Chris Moyles and Jeremy Paxman should have their salaries reviewed, but the millions earned by Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton from the BBC are justified, a report into presenters' pay concluded yesterday.

A landmark inquiry into stars' salaries, led by the BBC's regulator, concluded that the £18 million, three-year deal with Ross was fair because ITV and Channel 4 compete regularly for top entertainers. However, the BBC Trust questioned whether Paxman's £1 million a year, or the £630,000 paid to Moyles for his Radio 1 breakfast show, could be justified because there were was insufficent competition from commercial broadcast news or commercial radio.

The overall message — to the surprise of rival broadcasters and opposition politicans — was that the BBC was “not negatively distorting” stars' pay by bidding up rates.

The published version of the 140-page analysis, conducted for the BBC Trust by the economists Oliver & Ohlbaum, had the exact pay figures for the top 100 TV stars removed.

Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, said that he “did not want the BBC to become a no-go zone for top talent”. He added that “many, many licence-fee payers value some of the most expensive performers” on BBC television. Sir Michael also refused to be drawn on whether he would reject another £18 million deal for Ross, and in doing so effectively endorsed future inflation-busting rises for top performers. Norton is believed to earn £2.5 million a year, while Gary Lineker earns £1.5 million.

Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said that the BBC Trust had “completely missed the point”. He said: “Jonathan Ross may well be worth £18 million on the open market. The question is whether the BBC should be paying for this with licence- fee payers' money when commercial broadcasters would be more than willing to pay it at no cost to the public.”

One of the few figures that the report did reveal was that inflation for all “talent”, including presenters and actors, was running at 6.1 per cent, faster than the annual increase in the BBC's internal budget. The BBC spent £242 million on talent, £204 million of which came out of the licence fee — or £8.16 per licence-fee payer.

Sir Michael did concede that radio was different, where the BBC dominates a struggling commercial sector that is largely composed of local radio stations. “Some of the salaries would not be paid by commercial radio at the moment,” the chairman said, after Oliver & Ohlbaum recommended “appropriate price setting” when it comes to pay. Pay in radio will be reviewed over the next 12 months.

Sir Terry Wogan, the presenter of Britain's most listened-to breakfast programme on Radio 2, earns £800,000, according to information leaked from the broadcaster two years ago, while Chris Evans is paid £540,000 for his Radio 2 drivetime show.

Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of RadioCentre, the radio industry lobby group, complained that the BBC was not making any moves to make its pay policy more transparent. He said: “The BBC Trust report outlines that BBC pays more for its top talent than commercial radio — confirming the issue we have been flagging for some while. However, the actions proposed by the trust to address this, while helpful, do not go nearly far enough.”

Problems were also highlighted with the amount of money paid to some BBC news presenters and journalists. Sir Michael said that “the BBC's role in news is so distinctive that we want a review”, after the report prepared for the trust made it clear that, in all but a handful of cases, BBC news programes such as Newsnight, presented by Paxman, or Today, the home of John Humphrys, faced no competition.

Neither criticism was accepted by the BBC. It said that “top news talent was increasingly work across multiple genres” — referring, for example, to the newscaster Fiona Bruce taking on Antiques Roadshow. In radio the BBC said that competition was “not just between the BBC and commercial radio, but across the entire entertainment industry” — implying that top presenters could get lucrative work on screen instead of on the airwaves.

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