The government has announced who the remaining eight members of the new BBC Trust will be, which is funny, because I didn't know they'd named the first four of the twelve strong committee. I must have been dozing that day. The Trust, as I'm sure you do remember, is the new body that will oversee the Beeb from the beginning of next year, replacing the current Board Of Governors.
For those that care, the new trustees are as follows: Dr Chitra Bharucha, a former consultant haematologist who chairs a General Medical Council panel; former economics editor of The Independent and member of the Competition Commission, Diane Coyle; Alison Hastings, a former Newcastle Chronicle editor who becomes the trustee for England; Patricia Hodgson, the former chief executive of the Independent Television Commission; Rotha Johnston, an independent businesswoman who becomes the trustee for Northern Ireland; former S4C executive and vice-president of the British Board of Film Classification, Janet Lewis-Jones, who becomes the trustee for Wales; David Liddiment, former director of programmes at ITV and non-executive creative director All3Media; and Mehmuda Mian Pritchard, a solicitor and Independent Police Complaints Commissioner for London and the South East. They join existing appointments Dermot Gleeson, Richard Tait and Jeremy Peat (trustee for Scotland) and, of course, Trust chairman Michael Grade.
On the new committee, Grade said all these here words: "The new BBC Trust has a very different role from that of the Board of Governors it replaces. The new Charter requires that the Trust is independent of BBC management representing the interests of licence fee payers. We must consult the public to ensure our decisions are properly informed by those who pay for the BBC. The Trust will recognise that every licence fee payer also has an interest in the wider choice offered across the industry. For the first time, the public will help set the strategic agenda for its BBC".