Channel 4: Privatisation (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to be here. I am delighted to be speaking to a report introduced so wonderfully by the noble Lord, Lord Best, to whom tribute has been paid from many quarters for the clarity with which he put his view and for the intelligence with which he anticipated so many of the points that I want to make. I was delighted to hear the impassioned speech by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, which swept us off our feet. He told us of his watching habits at the age of 11. It was a long list. My only disappointment was that it did not highlight a programme on which I appeared more than once: “The Big Breakfast”. I shall never forget the experience of sitting on the studio couch being interviewed by two puppets called Zig and Zag. Some of the committee work in this House has made me aware of that experience and of some of its colour.

The future of Channel 4 must be a matter of concern for all of us. Since it was set up in 1982, it has become part of a brilliantly conceived ecosystem of free-to-air provision for the British public, and we ruin or harm or diminish it at our peril. I, too, regret that this report has taken so long to come to our attention on the Floor of the House. When I was reading it, I found it difficult to understand why the Government had set their heart on privatising Channel 4 at all. There were many financial, regulatory, commercial and professional voices mentioned in the report, even competitors in the field, and the Government’s position seemed so lonely among all the very different advice that was being given. The noble Lord, Lord Best, mentioned that an American might have bought Channel 4 if it had been for sale. We can imagine what such an American might have done with the remit which currently governs Channel 4 programming. It would not have been the same at all. It is not going to produce much money to do all those things, such as stimulate public debate, inspire change and nurture new and existing talent, which is truly radical.

I would add to the programming that has been mentioned the extraordinary film series, “The Promise” and “The State”, which Peter Kosminsky brought to our screens and which, very bravely, took us into the heart of complicated situations in a graphic way, as only the arts can succeed in doing. It was strange for me, a newcomer to this business, to read of the Government’s commitment to privatisation. Possible motives have been alluded to by noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. However, wiser heads prevailed and the project was abandoned. Privatisation went off the table, and we came to the question of nations and regions—and nobody, of course, can be against that.

We have had different advocates. My noble friend Lady Quin made an impassioned plea for the north-east. If I were less bound by my brief, I would go to town on the case for Wales. The barely disguised suggestion is that a significant part of the core business, if not all of it, should up sticks and move to another part of the country, although the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, have suggested more varied ways in which that might be achieved.

The Secretary of State announced the Government’s U-turn on privatisation from the heart of Media City in Manchester. We have heard about the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Best, received, and we have seen a copy of it. She made a big speech in Media City, in which she turned her attention towards regionalisation. She declared herself,

“unsympathetic towards those who recoil in horror at the very idea of media jobs being based outside the capital”.

Indeed, she offered Manchester as an example of what was being done for the industry by people who had shown themselves prepared to move out into other parts of the land.

We should be careful about facile comparisons. I happened to be working with the BBC in a peripheral way when, during the 1990s, some departments were being decanted from London to Manchester. I became aware of numbers of experienced staff who had roots, mortgages and children at school in London which they simply could not abandon. Others have mentioned the plight of such people. They are real human-need stories. There will always be a human cost to such a plan. It was the existence of already vibrant BBC activity in Manchester, together with the eventual presence of ITV, that allowed those relocated departments the possibility of achieving critical mass as the bold new venture was developed.

There is no similar place beckoning the Channel 4 operation. Indeed, Channel 4 has conducted its own consultation process, which has made it aware of the need to provide greater investment in programme commissioning that favours the nations and regions far more than at present. We can only hope that, when Alex Mahon comes into office as the chief executive officer, she will take those plans forward. It is worth pausing to rejoice at the fact that a woman is to be the chief executive officer, a first for a major broadcasting company in this country, and to talk about the fact that, while mention has been made of the fact that diversity on the board is less than it could be, there has been a terrific commitment to the question of diversity as far as it includes disabled people. You cannot win everything, but I should say that while Channel 4 has struggled with the question of diversity and there are things that it might have done better, there are things that we must rejoice at its having achieved.

There is no familiar place for Channel 4 to relocate to. In my view, everything would have to begin several steps back from what happened in Manchester. Nor should we forget that, at least in those days, the BBC did most of its work in-house. A lot more is put out now to independent companies—then it produced its own programmes. Channel 4, as many have said, does not work that way; it commissions its work from outside bodies. Are we aware that it sets up and employs 3,000 people across the nation and has spent £1.5 million on such programmes, a not inconsiderable amount? Just think of “Location, Location, Location”, whose production team is based in Glasgow and which films throughout the country, or “Hollyoaks”—why has no one mentioned that? It is Channel 4’s largest production and is rooted in the north-west, with 70% of its workforce drawn from the area. Then there is “Ackley Bridge”, a new school drama that is filmed and based in Halifax.

I suspect it would be interesting to look more closely not just at Channel 4 in this regard but at where terrestrial broadcasters as a whole currently commission their programmes, to ensure that independent producers in all areas of our regions and nations get the chance to tell their stories and broadcast their ideas about the world, each from their own perspective. This is not just a Channel 4 issue; ITV and the BBC, which are public service broadcasters too, should be asked, as well as Channel 4, to defend their commissioning policies. A key feature of our terrestrial television system is that it is a complex interrelated ecology where the channels compete on quality and diversity so that audiences receive the best service possible.

We damage Channel 4’s ability to maintain and develop its levels of performance at our peril. Since earlier I heard debates about implementation and transitional arrangements, I note that Channel 4 is awaiting the arrival of a new CEO, so perhaps this is the time to just wait a moment, consult and see how things turn out. Perhaps “Festina lente”—“Make haste slowly”—is the best advice that we could give ourselves.