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Fiona Bruce has faced backlash after claiming she is not £20,000 richer than before the Covid-19 pandemic despite her large BBC salary.
But how much has her pay really increased?
The dispute around the true nature of the 60-year-old TV host’s salary arose during the latest episode of Question Time in Dartford last week.
The panel consisted of chief secretary to the treasury Darren Jones MP; shadow Cabinet Office minister Richard Holden MP; Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper MP; journalist Camilla Tominey; and ‘financial trader-turned equality campaigner’ Gary Stevenson.
The first discussion posed the question: ‘Who should plug the deficit, benefit claimants, or billionaires?’
As the conversation turned more heated, Gary argued: ‘This is a problem of growing wealth inequality. The extremely rapid growth of wealth of the richest people in the country.’
As Fiona tried to clarify whether he was talking about those with pension funds, Gary posed a question to the audience: ‘Who here is £20,000 richer than before Covid?’
The audience remained silent and he added: ‘I’ll tell you who probably is, every single person on this panel, ok? The richest people in the country are getting richer.’
His claims were met with firm refusal from everyone on the panel as Fiona responded: ‘Hang on a minute, don’t include us in all this. I don’t know if you’ve seen the way the BBC works, but they’re not exactly raising salaries by that much.’
Her words were quickly picked apart by viewers.
‘Funniest bit here was the way they all fall over themselves to go “Er ACTUALLY I’m not rich AT ALL.” Yes you are!!! Fiona Bruce is on 400k!’ @rv_southern wrote on X.
‘Fiona Bruce is paid £400,000 a year by the BBC. Yet look at how uncomfortable she seems to have someone say she might be £20k better off than 5 years ago,’ Jonathan pointed out.
Another user @curtisdaly accused her of ‘literally lying’ and several more pointed out that her pay has increased not by just £20,000 but even up to £195k in the past six years.
According to figures reported by the BBC, Fiona was paid in the range of £255k to £259k in the year 2018/2019.
There was then a major jump the year after – 2019/2020 – to £450k to £454k. Then a slight dip the year after with 2020/2021 figures coming in at £405k to £409k.
Between 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 her pay jumped at least 10k from the range £395k to £399k to £405k to £409k.
If the media personality is solely looking at the past five years (beginning from 2020/2021), she is correct that her BBC salary has not risen by over 20k.
But when taking her pre-Covid salary into account from the years 2018/2019 to 2023/2024 – as Gary seems to ask – there has been a significant pay jump.
Of course, her salary also proves that she is not involved in the group of ‘multimillionaires and billionaires’ that Gary accused in the episode of hoarding wealth, based solely on her BBC pay alone.
Her net worth is also estimated to lie between the £2m to £3m mark, per Hello.
There are only a handful of presenters at the BBC paid significantly more than her including Zoe Ball whose salary ranges from £950k to £954k and Gary Lineker at a whopping £1.35m.
Even then, none of them come close to the Sunday Times 2024 rich list, which tracks the 350 wealthiest people in the country.
The list is topped by Gopi Hinduja with a worth of £37.196 billion and Sir Lewis Hamilton comes in at the bottom worth £350m.
It’s not the first time Fiona has come under fire for comments made during Question Time.
In October, the BBC was forced to edit an episode of the show after she made the false claim that the Labour Party had not used the phrase ‘working people’ in its manifesto about raising National Insurance.
And she was previously criticised for interrupting the party leaders when they gave answers during a Question Time special ahead of the general election last year.
Metro has reached out to Fiona Bruce’s representatives and the BBC for comment.
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