BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Motion introduced by my colleague Lord Young of Norwood Green. As other noble Lords have said, it is good to speak about a great British achievement in the amazing cross-fertilisation between the BBC and public service broadcasting on the one hand, and most British walks of life, on the other—even extending, as we have heard, to new kinds of sporting activities.

As other noble Lords have emphasised, the BBC is extensively appreciated and trusted abroad. The change before us is that UK broadcasting could become a commercial commodity, so that we may not see in future the coverage of new developments in science, technology and culture. Which organisations will provide the brilliant and innovative programmes in these fields, and who will grow the future links between media, technical and education organisations?

The BBC has explained and publicised advances in science and engineering to schoolchildren through its Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution, which are now also available in other countries. How will these be continued in future? Every year those lectures are given in exciting and different ways, which schoolchildren really appreciate. The BBC’s TV programmes have covered clearly and visibly the hottest issues in science and the media, as we have seen in the past month with the coverage of coronavirus.

Of the greatest importance has been the BBC’s explanation of the science and economics of climate change. Of growing importance have been the innovations in public involvement at all ages, with all organisations—from 17-year-old Scandinavian schoolgirls to leading financiers and industrialists on the snowy slopes of the Alps. This has required the BBC’s scientific presentations to be very diplomatic, as I saw when I was chief executive of the Met Office, but also to avoid unscientific discussions. I would say that the BBC has succeeded in that, despite the questioning of it by some. There are sceptics; that makes the debates healthy. I believe that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, can be criticised, but this is not the time for that.

Another innovation in collaboration took place in the 1960s, between the BBC and the newly formed Open University, with excellent instruction for students and the public. Sometimes, as other noble Lords have said, the programmes provided information for the general public. Conversely, sometimes entertainment programmes were brought into the OU set of programmes; that has been very effective.

On a visit to China, I was very interested to see how the information was spread around the world. There they took a programme that I had made with the Open University and incorporated it into a local Chinese programme in the university. Formally, that approach rather breaks the usual restrictions on data exchange, but it was remarkable to see Chinese students take an OU programme that we were exploring in the morning, and by the afternoon turn it into something extraordinary. That kind of innovation in using data is currently very difficult, but it is important.

The future of public service broadcasting is extremely important. There are new and innovative ways of doing things, and one of the areas in which more still needs doing is local government.

Museums and Galleries

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, we should indeed be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for his long-standing commitment to this area. It is a privilege to participate in this debate. I declare an interest as a former trustee of the British Museum and a current member of the Science Museum’s fundraising trust. I am based at Cambridge University, which is fortunate to have several outstanding museums; these are not only key adjuncts to research and teaching, but important cultural assets for the city and the region and, of course, tourist attractions too.

Museums and galleries are a diverse and complex ecology. I will focus my comments on science museums but I reiterate the concern we all share about the vulnerability of all local museums and libraries in an era when local government funding is under extreme pressure. There is a risk that temporary squeezes could lead to irreversible losses to our culture and communities. All museums aspire to be inspirational, cultural, and educational for young and old and they have a duty to conserve the artefacts emblematic of our heritage. However, I think it is accepted that science museums have, in addition, a more explicit educational role than the others. In this sense, they overlap in their mission with so-called science centres. Some of the latter were established with capital from the Millennium lottery fund, and have struggled to sustain an income.

The Science Museum itself has long seen young people as a key part of its clientele. There were 650,000 booked school visitors at the museum last year. Its acclaimed Wonderlab interactive gallery started in London and another was opened in Bradford at the newly revamped National Science and Media Museum, boosting visitor numbers there by one-third. The Government’s industrial strategy depends on a lifeblood of young people fired up by science and technology, and museums have a key role to play here. All too often, the natural enthusiasm that primary school children have—for dinosaurs, space or tadpoles—erodes at later stages. Those who have carried on in scientific careers often attribute their continuing motivation to media and museums, more than to their formal schooling.

As has been remarked, a generic feature of our great collections is that they are London-centric. The Science Museum is unusual here; it is actually a federation. Its flagship institution is indeed in South Kensington, but it has four other museums: the National Railway Museum in York, where there is an exciting redevelopment being planned; its adjunct in Shildon; the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford; and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. This is at least some cheer for the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, as he explained earlier. More than that, the Science Museum has organised special exhibitions which travel internationally. Science is the most truly global culture. There is currently an “Illuminating India” season at the Science Museum, which has been a tonic for UK-India relations. A special success—achieved through seriously difficult diplomacy by the director—was the Cosmonauts exhibition, which displayed artefacts from the 1960s which had never been seen publicly before, even in Russia. They went to Moscow only after they had been shown here. It was a worthy celebration of the heroism of the early cosmonauts and of Soviet achievements in science.

As a follow-up, incidentally, the museum is acquiring the capsule in which Tim Peake the UK astronaut travelled from the International Space Station; he came down in a Russian capsule. This will go on tour in the UK, along with Stephenson’s “Rocket”—a nice juxtaposition. Incidentally, touring exhibitions obviously engender concern about the safety of fragile artefacts, but the Science Museum director noted that this was the last of his concerns in the case of the space capsule as it had survived, glowing white-hot, during its re-entry into the atmosphere at 5 kilometres per second—so travel to the north of England occasioned zero concern. It will surely attract a lot of interest.

This leads to another important point: the allure of seeing the “real thing”. The web is, of course, a huge plus in spreading knowledge virtually and an important element in all museums. However, it is absolutely not the case that the web erodes the motivation to see actual iconic objects, just as in other fields there is now growing demand for book festivals and live concerts. I have witnessed an extreme example of this in science centres, when a spoonful of moon dust—utterly nondescript-seeming grey soil—always attracts a crowd of wondering young people.

Of course, some artefacts have aesthetic as well as technical or historic appeal—old clocks and astrolabes, for instance. That seems less true, sadly, of their modern counterparts, although an engineering friend assures me that the intricate structures on a silicon chip have a certain austere beauty if you look at them under a microscope. Be that as it may, in an era where short-termism is ever more prevalent, we should treasure our museums and acclaim their successes and initiatives. We need to celebrate and understand our past and be mindful of the heritage we owe to past generations as this should inspire us to reach for a brighter longer-term future.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, would he like to mention engineering? It is very important and has hardly been mentioned.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

Sorry, this is a timed debate so we have only a very short time.