The new boss of the BBC has criticised the large pay-offs given to senior staff in the past when they left the corporation.
Tony Hall, who took over as director-general yesterday, said the large sums paid had "not been right".
His immediate predecessor George Entwistle, who stood down over the Jimmy Savile scandal, walked away with a £450,000 pay-off.
Recent figures show 10 other leading figures at the BBC received severance packages in recent years which amounted to £4 million. The largest was the former deputy director-general Mark Byford, who was given £949,000.
Lord Hall said: "I think the size of the pay-offs has not been right."
He said he would be examining the policy on the matter and would have something to say about the "scale of those pay-offs" in the coming weeks. He said: "I will not have a pay-off if I'm found wanting in all sorts of ways."
Lord Hall also said the corporation's salary bill for senior executives would "not grow" while he was in charge.
He said: "We have got to look at the way we spend all our money on managers, on programmes, on everything as if we were spending our own personal money because at a time when every single family in this country is feeling hard-up, we've got to be able to justify what we spend."
Lord Hall, who began as a BBC trainee 40 years ago, was offered the top job after Mr Entwistle stepped down in November when Tory peer Lord McAlpine was wrongly implicated in child abuse claims on BBC2's Newsnight.
l A driver is to be charged with five sex offences as part of the investigation triggered by allegations of abuse against Jimmy Savile.
The charges against David Smith include two counts of indecent assault and two of gross indecency, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
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