Lord Sugar hits out at “heavily overstaffed” BBC

The BBC is “heavily overstaffed” and the BBC Trust is an “utter waste of time”, Lord Sugar said yesterday.

In a speech to the House of Lords, the host of the BBC business show The Apprentice called for “layers of jobsworths” to be removed to invest in programme-making and technology.

The peer said: “I say this very respectfully, they are heavily overstaffed, there are too many jobsworths and the organisation is not run in a manner that a commercial organisation would be.

“The BBC trust in my opinion is a complete and utter waste of time and should be disbanded.

“There is need for a more commercial approach with an experienced board of directors who are ready to stand up and be counted, of course with some independent non-executives.”

He went on to say that the broadcaster should introduce pay-per-view services on top of the licence fee to compete with rivals on film and sports rights.

“There would be a lot of consumers prepared to pay for extra stuff as demonstrated by the commercial pay broadcasters.”

“It is now possible for the BBC to encrypt pay-per-view programmes so that consumers can choose to buy, for example, football or latest movies,” he added.

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