Video: BBC 'did not lose the plot' over pay-off, says Mark Thompson He said the move, which saw Mark Byford leave the BBC with a total payout of £949,000, was part of a move to axe senior executives which would give the BBC "£19 million of savings for every year into the future" and he believed he "had the full support of the BBC Trust" to order it. The committee's chair, Margaret Hodge, said people were looking at BBC management in "dismay" and asked Mr Thompson if the BBC had, under his management, lost the plot. He said: "I do not think we lost the plot." Mr Thompson, who left the corporation last year to take over at the New York Times, has accused Lord Patten and trustee Anthony Fry of "fundamentally misleading" members of the committee at a previous hearing. During the hearing, BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten said he took the charge of misleading the committee "very strongly" and said his induction to the job included no references to severance pay and a media briefing he was given before the publication of the annual report said pay-offs to Mr Byford and former marketing boss Sharon Baylay were "contractual payments." He said: "I'm in the position in which I'm accused of having misled the committee on something I didn't know and couldn't have been expected to know." Margaret Hodge's stern chairing of the proceedings were noticed when she told Lucy Adams, the BBC's head of HR: "I'm not having any more lies this afternoon." Sources: PA/ITN