Taxpayers' millions paid to celebrities

Published on Sunday 9 August 2009 00:38

PUBLICLY-funded quangos have spent millions of pounds hiring celebrities to host prizegivings and make after-dinner speeches, it emerged last night.

Pop stars, television personalities and celebrities including Kirsty Young, Kirsty Wark and Midge Ure have been paid thousands of pounds to add glamour to events hosted by quangos.

Yorkshire Forward, a development agency, hired Lanarkshire-born Ure, an anti-poverty campaigner and former lead singer of Ultravox, to hand out awards. The co-author of the Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas was one of three celebrities paid 73,000 in total. He shared the sum with political pundit Michael Portillo and business tycoon Sir Alan Sugar.

In 2008, the Training and Development Agency for Schools recruited Myleene Klass, the M&S underwear model and former Hear'Say singer, to front a campaign to recruit more science teachers.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that over the past three years some 40 quangos and government departments have hired more than 200 personalities.

In March, Evan Davis of the Radio 4 Today programme, was paid 5,000 to chair a conference for Monitor, the independent regulator of NHS trusts.

Jonathan Dimbleby, the chairman of Radio 4's Any Questions? was paid 3,000 by the Information Commissioner to host a one-day conference on data protection.

Wark, the Newsnight presenter, and Martha Kearney, presenter of The World At One, both acted as comperes at a conference organised by the Technology Strategy Board.

In London, Young, the presenter of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme, hosted awards organised by the Ministry of Justice.

Kate Silverton, the newsreader, was paid for speaking at an event organised by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Neither organisation would say what the fee was.

The most star-struck quango was the Learning and Skills Council, which spent 400,000 hiring more than 50 personalities.

They include Konnie Huq, the former Blue Peter presenter, Richard Bacon, the BBC disc jockey, and Jill Halfpenny, the former EastEnders star who won the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing contest in 2004.

The schools training agency defended the use of Klass to front the campaign for science teachers. "She was ideal because she had enjoyed a high profile and was studying astronomy at the time," a spokesman said. "We felt she was appropriate to the message."

Critics said in most cases the personalities were hired for internal events, with little or no public benefit.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It is utterly wrong that the taxes of ordinary, hard-working taxpayers are being poured into the pockets of wealthy celebrities."