BBC: Finance and Independence

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the executive director of the Telegraph Media Group, which I fear damns me in the eyes of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, but I am none the less very grateful to her for introducing this debate.

Our reverence for the BBC’s role as a content provider—about which we have heard a great deal, and which I share—must not be allowed to obscure the realities of its commercial impact on the rest of the media; in particular, the private sector news media publishers, which face an extremely tough time as they transit from print-based operations to global digital news suppliers. If we are to have a vibrant democracy in which government is held effectively to account, then we need plural provision of news, with a commercially successful private sector news market, providing a range of partial and campaigning journalism, operating alongside licensed and impartial TV news provision. How these two parts of the media ecosystem develop over the next 10 years and relate to each other is the crucial issue at the heart of the charter review, especially with regard to the BBC’s digital operations, on which I wish to concentrate.

The reality of the media world is that traditional news media silos are disintegrating and all those seeking to provide news are now competing for audience in a single, global online market. That is a tremendous opportunity for innovative companies, as it provides a route to global audiences, but it is also fraught with danger where the playing field is uneven. In this period of rapid transition, the impact of a continually expanding and licence fee-funded online news operation, using the BBC’s network of overseas journalists to underpin those commercial news operations and producing ever more local UK news and magazine-style content, will, if not tackled, be highly damaging for the development of commercial news brands—if not lethal for many. The sums of money the BBC invests in BBC Online are huge. The headline figure alone is £201 million, but that masks the huge advantage from the £l billion spent on the World Service and BBC Radio. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that that is how the BBC is crowding out its commercial rivals. It provides a competitive advantage which is unsustainable if we are to maintain a plural media market.

Rather than seeking continually to expand online content at a time when resources are stretched, surely the time is now right to subject it to far tighter control in terms of its market impact, something particularly important in the local market—which is particularly important in the local market. I welcome the recognition from the noble Lord, Lord Hall, in his speech earlier this week that there is a problem in this area and, particularly, the belated commitment to partnership with the local press. However, his proposals go about it in the wrong way by foreshadowing a network of 100 local journalists “run by the BBC” and potentially supplied by them. That, I fear, would simply be a further attempt by the BBC to colonise local news. If it is serious, the BBC should tap into the pool of local news that is already provided by thousands of fantastic journalists working in the local press, rather than replicating it.

In general, the proposals on offer, although they go some way, are too timid and ignore the cultural and oversight change that will be essential to make partnership a reality. They certainly do not go far enough in terms of scrutiny and control of the BBC’s online services.

In my view, the new royal charter must: contain specific proposals for the scope and purpose of the BBC online as it relates to news provision and content; introduce a much more effective process for triggering market impact assessments of pre-existing and future initiatives; establish a binding commitment to source and pay for news content from existing news providers; and set up a system of accountability that ensures that its promises are adhered to. Regrettably, in the past, we have seen far too many promises that were not fulfilled. I must say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that change from within is a very good thing, but change from within never seems to happen.

This charter review is the last opportunity to achieve durable reform that protects a plural media market. Either the BBC can play a genuine partnership role, focus its resources on what it does best and help nurture the transition now going on within the commercially funded news market, or it can continue to colonise the online space in a way that erodes the wider news market and undermines the plurality on which democracy depends, leading to a news landscape dominated by social media and global news providers. I may be a lone voice in this debate, but I do not believe that anyone in this House would want that.