Schools: Transgender Guidance

Debate between Baroness Barran and Baroness Hoey

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I recognise my noble friend’s concerns on this point. The department remains absolutely committed to sending the letter. He will appreciate that, with various ministerial changes, we have to get sign-off from the current ministerial team. There is no block to the letter going, and it will be sent shortly.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

Can the Minister tell us who exactly is being consulted?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

This will be an open, public consultation in the normal way.

BBC: Freedom of Information Legislation

Debate between Baroness Barran and Baroness Hoey

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to amend Freedom of Information legislation to ensure that the British Broadcasting Corporation is more transparent.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the BBC is a public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act. As with other public service broadcasters under the Act, the right of access extends to all information held other than that held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature. There are no plans to amend this provision.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the BBC is a huge institution that took £3.5 billion from the public last year, yet it is the least transparent in its attitude toward freedom of information requests, using, as the Minister has just said, journalism as a broad way of getting out of FoI. BBC Northern Ireland is particularly bad: it even refused an FoI request to tell us what it paid the polling company LucidTalk, which it employed when it could have used other existing polls. The BBC is unaccountable, and now that GB News is established and it has some rivalry, when will the Government change the FoI rules to ensure that the BBC becomes more transparent and more accountable for our money?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As I said in my initial Answer, there are no current plans to amend the rules. As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, requesters have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if they believe that a public authority has not complied with the Act. However, my understanding is that in no recent decisions has the Information Commissioner upheld any appeals against the BBC based on journalistic and other exclusions.

Television Licence Evasion

Debate between Baroness Barran and Baroness Hoey

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce legislation to decriminalise television licence evasion.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s response to the consultation states that

“decriminalisation will remain under active consideration while more work is undertaken to understand the impact of alternative enforcement schemes.”

We remain concerned that a criminal sanction for TV licence evasion is increasingly disproportionate and unfair in a modern public service broadcasting system. However, we recognise that changing the sanction would have wide-ranging impacts for licence fee payers and has the potential for significantly higher fines and costs for the small minority who evade.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am glad that the Minister repeated what the Secretary of State said last week—that he remained

“concerned that a criminal sanction for TV licence evasion is increasingly disproportionate and unfair in a modern public service broadcasting system.”—[Official Report, Commons, 21/1/20; col. 48WS.]

How then can the Minister possibly justify the continued harassment, intimidation and bullying by Capita of the many elderly, vulnerable households just trying to survive in the midst of a pandemic? Is it not time that the Government recognised that older people are turning off the BBC, younger people have never even turned it on, and the licence fee itself represents a bygone age and should be abolished and replaced by a choice-based alternative?

Sport Sector: Financial Support

Debate between Baroness Barran and Baroness Hoey

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right about the role that broadcasters can play, and my colleagues within the department are liaising closely with them on this point.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome very much the financial support for this level of sport, but does the Minister share my concerns about the really grass-roots sports clubs—the little clubs, the Saturday morning football clubs that are losing their match fees, and clubs with huge numbers of volunteers whom they are losing at the moment? I join the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who asked earlier whether the Government might consider, once the Covid situation has been sorted, that we may need a really root-and-branch review of everything that is happening in grass-roots sport and how it has been affected?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am happy to reassure the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Moynihan that I will take the suggestion of a thorough review back to the department, but I reiterate what I said earlier about our constant communication. In terms of the real grass roots, I absolutely echo the noble Baroness’s recognition of the value of those organisations to their communities, particularly during this Covid period, in which they have been setting up food banks and providing all sorts of extraordinary help in their communities. That is also why we committed £220 million earlier this year to make sure that exactly those organisations survive.