Public Service Broadcasting (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, mine will be a lonely voice in this debate. As my noble friend Lord Vaizey forecast, the note that I strike will be dissonant—indeed, given the tenor of your Lordships’ debate so far, not just dissonant but atonal, jarring and downright cacophonous. I must stand back and ask whether anybody, today, would propose funding one television and radio network with a poll tax on TV sets. That you would not invent something today is of course not a knock-down argument; I am enough of a Burkean conservative to see that. There are lots of things that we would not invent today but that we rather like, such as the use of French in diplomatic invitations; those resonant phrases about monarchy in the Book of Common Prayer, like shards left over from some ancient quarrel; or, indeed, the presence of hereditary legislators in the United Kingdom, who do such a disproportionate share of the unthanked and workaday tasks and who should stay, at least until the original deal is complied with. But I am not sure that the BBC is in that category.

A poll tax to fund one station made absolute sense when there was only one station. In 1922, it was very difficult to argue with, but even by 1955, when there were commercial alternatives, it was becoming difficult to justify in theory. Now, in an age of streaming, Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube, it has become unsustainable. The report that your Lordships are debating today took the figures up to 2018, and it is pretty clear that the lockdown has accelerated the trends that it identified.

There are a number of standard oppositional arguments levelled against the BBC: that you cannot justify the licence fee if you are trying to level up; that it is a poll tax on poor people; that the Bashir affair is part of what happens when an organisation is convinced of its rectitude because it is a public service dispenser; or that it is biased. I was surprised to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, say that it was attacked by both sides and that this showed it was doing something right—I would have thought that, if you are being attacked by all sides, there is at least a case to be made that you are doing something wrong. It seems to me that you cannot have total impartiality in any broadcast or newspaper—one person’s idea of impartiality is another person’s idea of tendentiousness. The closest you can get, therefore, is to have a multiplicity or plurality of differing voices, so that out of a cacophony of clashing interpretations, the listener discerns something close to the truth.

The reality is that, as our viewing and listening habits shift, even within the corporation people are realising that change is coming. I do not think that the BBC has much to fear from change. We are creatures of habit, and there is such a thing as first-mover advantage. Thirty years after the privatisation of telecoms, BT was still by far the largest producer of landlines, with more than 40% of the market. The idea that, if the BBC moved to a subscription-only system, people would suddenly give up watching “Strictly”, “EastEnders”, or whatever programme they enjoy, just does not take account of human nature.

Some aspects of the corporation’s work may be unsustainable. For example, I never understood why the BBC needed to get into local radio—it struck me as an area already well-served by commercial operators. But the things that people regard as gems, and always bring up in these conversations—the Attenborough nature programmes and so on—are precisely the pieces of programming that would be profitable under any dispensation and that will continue to be export revenue-raisers for this country.

I finish by addressing those in the corporation who are capable of looking at reform positively. If this change is coming and technology is ineluctably moving this way, the only choice is to stand there and be pummelled by the waves or to scramble nimbly on to your board and try to ride them.