BBC: EU Coverage

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, for tabling this debate today. Like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I am grateful to him for drawing our attention to the report by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, which was published before I joined your Lordships’ House. I was not aware of it before this debate, but I have now read it and found it very persuasive and perceptive. It raised a number of challenging issues about not just the BBC’s but the media’s coverage of European issues. Many of the issues are commonplace but, as the report quite rightly acknowledges, as the public service broadcaster, the BBC bears a particularly heavy responsibility for raising public awareness and maintaining a scrupulous standard of impartiality on this issue.

However, it is also clear that it was a report very much of its time—it is, after all, nearly 10 years old—and having read the BBC’s response and the commitments contained within it, it seems that a genuine and robust attempt was made to address the structural and presentational weaknesses covered by the report’s recommendations. For example, the BBC now has a specialist Europe editor and the BBC News website has its own dedicated European section. The “Daily Politics” and “Sunday Politics” shows have featured MEPs on 172 occasions, with 51 of 73 UK MEPs being interviewed over the past 18 months. On Fridays, “Today in Parliament” on Radio 4 includes reports from Strasbourg, and BBC News broadcasts a half-hour programme, “Politics Europe”, at the end of each Strasbourg session. More recently, the debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage was broadcast on BBC2 and BBC News with an audience of more than 3 million viewers, so there is some evidence that the mechanisms for better coverage are in place.

Similarly, the BBC has visited and revisited the concerns regularly raised about impartiality, most recently in an independent report by Stuart Prebble which was commissioned in 2012 and to which the noble Lord referred. He drew on research from Cardiff University. The noble Lord said that he found its research untrustworthy, but that scepticism has been challenged and challenged again, and all the authoritative people who have looked at the research think that it stands up and confirms that a wide range of viewpoints and opinions on Europe can be found on the BBC.

While I do not think it is helpful to dwell overmuch on the Wilson report of 2005, I agree with some of the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and others about the lack of breadth and depth of coverage, which is a real challenge for us. This is a more fundamental challenge than simply requiring a review of the BBC’s output or, indeed, its charter because it stretches across from the media to our other democratic institutions. For example, there is a fundamental knowledge gap that needs to be addressed. We cannot lay that purely in the lap of the BBC. It starts at a much earlier level, in schools, where, as we know, political education is sparse and centred on UK institutions. Survey after survey of young people have shown that they have a real thirst for more information about what goes on in Europe. A European Parliament report shows that young people across the EU have the most positive feelings about Europe but also that two-thirds of them want to know more about its institutions and opportunities. This mood is reflected in a recent Anglia Ruskin University report which shows that 81% of British young people feel disengaged because they do not know enough about the EU, how it works and, above all, how it affects their daily lives. This is the point made by my noble friend Lord Giddens. There is a thirst for facts and information, not just for rhetoric.

This lack of information was reflected in the canvassing I was doing at the weekend. There was widespread apathy about the forthcoming European elections, a lack of understanding of the role of the European Parliament and a failure to grasp the range of social, environmental and economic benefits of the EU which impact on our lives. The challenge of filling this knowledge gap requires a greater commitment from all those involved in democratic and civic groups—we cannot lay responsibility for this solely at the door of the BBC.

Secondly, we need to recognise that one of the great strengths of the European legislative process is its focus on collaboration and negotiation. However, that very strength is also a weakness when it comes to media coverage as there are no gunfights at the OK Corral or headline-grabbing issues. A lot is done through deliberation, which is hard for the media to report effectively.

Ironically, although I very much share my party’s commitment to reform of the EU, including greater democracy in its institutions, I also accept that an EU style of politics provides a great alternative model to an electorate who are sick of British adversarial Punch and Judy encounters, which are driving so many people away from our own political institutions and politicians in the UK. If the British media were only better able to capture the essence of European political systems, we could have a more meaningful debate about the nature of political reform both here and in the EU.

Finally, I will pick up on the noble Lord’s question—the fundamental one we are debating today—about whether these issues should be raised in the context of the renewal of the BBC’s charter. I hope the Minister will agree with me that it would be completely inappropriate to start raising issues of content when the charter discussions take place. This is a highly sensitive issue but it is important that we reaffirm the BBC’s editorial independence, free from political interference, when the charter is renewed. The BBC has its own processes in place for monitoring and evaluating quality and impartiality, which need to be respected.

I hope we are able to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that we all bear some responsibility for extending knowledge and news about the EU. The debate should continue, but the BBC charter is not the right vehicle for dong this. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, that it is not in our interests to attempt to weaken what continues to be a respected and admired institution through this type of criticism at this point in time. Quite frankly, I do not think we would be thanked by the electorate or by BBC viewers for doing that—it remains a much loved institution, something which I think all the polling would confirm. We have had a good debate but the charter is not the way to take this issue forward. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.