Payouts of up to £500,000 made over the last six years

National Audit Office investigating scale of the agreements

New BBC boss Lord Hall moves to cap future deals at £150,000

The BBC has spent £28million securing the silence of more than 500 staff with controversial gagging orders.

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The figures, released yesterday, reignited fears that cases of sexual harassment or bullying may have been kept under wraps because of the payments.

The BBC conceded that most of its ‘compromise agreements’ included confidentiality clauses. The data, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals 539 staff had signed such deals over the last eight years.

Payouts: New BBC Director General Tony Hall has capped future payments at £150,000 but the Corporation has spent millions in the last six years

Payouts: New BBC Director General Tony Hall has capped future payments at £150,000 but the Corporation has spent millions in the last six years

The biggest payments were given to bosses, with 77 individuals receiving more than £100,000 and 14 more than £300,000. In the 2009-10 financial year, the pay-off bill was almost £5.5million.

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George Entwistle, who resigned last year as director general following the Newsnight scandal over Lord McAlpine, received a £450,000 pay-off, double what he was entitled to. He had spent just 54 days in the job.

The figures, which date back to 2005, also show that two unnamed individuals received pay-offs of £500,100 and £524,680.

Some employees who signed gagging orders include those who had complained they had been victims of sexual harassment and bullying.

The National Audit Office is next month due to deliver its report into the culture of pay-offs at the BBC, and is expected to be highly critical.

Tony Hall, who became director general in April, is to introduce a £150,000 cap on pay-offs from September.

Former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly, 56, who famously won an ageism case against the BBC in 2011, said she had rejected a five-figure offer to buy her silence.

‘Before I arrived at my tribunal, I was offered a large amount of money to go away and forget about it – never speak of it again,’ she said.

‘I didn’t want to do that because I am a journalist. The fact that the BBC was asking me to sign away my freedom of speech for hard money made me feel sick. I was ashamed.’

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She said the gagging orders were so restrictive that they even bar signatories from talking to their spouses about them, but a BBC spokesman said that such compromise deals were standard practice.