Media Bill

Debate between Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie and Lord Bishop of Leeds

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 1 to 3 and 7, to which I have added my name, and in doing so, I declare my interest as laid out in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland.

The Bill will set the standard for public service broadcasting and is much welcomed. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has spotted that currently the Bill removes any overarching principles for public service broadcasting, which I believe is a glaring omission.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has just excellently introduced, the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain have been at the foundation of our public service broadcasting for over 100 years. These overarching principles mean that the values, objectives and practices of public service broadcasters are very different from those in the private sector.

A 2022 report by the Ada Lovelace Institute highlighted the importance of the Reithian principles that guided public service broadcasters in what stories they chose to tell, how they were told and presented, and what programmes were commissioned. By extension, they reflect, support and stimulate the nation of the UK in all its diversity and creativity, and therefore support our world-leading creative industries.

Public service broadcasters already face criticism that they do not sufficiently reflect the public whom they serve, which is why the BBC and Channel 4 attempted to address that by moving parts of their workforce and commissioning outside London—but more of that in amendments to come. In contrast, private organisations such as Netflix are designed to maximise market share and shareholder revenue. They use recommendation systems to drive user engagement with their content. They may have some consideration of social values, but public service organisations are currently legally mandated to operate with a particular set of public interest values at their core. Without these amendments, we would lose that. PSBs are building their own recommendation systems to compete in this new digital age but, as the Ada Lovelace Institute report highlights, they will not work unless public service broadcasters are clear about their own identity and purpose.

Amendment 3 reinstates the role of PSBs in supporting our creative industries in all their diversity. The regional production of drama, comedy, music and other visual and performing arts programming plays a vital role in enabling new talent to be heard, local creative economies to be sustained and regional culture to be supported. The UK’s network of PSBs provides a platform for artists, musicians, songwriters, producers, composers and choreographers, enabling them to reach a wider audience and to gain exposure. For example, many people’s first experience of ballet is only through the Christmas Day ballet production. It is a two-way relationship: as government and funding bodies encourage live performing arts companies to make the most of digital viewing opportunities, it is in partnership with the broadcasters that those skills can be developed.

Amendment 7 recognises that education is not solely the preserve of children and children’s broadcasting. Education is a crucial part of the public service broad- casting requirements. Several of the statutory requirements set out in Section 264 of the Communications Act 2003 relate to educational objectives. The noble Baroness’s amendment picks up on them and ensures that PSBs continue to have a role in lifelong learning.

Engaging adults in lifelong learning, to ensure that we continue to invest in the development of crucial skills, is a theme that emerges from numerous Select Committee reports from your Lordships’ House. Lifelong learning is vital to the success of the UK economy. Broadcast media has a unique power and reach as a medium for inspiring adults to take advantage of learning opportunities and can engage unconfident learners who would not normally consider the possibility of lifelong learning. It is therefore essential that requirements are in place that encourage broadcasters to produce high-quality educational programmes and to give them sufficient prominence to attract viewers.

This is our opportunity to ensure that we clearly define public service values for the digital age. Public service broadcasters are already delivering against the Reithian principles and—as far as I understand from my conversations with some of them, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said—we believe that they have no objections to these amendments. As a group, the amendments seek to ensure that PSBs continue to provide content considered of value to society, if not to the shareholders. I wholeheartedly support them and hope that the Minister will too.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I support the first four amendments in this group—Amendments 1 to 3 and 7—and will not repeat what has been said so far in the excellent two speeches. However, I support them for a different reason: I think that they lay the ground for later amendments, particularly Amendments 9, 13 and 32. I will make a serious point about those amendments now, partly because I may have to be on a train when the Committee gets to them.

If we take seriously the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain, it means doing what the inscription from George Orwell outside the BBC spells out: that people are enabled to be confronted by, or to hear and see things, that

“they do not want to hear”.

That is essential to public service broadcasting and democratic education. That is also why, when we get to Amendments 9, 13 and 32, it becomes so important to cite in the Bill some of the genres that need to be not just glossed over or assumed but recognised as essential to inform, educate and broadcast in an entertaining way. As was said earlier, not everything has to be serious; often we are informed and educated by being entertained. The reference to “EastEnders” was pertinent: we gauge the public conversation by what we see being conversed about in things such as soap operas.

That is why—I would say this, wouldn’t I?—portrayal of religion is so important and needs to be named, as well as children, the arts, science, and so on. These are often called minority interests but in fact, because something is of interest to minorities does not mean that the majority should not be aware of what those interests are. Whenever we talk about religious broadcasting —I refer to my previous interest as the chairman of the Sandford St Martin Trust for nine years—it is not about proselytism or propagating a particular world view; it is recognising that you cannot live in the world and understand it if you do not understand religion. That should be obvious, given what is going on in the world at the moment. We cannot understand the Sunni/Shia divide and how that impacts on politics in the United Kingdom if we do not get informed and educated about that. So it is not about proselytism; it is about education, social cohesion and so on.

That raises another question that I wish to put at this point. How is Ofcom supposed to be able to report on whether PSBs are fulfilling their remit if there are no metrics in the Bill to say what fulfilment of the remit might be? At Second Reading we were told that it will be left to “flexibility”. Flexibility is as flexible as you want it to be, but it is quite possible to go through a whole year and just have a subjective account of what constitutes, for example, religious broadcasting or children’s broadcasting, which puts it into a narrow silo and which, for example, counts out entertainment as a medium for these things. If there are no metrics, how are we and Ofcom to know whether the remit has been fulfilled? I have been told that it cannot be the number of hours you allot to a particular genre, or a percentage quota. I am very happy with that, but what are the metrics going to be? There have to be some; otherwise, it is totally subjective.

We can speak nobly about creative industries, the creative process and what ought to constitute public service broadcasting, but if we do not put some detail in and nail down those things, name the genres and say something about metrics other than flexibility, we cannot guarantee that the remit is being fulfilled.