The husband of Question Time presenter Fiona Bruce is paid £3.9 million a year by the Conservative Party for advertising contracts.
This is false. Mr Sharrocks was formerly CEO of a company group that later had advertising contracts from the government worth £3.9 million, but left before these contracts were awarded.
A number of posts on Facebook claim that the husband of BBC Question Time presenter Fiona Bruce is paid millions of pounds each year to advertise for the Conservative party.
One post says: “Do you think that Fiona Bruce (sat here with her husband who is paid £3.9m a year to advertise for the Conservatives) should resign from the BBC and Question Time?”
Other posts use different wording but repeat the claim that Ms Bruce’s husband is paid £3.9 million to advertise for the Conservatives and question her impartiality.
This claim is incorrect. Although Ms Bruce’s husband once worked with a company that has since delivered advertising and publicity materials for the government, he is understood to have left before the contract for this amount was awarded.
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According to reports Ms Bruce’s husband, Nigel Sharrocks, served as CEO of Aegis Media Global Brands and as part of this role was Global CEO of Carat, an advertising agency within the group.
Mr Sharrocks had left these roles during 2013 when he stepped down from Aegis Media.
In 2016 it was reported that Carat had been paid £3.9 million by the government for “‘advertising and publicity,’ according to payments listed on its website”.
According to the government website, contracts to Carat were all awarded from 2014 onwards, after Mr Sharrocks had left.
Following the receipt of a number of complaints last year, the BBC published a statement on its website in June 2023, addressing the issue.
It said: “For the record, Fiona Bruce’s husband Nigel Sharrocks has never donated to the Conservative party. Mr Sharrocks is not CEO of Carat Global Management Ltd. The account to advertise Conservative government policy, which has been referred to, was won by a subsidiary of a company of which Mr Sharrocks was once CEO, but after he had left the company.”
Image courtesy of Towfiqu Barbhuiya
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Fiona Bruce’s husband was CEO of a company group associated with advertising contracts from the government worth £3.9 million, but left before these contracts were awarded.
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