Who said disclosure isn’t good for you? My rule when I ran Channel Five was that every expenses form would be subject to my personal scrutiny: this magically eliminated excessive claims.
The BBC’s mild embarrassment over individual claims when it first published managerial expenses has resulted in a suitably bland list for the first quarter of the current financial year.
Of course, there are still those irritating minicab bills running well into three figures, no doubt reflecting the “tell him to wait” attitude of BBC executives that amazes independent producers when they lunch together.
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It is also quite hard to see why expenses incurred well before the quarter concerned turn up in these lists. Perhaps as the BBC gets deeper into this kind of exercise, it will persuade executives to submit their claims in timely fashion, and slot centrally booked costs in the correct column.
That said, at least we now have the centrally booked costs. When the first list of out-of-pocket claims was published, critics noted that these were surely only the tip of the iceberg: executives would scarcely pay for flights and hotels on their credit cards, meaning that the bulk of expenditure was not disclosed.
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Now, both forms of cost are being published, though we still do not have routine claims — such as telephone bills and pay-TV subscriptions that are no doubt seen by the BBC as contractual costs rather than incidental expenses.
Nor are the details of pay fully disclosed: Alan Yentob’s managerial salary is revealed, but not his compensation for presenting his TV series, Imagine.
Eventually, we will see a rounded annual picture of the full costs of employment of the majority of the most senior people in the BBC — salary, pension costs, perks, expenses, telephone bills, subscriptions, perhaps even the cost of support staff.
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Meanwhile, at least the principle of disclosure is being more fully entrenched: and perhaps the BBC will recognise that this is good, not only for accountability, but also for internal discipline.
But there is still a long way to go. The BBC promises to publish a global cost of talent, but still fights shy of breaking this down to an individual level.
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A possible future Tory government will not be satisfied with that. Better, surely, to get ahead of the curve, and treat talent in the same way as executives.
In the meantime, two cheers for effort.
David Elstein is chairman of television producer DCD Media and a former chief executive of Channel Five