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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> Dyke to spill the beans http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1083829640 Message started by Forum Admin on May 6^th, 2004, 7:48am

Title: Dyke to spill the beans
Post by Forum Admin on May 6^th, 2004, 7:48am

This from The Times:

May 05, 2004

Dyke to tell of BBC's 'betrayal'
By Andrew Pierce and Ray Snoddy

GREG DYKE will use his memoirs to accuse the Governors of the BBC of
reneging on a secret deal for him to stay on as Director-General after
publication of the Hutton report.

Mr Dyke has written 70,000 words of the book, which will underline his
lingering bitterness at his forced departure from the most powerful post
in British broadcasting.

He will reveal details of a highly charged private meeting at
Broadcasting House with Gavyn Davies, the former BBC Chairman, and Dame
Pauline Neville-Jones, a senior governor at the corporation.

The hastily convened meeting came shortly after they had read the
conclusions of Lord Hutton’s inquiry into events leading up to the death
of David Kelly.

At the meeting, Mr Davies announced that he would resign that evening, a
move that Mr Dyke now regards as a serious strategic error that sealed
his own fate.

In the book Mr Dyke will maintain that at the meeting he thought he had
secured an agreement with Dame Pauline, who was the go between with the
other governors, that he would be able to stay on as Director-General
because Mr Davies was going.

Yet in the most turbulent 24 hours in the corporation’s history, Mr Dyke
went to the emergency governors’ meeting the next day to offer his
resignation. He was devastated when they accepted it.

Mr Dyke believes that if Mr Davies, whose wife Sue runs the Chancellor’s
private office, had resigned after this emergency meeting, the demand for
scapegoats would have been sated; he could have retained his £469,000-a-
year post.

Dame Pauline, a former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and
former political director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
maintains that she acted in good faith and that there was no such
agreement.

The governors were under pressure as Alastair Campbell, the former
Downing Street communications director, had made a televised statement in
which he said that Lord Hutton’s report “shows the Prime Minister told
the truth, the Government told the truth, and I told the truth. The BBC
from the Chairman and Director-General down did not.”

Accusing named BBC executives of “unforgivable lying”, he demanded
resignations at every level of the corporation.

Dame Pauline is not the only governor who will be criticised in the book.
Lord Ryder of Wensum, the Vice-Chairman of the BBC, will be criticised
for his apology on behalf of the BBC after the Hutton report.

A BBC spokesman, challenged about the assertions in Mr Dyke’s book,
declined to comment. The book, whose working title is Memoirs, will
contain criticism of Tony Blair and Mr Campbell, whom Mr Dyke will accuse
of bullying and control freakery.

He will also refer to the post-Hutton disciplinary inquiry at the BBC,
conducted by Caroline Thompson, the BBC’s director of public policy, and
Stephen Dando, the head of human resources. It has been dubbed the
“medieval Star Chamber” by senior presenters, who resent what they regard
as a witch-hunt.

The Times can disclose that Michael Grade, the new BBC Chairman, sought
to abandon the inquiry when he took up his post last month. He was told
that the governors had no provenance over the inquiry, as it had been set
up by Mr Dyke.

The former Director-General, who accepts that he will not return to the
BBC, will also disclose details of a peace offering by Downing Street,
made only days before Dr Kelly, the weapons expert, was confirmed by the
corporation as its source for the story of the “sexed-up” weapons
dossier.

The compromise proposal was rejected because Mr Davies was determined to
give no ground to Mr Campbell.

A senior BBC executive said: “Greg and Gavyn were told that if they
wanted to talk, there was an open line to No10. I think to this day Gavyn
and Greg both regret not picking the phone up to Tony Blair.

“But if they had done a deal, and it got out, they feared they would be
labelled new Labour poodles. You have to remember they both had close
links to the Labour Party.”

Mr Dyke was paid a £500,000 advance for his book, which is due to be
finished by the end of this month.

Publication is scheduled for the middle of September, on the eve of the
party conference season.