stake in a little-known legal case which came to trial yesterday.

John Bradbury, a clarinettist in one of the BBC's orchestras, has (with the backing of the NUJ and the Musicians' Union) sued the BBC over the changes that it made late in 2010 to its pension scheme. Actually, to be completely accurate, he complained to the pensions ombudsman, who found against him, and has now appealed to the Chancery Division of the High Court.

Which is where I was yesterday morning, at court 31 of the Rolls Building, a brand spanking new outhouse just up the road from the historic Royal Courts of Justice. I attended for the first hour or so of argument before Mr Justice Warren - NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet was there too, so the union is clearly taking the case very seriously.

The fact that the unions are taking legal action at all is slightly curious, given that the changes to the BBC pension scheme were agreed by all the main BBC unions late in 2010, after they were massively watered down by director-general Mark Thompson in response to industrial action, including strikes.

More to the point, the deal was a pretty good one for the workers. For Thompson, something had to give: the BBC pension scheme was facing a deficit of £1.6bn (enough to pay for all of BBC One and BBC Two for a whole year). There were only two groups of people to whom Thompson could send the bill: BBC employees, in the form of higher pension contributions and lower benefits in retirement, or licence fee payers. 

The deal which Thompson and the unions agreed - without, to the best of my knowledge, a single licence-fee payer ever being consulted - left those licence-fee payers with two-thirds of the bill, requiring up to £110m a year to be skimmed off the licence fee for no fewer than 11 years.

BBC employees were to make up the remaining £500million or so. As a licence-fee payer, that doesn't strike me as a split that particularly victimises BBC staff. But where the unions have a good point, it seems to me, is in complaining about the way the BBC tried to implement its changes. 

Indeed, the legal arguments that I heard yesterday bore a reassuring resemblance to a blog that I wrote on the topic about 18 months ago. The basic thrust of the arguments put forward by Andrew Stafford QC, acting for Mr Bradbury, is that the BBC has unilaterally tried to change the definition of "basic salary" in order to lower its pension contributions - but that the BBC wasn't entitled to do that under constitutional documents of the pension fund.

Arguments on both sides (including from the BBC's counsel, Robert Ham QC) apparently took most of the rest of the day, and a result is expected in the next few days.

Stafford contended yesterday that the BBC has "illegitimately sought to use a combination of limited pay rises and limited pension accruals to persuade or coerce Mr Bradbury" to leave the original BBC pension scheme and join a new, much less generous scheme. (Coercion, apparently, is bad, despite its evident effectiveness when used by private sector employers in a similar position.)

If Bradbury wins, a lot of that £500m settlement with the BBC unions could be unravelled, potentially leaving the poor old licence fee payer with a much bigger bill. There will also potentially be administrative chaos: over 8,000 BBC employees (more than 50% of pension scheme members) changed their pension arrangements as a result of the deal, and will no doubt contend that "coercion" means they have the right to change their minds.

It's the kind of case that doesn't get much coverage in the press, because both sides are too sheepish to publicise their involvement, and because the legal issues involved are so complex. It's also the kind of case that former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons - who should have been holding Thompson to account on behalf of licence-fee payers - steered well clear of. (Licence fee payers must hope - though his time in office so far since his appointment in May gives them little ground for optimism - that new BBC chairman Lord (Chris) Patten shows more of a spine.)

Some BBC staff, by the way, are hoping for good luck to be on their side, as well as the letter of the law. I saw an email from one BBC wag about the case, and about Mr Justice Warren in particular. "As for our judge, he's reputed to be evenhanded," said the email. "Apparently his ‘recreations’ include music. Since John Bradbury, whose case we're appealing, is Principal Clarinettist of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, let’s hope the judge isn’t into drum 'n' bass."

BBC Radio 4 'seriously threatened', say unions

Quite rightly, after protests from MPs and listeners, it looks like the proposed cuts to BBC local radio are to be scaled back. But there is another battle brewing at Broadcasting House about cuts to Radio 4.

When Mark Thompson announced his package of cuts, 'Delivering Quality First', on October 6, he was keen to stress that Radio 4 - alongside BBC One, children's programmes, News and the devolved nations - would be largely safe from the cuts. But this pronouncement - which saved Thompson from predictable criticism in the serious print press - is based on the kind of sleight of hand that could only come from BBC management.

Thompson has divided the upcoming BBC cuts into two categories: 'productivity' and 'scope'. A 'scope' cut means saving money by the BBC stopping doing something (for example, no more new daytime shows on BBC Two). A 'productivity' cut means saving money by carrying on doing exactly the same thing, but doing it with fewer people or a smaller budget.

(One small aside: a very senior BBC manager said to me privately the other day that Lord Patten's supervisory BBC Trust, currently consulting on the cuts, can only suggest changes to 'scope' cuts, not to 'productivity' cuts. That's presumably because 'productivity' cuts are operational decisions for Thompson and his management team, not policy decisions for consideration by the Trust. A convenient distinction for management, but one which - as with so many other Trust processes - might not get the best deal for licence-fee payers.)

It is easy to protest against a 'scope' cut - the proposed changes to, for example, local radio schedules were clear to see. It is much more difficult to argue against a 'productivity' cut, because the idea is that listeners and viewers won't see any difference. And, of course, the serious print press traditionally says that the BBC is overstaffed and inefficient, so any increases in productivity should be welcomed by commentators like me.

And true enough, very little in the way of 'scope' cuts are planned for Radio 4, so nothing to worry about, eh?

The true picture is murkier than that. Even though Radio 4, for example, is supposed to be protected from the cuts, 50 staff will lose their jobs in the departments that make its programmes. Can all of those be truly characterised as making the BBC more 'productive', or does there come a point when a cut is simply a cut?

The unions - predictably but, in this case, convincingly - say the latter. 'Radio 4 is seriously threatened,' says a document prepared by the NUJ's Radio and Technology chapel. It goes on to say that the Audio & Music Production department - which makes Desert Island Discs, Start the Week, etc 'proposes to force all its c. 130 Producers and Senior Producers to apply for a newly-defined 'Producer' role – with at least 30 fewer posts but no reduction in R4 output.  Those who are unsuccessful face redundancy or demotion.  Many, but by no means all, will be replaced by so-called 'Assistant Producer' posts – a euphemism for 'underpaid producers'.  There are no proposals to cut management jobs.'


The document finishes by saying 'Is losing so many expert production staff really "the best way ahead"?  If this is "special protection", what would swingeing cuts look like?'

Up to 110 jobs to be lost at BBC Salford

I hear that up to 110 of the jobs that have been moved to the BBC's new northern hub in Salford (mainly from London) will be lost as part of director-general Mark Thompson's Delivering Quality First cuts programme - with up to 60 of those coming from the News division.

All of which leaves people who have moved north out of love for their current BBC job feeling rather anxious.

But, when I interviewed Peter Salmon, the boss of the BBC's Salford project, for the Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago, he said that anybody who has moved up from London to do a BBC job in Salford will almost certainly be found another job, if theirs is made redundant.

'We don't foresee there being any enforced redundancies of people who've moved up from the south of England, supported by the BBC,' he said, pointing out that an additional 1,000 jobs would move to Salford as part of DQF (though the nature of those jobs has yet to be specified).

'The most important element is anybody who's moved from the south of England to the north of England. They will be put in a place of some preference for job opportunities. Secondly, wherever the BBC can redeploy staff from across the BBC, we have a commitment to making redeployment work.'

The unions will be watching carefully to see if Salmon's predictions come true on the ground.

• In other Salford news: the provisional date for BBC One's Breakfast programme to start broadcasting from the new site is 4 April 2012.

Staff - well, those that are going - will move up in earnest during March, following colleagues in Sport, Radio 5 Live and CBBC.

Sofie Gråbøl: 'I have Pernille Birk Larsen's chairs and lamps in my flat'

As the entire British nation girds itself for tonight's return of The Killing (BBC Four, 9pm), I thought I'd christen my new blog with a little titbit from its star - though this one is for diehard fans only.

I interviewed Sofie Gråbøl for Hello! magazine, but this bit didn't make it into the print version…

I suggested to Gråbøl that the second series would be different at least in part because the story doesn't have the predominant family element of the Birk Larsens' grief, which was such a major part of series one.

'You won't have that,' said Gråbøl. 'Not in that sense.'

No kitchen table, I said.

'Not that kitchen table,' she replied with mock frustration. (At least, I hope it was mock.)

Then she laughed, and added: 'I actually have the chairs at home, and the lamps.'

From the Birk Larsens'?

'Yes. I don't have their kitchen table, because they didn't sell their kitchen table when we ended the shooting,' said Gråbøl. 'They were selling out all the furniture, and I had just moved, so I said: "I want to buy the chairs and the lamps."'

No news yet as to where the Birk Larsens' kitchen table actually ended up…