The BBC is set to remove the criticism it faced due to discrimination in the pay scale for its male and female employees. The recent controversy and the subsequent resignation of its China Editor Carrie Gracie over unequal pay had invited criticism from across the globe. Following the resignation, some of the corporation’s best-paid presenters – including John Humphrys, Jeremy Vine, Huw Edwards, Nick Robinson and Jon Sopel – voluntarily agreed for a pay cut. Now the Corporation will reveal star women’s salaries to within a few thousand pounds of their actual pay. The gender discrimination had invited criticism even from Corporation’s 40 own high profile female presenters including Clare Balding, Fiona Bruce, and Emily Maitlis.

After BBC revealed that only a third of its 96 top earners were women and out of it top seven were all men with Chris Evans as the best paid with Euro 2.2 m. This was a major setback for BBC when the entire media world debated this. As an image-boosting plan, the Corporation has now decided to publish a fresh list which reveals all top women’s salary. The corporation currently reports star pay in £50,000 pay bands.

Top earners including Claudia Winkleman, the corporation’s best-paid female star, DIY SOS presenter Nick Knowles and actors from EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City will disappear from this year’s list. At least 35 of the 96 stars on last year’s list could fail to appear because programs they were paid for in the past year are now produced by the newly merged entity, BBC Studios, which is now classed as a commercial entity and will not have to publish how much it pays people. This meant it does not include payments to staff through independent production companies that make programmes for the BBC, or payments from BBC Worldwide.

As a result, the list still does not include stars such as Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch, Question Time’s David Dimbleby, Have I Got News For You’s Ian Hislop, Sir David Attenborough or Alan Sugar.