BBC: Government Role in Impartiality

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Commons Urgent Question

The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House of Commons on Tuesday 14 March.

“The BBC is a world-class broadcaster, a creative engine and a cultural institution producing some of the best television and radio in the world. The impartiality of the BBC, as a publicly funded broadcaster, goes to the heart of the contract between the corporation and all the licence fee payers whom it serves. That is why the royal charter, which is the constitutional basis of the BBC—along with the underpinning framework agreement—enshrines the need for the BBC to be impartial in both its mission and its public purposes.

The BBC’s mission and public purposes, as set out in the charter, require it to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain, helping people to understand and engage with the world around them. The BBC’s first public purpose is to provide duly accurate and impartial news and information to help people to understand and engage with the world around them. It must also represent and serve the diverse communities of all the United Kingdom’s nations and regions. Both the charter and the framework agreement also explicitly guarantee the independence of the BBC. As such, the Government have no say in the BBC’s operational or editorial day-to-day decisions or staffing matters, including as they relate to the application of the requirement for impartiality.

The Government stand fully behind the requirements of the royal charter. We are clear that the BBC must truly reflect the nation and guard its impartiality in all of its output. The BBC’s director-general has repeatedly said that the corporation’s impartiality is a priority for him and must be protected. We welcome that the BBC accepted the findings and recommendations of the Serota review and is committed to reform through its 10-point impartiality and editorial standards action plan. It is Ofcom, established by the Government as the independent regulator of the BBC in 2017, that is responsible for holding broadcasters including the BBC to account on the impartiality of their news and current affairs coverage, against the Broadcasting Code under the Communications Act 2003.

In November last year, Ofcom published its annual review of the BBC. It found the BBC’s impartiality to be a key area of concern among audiences and one where they consistently rate BBC news less favourably for trust and accuracy. Ofcom stated that addressing audience perceptions on this matter is challenging, and the regulator recognises that this is a complex area. It will continue to monitor the performance of the BBC and has urged the BBC not to lose momentum in its efforts to address this issue. It remains a priority for the Government to ensure that Ofcom delivers an effective and proportionate regulatory framework that holds the BBC to account while maintaining its creative freedom and operational independence.

In May 2022, the Government launched the mid-term review. This is a new mechanism established by the current charter, focusing on the governance and regulatory arrangements for the BBC, given the reforms that were introduced when the charter was granted. One area of focus in the MTR is impartiality, and it will assess the efficacy of the governance mechanisms and Ofcom’s regulation in ensuring that the BBC meets the high standards that licence fee payers expect of it. It is also an important milestone in our road map for BBC reform, and work is well under way. The charter specifies that the review must take place between 2022 and 2024, and we will publish our findings and conclusions in due course.

The BBC is respected globally. It reaches hundreds of millions of people across the world every week. No other country in the world has anything quite like it. We have been clear that the BBC must place a firm emphasis on accuracy, impartiality and diversity of opinion. It can never be the BBC’s role to judge, or appear to judge, the diverse values of the people from across the country it serves. In the era of fake news, public service broadcasting and a free press have never been more important, and the BBC has been and should be a beacon that sets standards to which others can aspire.”

15:47

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government claim not to have interfered in the BBC’s affairs this past weekend. We take that at face value, even if Downing Street had no problem with Conservative MPs applying their own pressure on the BBC. According to leaked messages, it is clear Downing Street has interfered in the corporation’s news output, both during the pandemic and at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. Is not the Minister concerned by this quote from a BBC insider, who said:

“Particularly on the website, our headlines have been determined by calls from Downing Street on a very regular basis.”


Does not this bring us once again to the wholly inappropriate relationship between Boris Johnson and the man he appointed as chair of the BBC, and does not this tell us everything we need to know about the Government’s paper-thin commitment to the notion of impartiality?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord will know that political parties, whether in government or in opposition, regularly contact the BBC and other broadcasters in relation to what they broadcast as part and parcel of the news content they provide, but the public service broadcasters do a brilliant job presenting impartial news which continues to inform people, whatever their political views or persuasions. The impartiality of the BBC as a publicly funded broadcaster goes to the very heart of the contract between it and the licence fee payers it serves. It is set out in the royal charter, along with the underpinning framework agreement, and the Government fully support the BBC in the action it takes to uphold that impartiality.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, in many organisations, the chairman’s role includes that of being the chief brand ambassador. This week, the BBC has found itself under siege, but the chairman has been totally absent and has not said a word. If it looks like a lame duck and fails to quack, it appears to be a lame duck chairman—and, at the moment, a lame duck chairman who is under investigation on two counts, having been severely damaged by the Commons Select Committee. Does the Minister agree that, even if the chairman does not feel he should stand down, he should at least be suspended while these inquiries go on?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the BBC’s charter makes it clear that it is the director-general, as editor-in-chief of the corporation, who has final responsibility for individual decisions on the BBC’s editorial matters, not the chairman of the board or other board members; that is what has been discussed quite widely in the past few days. The director-general of the BBC has made this clear, saying on Monday that he is

“absolutely not affected by pressure from one party or the other.”

The corporation is upholding its impartiality, as it absolutely should. The Commissioner for Public Appointments, as he is entitled to do, announced a review of the appointment process for the chairman of the BBC; we await the outcome of that review.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, does the House not remember those halcyon days—oh, okay. If you want.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

What courtesy from the Conservative Benches—there is hope for them yet. It is our turn; that is why I am standing.

My Lords, the Minister of State, Julia Lopez, made my heart leap yesterday when she told the Commons:

“The BBC is a world-class broadcaster, a creative engine and a cultural institution producing some of the best television and radio in the world.”—[Official Report, Commons, 14/3/23; col. 714.]


She slightly rolled back on that later when addressing some of her Neanderthals by reassuring them that the mid-term review in 2024 would deal with some of their concerns. I wonder: will that mid-term review be just a one-way street of more squeezes on the BBC or will other things be considered, such as the decision to do away with the UK BBC News service? Will it consider the long-term impact of the campaigns run by the Murdoch press, Associated Newspapers and Express Newspapers, all tax-exile owned and all with a massive self-interest in diminishing and attacking the BBC? Will the mid-term review be a genuine two-way street, bringing things back as well as getting rid of them?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The terms of reference for the mid-term review were published in May last year, so the noble Lord can consult them. As set out in the charter, the review will consider the governance and regulation of the corporation. As agreed with the BBC, Ofcom and the devolved Administrations, it will consider how the governance and regulation of the BBC delivers the requirement on impartiality in the charter. I hope also to make the noble Lord’s heart glow by associating myself with my honourable friend’s comments.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, does the House not remember those halcyon days of the Blair premiership when not only was Gavyn Davies, a Labour donor, made chairman of the BBC but Greg Dyke, another Labour donor, was made director-general of the BBC? I do not remember everybody talking about impartiality then. Can my noble friend the Minister not only remember that but answer me this: does he think that £1.35 million is worth spending on a single presenter who used to be very good at football?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I remember those days. As noble Lords would expect, an organisation as august and that has been around for as long as the BBC draws people from all sorts of backgrounds, political or otherwise. Long may it continue to do so and long may such people continue to discharge their responsibilities impartially. How the BBC decides to spend the money that it gets from licence fee payers is for it to decide and justify to those licence fee payers.

[The Lord Bishop of Southwark]

My Lords, political pressure on the BBC is not new. Mr Wilson, Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair all had their problems with the BBC. As in this place, those in power there face scrutiny, but does the Minister accept two things that are now in play when it comes to impartiality: first, the long-term commodification of the BBC, which has eroded its funding and its service commitment to the nations and regions at home, to religion, to culture, to education and to our mutual flourishing through both the expression of heightened values and entertainment; and, secondly, the fact that impartiality is about fairness? Who determines what is impartial? It should not be the Government.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As I say, the process for the BBC’s impartiality is set out in its royal charter and framework agreement; it is for the BBC to discharge that. The Government also made Ofcom the independent regulator of the BBC in 2017, with a further independent body responsible in that process. The BBC will receive at least £3.8 billion for the remainder of the current charter period in annual licence fee funding. On their part, the Government have also provided further funding, such as the announcement this week of a £20 million uplift for the BBC World Service in recognition of the crucial role that it plays. The right reverend Prelate is right to point to the many important roles that the corporation plays in our national—and, indeed, the world’s international —life.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an ex-governor of the BBC. I echo the view that was expressed about Gary Lineker and his salary. He is like many people who have been in that position in the past and who believe that they are irreplaceable. Your Lordships will remember that Jeremy Clarkson and the “Top Gear” team thought that they were irreplaceable; needless to say, “Top Gear” thrives just as successfully without them. I have conveyed in writing to the director-general my advice to get rid of the old boys’ club of Lineker, Shearer and Wright, and replace it with at least one or two women, which we could probably do for half the price, and they would do twice as good a job.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Half the price?

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

If the noble Baroness could just pause to hear the end of my contribution, I do not believe that we should be paying those kinds of prices for presenters. If the BBC did this—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

The noble Lord is talking rubbish.

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

It is so kind of my noble friends to assist me. If the BBC did that, we could save the BBC Singers, which provides a really important contribution to the country.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Decisions about salaries are for the BBC, but the Government have urged transparency over those payments, so that licence fee payers are aware of how their money is being spent.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a freelance composer and broadcaster for the BBC, although at a somewhat less august salary level than Mr Gary Lineker. The Minister would probably accept, as we all do, that there is a difference between not making political observations in programmes that you are aligned to and being free to express your conscience when you are talking about something which has nothing to do with sport or, in my case, music. Does he understand that musicians feel rather beleaguered, given the Arts Council England cuts, coupled with this own goal of scrapping the BBC Singers, the only professional group of its sort in this country?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Questions about how people who work for the BBC use social media and how their activity adheres to the BBC’s social media guidelines are for the corporation to determine. The noble Lord, who does not tweet, I think, and certainly not in a way that causes any controversy, is right to draw attention to the decisions about the BBC Singers and BBC orchestras, although again those decisions are for the BBC to set out and justify to licence fee payers, in the context of how it spends their money. The noble Lord referred to Arts Council England cuts. I remind him that the amount of money being dispensed by Arts Council England in the new portfolio is larger than in the previous one, and classical music accounts for a great deal of its musical output. However, he is right to draw your Lordships’ attention to this important issue.