BBC

Lord Alli Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his congratulations; the noble Lord, Lord Hall, has indeed been very helpful in the whole process.

It is an 11-year charter. There is a five-year health check—I use those words advisedly. It is a health check. We are setting up a completely new system of governance. As my noble friend said, the BBC Trust has problems—he foresaw them, but not everyone was so able to do so—and it seems right that a health check, which is what it is, should take place.

[Lord Alli (Lab)]

Before I start, I say this to the usual channels. On a day when we are adjourning for pleasure and there is no other business, you should not be time-limiting this debate to 20 minutes for those of us on the Back Benches. We deserve a proper share of time. We are adjourning for pleasure today: there is no other business. From speaking to colleagues around the House, that is the feeling of the Back Benches, and you should listen to us a little more often.

The test today for me is: does the White Paper leave the BBC more independent, or less, than it is today? My fear is that it will be less independent. We know that the Secretary of State is a little less ideologically bent towards the BBC. When I read the White Paper, I worry that there are ticking time-bombs in it in three areas. One, which we have talked about, is the appointment of board members. The second is contestability and whether that money will grow in time and be used as a mechanism to siphon off the licence fee. The third and probably the most worrying is trying to force the BBC to do distinctive programmes. My fear is that that will be used to make it move off doing popular programmes which, from the consultation, is what the public and licence fee payers want.

Will the Government confirm that nothing in the distinctiveness mandate will limit the BBC’s ability to produce the programmes it wants, schedule them when it wants to and introduce the new services it thinks are right? Will the noble Baroness answer that question?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I thank the noble Lord for making the point about independence, but I take a different view, as I explained, on the first two items. It is clear to me that the way we have set this up, the BBC, with a stronger, more corporate board, and the editorial independence of the director-general, will be the prime focus to decide exactly on the programming. We will not be able to abolish “EastEnders” or do any of the things that people have been worrying about. It leaves the duties squarely with the BBC. There will be a modern regulator—there will be Ofcom—but it is not my experience that Ofcom interferes all that much with the content of individual commercial companies. There is occasionally the need for an appeal or complaint, and I am sure that that system will be moved across. Our general approach is to enhance independence, which I believe we have done, and make sure that the BBC can continue to make all the programmes it needs to make. I continually emphasise the point about informing, educating and entertaining, while of course serving all audiences. It will need to do that.