Broadcasting: Recent Developments

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to those who have given theirs to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for securing this debate. He has been a seasoned journalist, a campaigner on issues such as AIDS and has now taken up the cudgels on behalf of the really important issue of broadcasting. I am also delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, or, as those who have listened to Times Radio occasionally must have learned to call him in the morning, “our Ed”. I know a lot more about “our Ed” in the morning now than I might have chosen to, having been a regular listener—speak to me later.

The time has come when we now have a wide choice of what to watch and listen to. Clearly, some producers allow their presenters rather more leeway, which is why they run over time. Others keep them more to the minute, which is why the BBC has such a reputation.

We have a responsibility in this House to look after the BBC. It is a repository of trust and values that simply does not exist anywhere else. It used to be the case, when I started in journalism, that the first-person pronoun never appeared. There was a firm dividing line between news and comment—but that barely exists now. The BBC at least tries to preserve it in a way that other news organisations simply do not.

Indeed, in some of our broadcasters now, we have politicians not only as presenters but who also try to be newsreaders. Ofcom drew the line at that, quite rightly, but the High Court intervened and said that, even if they were not allowed to do newscasting, they could do current affairs programmes. It is a very fine line. Ofcom had been minded to ban politicians from presenting current affairs programmes; following the ruling in the High Court, it had to give way on that. I now challenge noble Lords to find a politician who is not presenting current affairs as news on certain channels. This is not the way that broadcasting should operate.

On the other hand, I find myself listening to various broadcasts and podcasts where respected journalists suddenly turn into advertisers. There is a seamless progression from them presenting a programme to them promoting the promoter of the programme. They obviously see the difference, but some listeners may find it hard to spot the dividing line. That makes me feel uncomfortable, and I hope that media training in schools will alert people to where that difference should lie.

I am deeply concerned about the lack of local media coverage, and support the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, in his calls for more funding, if possible, for local news and more support for BBC local news. People are getting terribly worried about the lack of jury trials that is now being discussed. I worry about the lack of coverage of local court proceedings and local politics. Who knows what is going on in their local area now? That is a true deficit in democracy, which should cause us all to think hard.

In the end, this debate is clearly centred on the BBC, and there is no getting away from the importance of that organisation. We have heard from former directors-general of the BBC, who certainly know its value. While it is easy to pick up on the problems there, it is a wonderful organisation. Before I sit down, I remind noble Lords that the BBC spends £358 million on the World Service, while China and Russia combined spend between £6 billion and £8 billion on promoting their ideas across the world.