Broadcaster urged to cut pay after figures reveal 47 executives earn more than £200,000

The BBC has come under pressure to curb pay after the salaries and expenses of senior executives were published for the first time yesterday.

The corporation’s top 50 executives earned up to £13.6 million last year, with expenses claims totalling £363,000 over five years.

The broadcaster agreed to publish the details after a series of Freedom of Information requests were made by journalists. Mark Thompson, the director general, said that the public had a “right to know” the level of executive remuneration.

Thompson, who earns £647,000 a year, claimed over £77,000 in expenses including £2,236 to fly his family home from Sicily in the wake of the furore over the prank calls made by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to the actor Andrew Sachs.

The director general also claimed £1,277 to fly back by private jet from New England to attend an emergency meeting in London in 2004.

In other revelations, Jana Bennett, the director of BBC vision, was revealed to have claimed almost £2,000 in expenses for flowers.

The corporation was also criticised yesterday for once more refusing to publish the details of its stars’ pay and expenses.

Thompson argued that revealing the exact pay of presenters such as Jonathan Ross, who is thought to earn £6 million a year, would lead to “fresh upward pressure on pay”. He added that figures such as Graham Norton or Anne Robinson were in no sense “public decision-makers or public officers of the BBC”.

But Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, demanded that the BBC revealed all employee pay.

He said: "It’s not just the top ten or top 100 people who should disclose their expenses — all the BBC employees are part of a public organisation. What we did at Westminster shows what happens when you don’t disclose expenses — you lose public trust."

The BBC's executive salaries, with 47 senior staff paid over £200,000, were criticised by a series of opposition politicians yesterday.

John Whittingdale, the Conservaitve chairman of the Commons media committee, said that the BBC was no longer paying "market rates".

"One of the reasons why it was important that this information about salaries was made public is that there is increasing concern that the BBC is not paying market rates,” he said. "They are far in excess of what any commercial broadcaster could afford."

Martin Bell, the former independent MP, urged the BBC to show "restraint" in its salaries. “I don’t buy the line that these people could be earning more money in the private sector, because commercial broadcasters are in serious trouble at the moment," he said.

The latest developments come as the BBC fights to prevent the licence fee, worth £3.6bn a year, from being 'top-sliced', as proposed by the government's Digital Britain report. The report suggested that any surplus from the BBC's digital witchover fund could be shared with Channel 4 and ITV.

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