BBC Charter

Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I started off by looking at whether I should make this speech at all. I read what I said last time, in the debate instituted by my noble friend Lady Bakewell, and thought maybe I should not as I said then most of what I want to say now. However, I will say several things, which I hope will be brief.

First, as a Scot I do not want to see the Scottish Parliament in control of a BBC Scotland. I do not want the Scottish Parliament to have regulation of the broadcasting or internet services in Scotland. Lastly, maybe most mundanely but also most importantly, I do not want a “Scottish Six”. In other words, I do not want to see an hour-long Scottish programme at six o’clock. One has only to listen to “Good Morning Scotland” on the radio to know that that is not something any Scot in his right mind would want. By the way, my wife always insists on turning on BBC Radio Scotland on the bedside radio, not because she is interested in listening to the news or even the weather forecast in Scotland but because it puts her back to sleep. I said, “Let’s change it to Radio 4”, and she said, “But Radio 4—the ‘Today’ programme—keeps me awake”. So I do not want any of that.

I welcome the Minister to his new position and I welcome this debate, but at the end of the day we are not going to vote on the charter, we cannot amend it and we cannot do anything at all but have this debate today. That is it as far as I am aware. Several noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Birt, in particular—said that it is time the BBC was put on a statutory basis and that we had the introduction of a Bill to establish the BBC in that way. Then the House of Commons and the Houses of Lords, in which there are many experts as we have seen tonight, would be able to look at that, examine it in detail and amend it and then we could go into that process. It may be too late for that now, but I hope that in the very near future the Government will consider it and put it in process.

I have three reasons for this. First, I must say to my noble friend Lord Cashman—

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I just want to clear up a misunderstanding. The proposal is not for detailed legislative intervention in the BBC but simply for some standards and principles that the charter and agreement must meet. There is no suggestion of interference by statute in the BBC. It is setting down standards and criteria.

[Lord Maxton]

Well, the BBC is going to continue its life for the next 11 years, apparently, on the basis of the charter that we are debating tonight. There is no statute that we can seek to amend at this point in time.

I have to say to my noble friend Lord Cashman that there are people who are accountable to the licence fee payers. They are elected by the licence fee payers. They work along the Corridor from us. They are called Members of Parliament. They are elected by the licence fee payers and the BBC should be accountable to them. Therefore, that should be part and parcel of the work they undertake. Of course, that is not the only job they do; they do a lot of other work as well. I was one of them and I know they do a lot of other work. But the fact is that the BBC is a public body. It ought to be accountable to those who are elected to represent the people of this country.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, is absolutely right. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, has to be congratulated on the work he did as director-general in moving the BBC into the new media, but 11 years is a long, long time in the modern world. If you look back 11 years to 2005, just after I came to this House, you will see how much the media have changed during that period. If you look forward 11 years, it will change even more and even faster. I can watch any programme I want from anywhere in the world on this screen I am holding, but also by putting it on to my television screen through a variety of devices, which will get cheaper and easier to use as time goes on. We have to take account of that. Having an 11-year charter is a nonsense when we could have the BBC established as a statutory body, accountable to the public and to those who are elected by the public, and then change it as we go along. At the moment it is almost immutable and 11 years is too long. We have to consider whether or not the changes that are taking place in our society are those that are going to be necessary and are going to happen anyway.

Lastly, person after person has used the term “broadcasting”. We are moving, if we have not moved already, into an age in which broadcasting is the wrong word. It is now narrowcasting. We listen to what we want to listen to, we watch what we want to watch, when we want to watch it, on what device we want to watch it on, and how we want to watch it. That is the future, and we have to take that into account when we look at the future of the BBC.