BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Bragg Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, first I thank my noble friend Lord Young for calling this important debate, and for speaking so well and covering so much ground. It is a starting shot in what will be a long and, regrettably, corrosive ideological battle. I declare an interest: I work as a freelancer for BBC Radio 4.

My greater interest is that, as far back as I can remember, the BBC, one way or another, has entertained, educated and informed me and millions of others through radio and television—and it still does. For almost 100 years, it has been in the grain of our lives—and it still is. The BBC is the sum of its programmes. Its range is incomparable—from the cosmic to the minority to the eccentric—and it is envied globally. Yet it appears that this Government want to thwack—a word straight from the nursery—the BBC. The Tories have had a good record of thwacking over the years. The northern manufacturing industries, which once compared with anything in Germany and France, were thwacked by Mrs Thatcher. How else could an island that began shipbuilding in the time of Alfred the Great have totally lost its shipbuilding traditions? Local government —the proud continuation of ancient and independent regions—has also been thwacked, and on it goes. The BBC needs to be redirected because of the new television armadas storming across from America—aided and cheered on by Dominic Cummings —elegantly eviscerated by my noble friend Lord Puttnam and scorched by my noble friend Lady Bakewell.

The BBC licence fee should be examined, but the best way is to reform, not dismantle, it. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that the licence fee, so far, is the least bad method of doing that. A means test, one way or another, might work—perhaps there are other ways—so I agree with the noble Lord on that one. The declared policy of sending a wrecking ball through an organisation that has taken almost a hundred years to evolve and is now fine-tuned to every class, age group, creed and niche in this country is childish. The BBC is deeply intermixed and intermeshed with our culture. For many people, it is our culture, so why tear it apart? Is this the best we can do? It is depressing that the Conservatives do not understand the monetisation of the big American networks—with their many billions of dollars of debt—which are very limited in their programme spectrum and, as far as this country is concerned, are a model from hell. We do things differently here. Many Americans believe that they should learn from us, rather than we from them, in the matter of range, reach and depth of broadcasting.

Post Brexit, we have to build a new country. We have strengths in the City, which need to be affirmed, but our three modern strengths—our universities, culture and media—are all accelerating employers, capable of being even bigger earners and deeply influential for this country’s good. The BBC is key to all of these—for instance, almost two million people work in the media. It has grown rapidly since the 1940s and outstrips most of the traditional industries. There is no reason why those two million should not turn into three or four million, providing skilled, niche jobs globally and in demand. The BBC is the core of this development. We could become a media island, rivalling Silicon Valley.

Link this with the strength of our universities. English universities are rated as the top universities in the world—not least the Open University—and their research departments are growing at pace. We then have the widely praised strength of the arts, in which the BBC is a huge player. This trilogy—the media, universities and the arts—could rise post Brexit, but not if we fail to see the profound, interwoven basic structures at work. The BBC is crucial to this.

What sort of country do we want to be? That is the question. The BBC is key to a transformation that will be sorely needed, not only in itself but in what it feeds and drives. Above all, it stands for and tells us who we are. That cohesive self-knowledge is increasingly necessary and energising in what is a fractured time. People in this country will march for the BBC because they know that, since the beginning, it has served them well in a democratic and equal way. For almost 100 years, they have paid for it with very little complaint. It is a public service; it belongs to them and we cannot let them down.