BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome this initiative by my noble friend Lord Young. I hope that he is pleased with the calibre of the response in this debate. For a thriving, open, free democratic society there is a high dependence on the information, the quality of analysis and the stimulus that comes from the media. There is a historic tension between the high calling of the media in a democracy and the commercial pressures that inevitably operate.

I am sad that so much of the media has succumbed to commercial pressures, and also to the political and vested interests bias of the ownership to which it is subjected. Public service broadcasting has always risen above that. In making that point I am thinking very much of Channel 4, not least its news, and ITV. But the guarantor of that standard has always been the BBC. Long may it remain so.

The BBC has become part of the fabric of British society. When I think of the profile of the Britain in which I want to live, the BBC is salient as a leader of what that society should be about. I think of the years of Lord Reith, the standards he set, the integrity he brought, and the influence that has lasted ever since. I think of the war years, when I was growing up—sitting with my father during an air raid and listening when, at the end of broadcasting for the day, the national anthem of every occupied country was played by the BBC. This is the significance: it was emotional, but what it said about the BBC and its role in society was real.

The overseas service has been very important in my life. I think of myself overseas, sometimes in quite difficult situations, waiting to hear the news, and the authority that it brought. I think of all those people, in too much of the world, where oppression, cruel warfare and tyranny are the order of the day. The BBC is a vital link to keep the idea—the ideal—of freedom, and of a future, alive.

We should never underestimate that. It literally has been the saving of many people in desperate situations, because they can cling to that vision of what society could be. What is it that has been central to the BBC’s standards? The courageous integrity of its journalists, no doubt, and its representation of cultural diversity—but above all, its relentless and total commitment to truth.