BBC: Unfair Pay

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with some of what the noble Baroness has said but I do not agree with the general statement that sometimes women work harder or are better at their jobs than men. We are talking about equality here. People should be paid the same for doing the same job and should be treated equally and given the same opportunities. As far as the BBC is concerned, this Government have made transparency available—both by introducing transparency regulations on the gender pay gap for all organisations with more than 250 employees and by making the BBC publish the details of employees earning over £150,000—so that we can look at this situation. We can get all organisations to do what they should be doing, which we all support, by making it transparent when they do not do so, so that their customers, employees and all the stakeholders that deal with them know the sort of organisations they are.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Does my noble friend not agree that it is unacceptable for this situation to continue so many months after the initial transparency regulations were introduced, with the exposure of the differences in salaries? Had this particular female employee of the BBC not resigned on a matter of principle, it would have been swept under the carpet. How can this situation, where she is so well qualified as a Mandarin speaker and outperforms her two male colleagues, persist?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am certainly not going to get into the details of whether she outperformed her male colleagues. People should be paid equally for doing the same jobs, but that does not mean that two people, be they men or women, will be paid exactly the same at different levels, as there are different levels of experience. The fact is that, if somebody does not believe that they are receiving equal pay for gender reasons, under the Equality Act they can go to an employment tribunal.

Brexit: Creative Industries

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

We have had many conversations with subsectors in the creative industries, and we are certainly open to more. We know that access to talent and skills is a key concern for the creative industries. That is why we are working closely with the Home Office and the Migration Advisory Committee, through its consultation, to feed in the concerns and demands of the sector.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend accept what this Government and previous Governments have done to support creative industries through tax relief, from which Screen Yorkshire and the UK film industry have benefited? Will he use his good offices to ensure that these tax reliefs continue? I should declare my interest as I was a shadow Minister campaigning for these tax reliefs and subsequently benefited from them.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I certainly accept the remarks of my noble friend. For example, since film tax relief was introduced in 2007, 2,070 films have been made accounting for £8.9 billion of UK expenditure. Only recently, we introduced tax relief for children’s television programmes and theatre tax relief, and we hope to continue to do so.

BBC: Equal Pay

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

It is a very large amount—but why draw the line at £2 million as opposed to any other amount?

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on serving so many women masters with such good grace and fortitude. Further, I congratulate the Government on introducing Ofcom as the first external regulator and for advising it to introduce an operating framework for the BBC. Should equal pay not be one of the first models that the operating framework should cover?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I do not agree with my noble friend. Diversity and equal pay are management issues for the BBC. The board of the BBC should be obeying the law and should be paying people on an equal basis, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or anything else. The BBC knows full well what our view is, and the director general of the BBC is committed to doing something about it by 2020.

Rural Areas: Superfast Broadband

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is absolutely right. We are now not prescriptive about any particular technology to reach the final 5%, as 95% will be covered for superfast broadband by the end of this year. Therefore, any procurement supported by BDUK is done through open tenders on a technology-neutral basis. Projects supported since 2016 have included fibre to the cabinet, fibre to the premises and fixed wireless access. As regards his question about superfast broadband market test pilots, the report is scheduled to be released shortly.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend give the House an assurance that 95% of the digital infrastructure investment fund will be spent in the 5% hardest-to-reach areas? Does he agree that it is unacceptable that doctors’ surgeries, schools, rural businesses and farms are deprived of speed and good access to infrastructure in the 21st century?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The digital infrastructure investment fund is purely for fibre projects. There may be hard-to-reach areas where fibre is not the answer—where, for example, it may be satellite or fixed wireless. Therefore, I cannot give my noble friend the assurance she seeks. The Government are working hard to reach those areas but the digital infrastructure investment fund is purely for fibre, which, of course, is very important for ongoing technology such as 5G.