BBC Funding

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, as we touched on in our debate on the BBC instigated by the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, before Christmas, it has been the hallmark of many Administrations to speak about the BBC with affection and sometimes criticism, as is the case with a much-cherished 100 year-old institution. The Statement that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State set out is the culmination of negotiations which began in November 2020, focused on helping licence fee payers in the short term and setting out a sustainable model for the BBC over the long term.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I cannot think of a time in the 100-year history of the BBC when an announcement of its future has been so politically motivated and accompanied by such ridiculous statements from the Minister responsible on Twitter. The one thing to grasp from the Statement was the offer of a proper, open, fair study of the problem of how we fund the BBC. If she wants to redeem her reputation, it would be by establishing such an independent, open commission to look at this problem and report, so that the next decision can be made in an informed way. Since we have just heard from one Bottomley, I shall quote another, the Father of the House, Peter Bottomley, my pair when I was in the other place. He said:

“The Conservative approach is to keep what is good, what works—and to improve whenever possible.”


What better terms of reference for such a future study of the funding of the BBC?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, Parliament is lucky to have a Bottomley in each House and I have the pleasure of calling them both friends. I will take the noble Lord’s suggestion about how we might have the debate that the Secretary of State has said we want to have about future funding back to the department. I welcome the fact that he is beginning to engage with it and look forward to having that debate with noble Lords across the House.

Covid-19: Entertainment and Arts Venues

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will discuss that matter with my honourable friend the Sports Minister. Of course, the Culture Recovery Fund has been helping organisations right across the wide range of things that people enjoy.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday’s newspapers reported on the new musical “Cabaret”. These five-star reviews remind us what a magnificent magnet our London theatres in particular are for inward investment and tourism. However, the Society of London Theatre is warning us that these new circumstances—and they are new; the Prime Minister had to have a special broadcast, and we have to have special legislation—mean that the theatres are now faced with entirely new threats, yet from the department it still sounds like it is business as usual, rather than action this day.

BBC: Government Support

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, first, I send my good wishes to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool on making his maiden speech. My parents were both born in Old Swan; they gave their allegiance to the cathedral at the other end of Hope Street. Successive bishops of Liverpool have worked hard to eliminate religious intolerance, and Hope Street is well named in housing those two cathedrals.

My first task is to thank the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, for introducing this debate with such authority. His words of wisdom, delivered in that mellifluous Cumbrian accent, always put me in mind of another iconic author and broadcaster: JB Priestley. The noble Lord’s “In Our Time” programmes are not just brilliant radio broadcasts in their own right; they will be repeated as source material for the study of all aspects of our social, scientific and cultural life for decades to come.

In the world of fake news, it is more important than ever to safeguard the impartiality of broadcast news. In its 100-year history, the BBC has been able to rely on cross-party consensus to support and protect our values. It would be a tragedy if that consensus were to break down now. As I have said before, much depends on the courage of those on the Government Benches to defend the BBC from this death by a thousand cuts.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said, one area where this consensus still seems to exist is in the recognition of the soft power and global influence that we receive from the BBC World Service. Today’s Motion

“takes note of the BBC’s value to the United Kingdom and a wider global audience”.

It would be helpful if the Minister could spell out in his reply the ongoing support and financial commitment to the World Service, which achieved its highest-ever global audience, of nearly half a billion people last year. Not only that, but all the research shows that listeners and viewers worldwide believe and trust the BBC. The research also showed that World Service users have positive perceptions of the UK and are more likely to use British goods and services.

Around the world, the BBC is associated with distinctive British values of fairness, integrity and impartiality. The quality of its coverage is underpinned by a two-way flow of experience and expertise between the BBC at home and the World Service. We all know from our own experience that, whenever a crisis hits the headlines, wherever it is in the world, people will switch on the BBC to find out the facts. We also know that to be true because of the way in which authoritarians seek to block BBC broadcasts and expel BBC journalists.

Brand Finance’s respected Global Soft Power Index said in its latest report that:

“The UK ranks 1st globally in the Media & Communications pillar—overtaking the US this year to clinch the top spot”.


It went on to say that the BBC

“is arguably the most respected and well-known media outlet in the world … and acts as one of the nation’s greatest soft power tools.”

That is the asset that this Government and Parliament must defend and nourish. We know the benefits that the BBC brings us, both home and abroad. We know who its enemies are and the damage that they have caused elsewhere to other broadcasting ecologies. Since this is a Labour Party debate, I think I can quote Nye Bevan: “Why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book?”

Football Clubs: Ownership Test

Lord McNally Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I do not know if the Premier League has answered that, but I will certainly take the point away and ask on behalf of the noble Lord. But, as I say, the takeover of Newcastle United has been a matter for it and the Premier League, which undertook its own due diligence as part of the owners and directors test.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I do not think anybody doubts Tracey Crouch’s commitment to reform, but as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, reminded us, the Mellor-Faulkner report 20 years ago was equally determined to clean up football and was defeated by vested interests within the game. Can the Minister assure us that there will be backbone in No.10 as well as with Tracey Crouch in seeing these reforms through?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Yes, and I would point to the Government’s manifesto, which committed to this fan-led review. Football is nothing without its fans. That is why we have taken action at every step to support them, both through the manifesto commitment but also during the pandemic by getting football back on television and using the events research programme to get fans back safely into stadia.

Ofcom: Appointment of Chair

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Again, I cannot be drawn into speculation on who may or may not have applied, but the general thrust of my noble friend’s remarks makes an important point. Civil servants do a brilliant job in delivering the laws that we enact in this place and in another place, but it is important that there is oversight not just from Ministers but from a broad range of people with experience in those fields. We want a broad range to apply to be the chairman of this important regulator.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that, according to the Daily Telegraph, the term popular in the 1980s that “Every Prime Minister needs a Willie” is back in fashion? That of course referred to the late and much lamented Viscount Whitelaw being available to Mrs Thatcher to curb her exuberances. Does he think that the present Prime Minister needs a Willie and, if he does, could he not look to the Privy Council Benches for an ideal candidate?

Channel 4: Consultation

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many responses they received to their consultation on A potential change of ownership of Channel 4 Television Corporation, which closed on 14 September.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter, and at her request, I beg to move the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, the consultation on the potential change in ownership of Channel 4 received around 60,000 responses. We are grateful for the public’s engagement on this matter and, indeed, for the response from the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and her Liberal Democrat colleagues. We are now working hard to analyse every response and to ensure that all evidence feeds into any final decision.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, is there not a lot of evidence that the overwhelming response, particularly from those with individual or organisational experience of the collective creative industries, was to warn against the privatisation of Channel 4? Will the Minister publish the advice that the department has received and, once he has analysed and considered it, would it not be a good idea to drop this piece of ideological vandalism?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is rather getting ahead of the process. No decision has been taken yet and we are carefully processing all the responses received. The consultation ran from 6 July to 14 September; as I said, it received around 60,000 responses, including more than 100 from the industry, all of which will be carefully analysed before any decisions are made.

Creative Sector

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very constructive debate, thanks in no little part to how my noble friend Lady Featherstone introduced it, and I congratulate her on that. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, on his maiden speech. I was interested to hear about his interest in exotic animals. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to the elephants in this House—I think he will quickly find that a number of species he thought were extinct are still on these Benches. Later, I shall ask the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, for some specific help on the issue that I want to talk about, which has already been introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh—namely, the future of the BBC.

Next year, on 18 October, we will celebrate the formation of the British Broadcasting Company in 1922 by a group of leading wireless manufacturers, led by Marconi. On 14 November 1922, the BBC began daily broadcasting from the Marconi studio in the Strand. In the last 100 years, it has been Conservative Governments who have quite often made the right calls in broadcasting, not least by establishing the BBC as the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927, protected by royal charter. Its first director-general, John Reith, gave it the guiding mantra which has served it so well for nearly 100 years: to educate, inform and entertain. In so doing, we have been able to talk to each other and to the world in a way which has won trust and respect.

In the last 12 months, more than 90% of adults used BBC services each week. It is an established fact that whenever there is a national or international crisis, as the Covid pandemic has proved, the nation and the world tune in to the BBC. In its educational output, the BBC provides support for students, parents and teachers while helping the next generation to connect with our culture, arts and the creative industries, as the noble Lords, Lord Cashman and Lord Vaizey, and my noble friend Lord Storey, emphasised in their speeches.

All this should be a cause of great celebration. One of our major contributors to soft power and the promotion of excellence in every part of our national life is approaching a major milestone. Yet in recent years it has come under constant attack from political and financial interests, which would like to see it undermined and marginalised. I have said before in this House that it would greatly contribute to public understanding if our newspapers, when covering stories about the BBC, followed the example of their financial pages and carried a short note setting out the financial interests of their owners. As my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones pointed out, we now see the BBC and other public service broadcasters having to compete with international streaming services whose inward investment, welcome as it is—and their very deep pockets—have only a glancing commitment to our creative industries or cultural identity, as they promote their international products.

Over the past decade, the BBC’s UK services have seen a 30% real-terms reduction in income while being obliged to maintain their commitment to quality and relevance across all our nations and regions. During a similar contraction in public service broadcasting in the USA in the 1980s, one commentator famously said, “We will only realise what we have lost once we have lost it”. The same will be said of the BBC if we continue to allow it to be crippled by the malice of those who wish to see it diminished and destroyed.

In the months ahead, government and Parliament will have to make some fundamental decisions about the future of broadcasting in this country, from the chair of Ofcom to the future of Channel 4, from regulation of online harms to the funding of the BBC. The changes in technology and the power of the tech giants and their streaming services could mean that our creative industries become merely the sub-contractors to an international, US-dominated market, setting its own cultural and creative agenda. The distinctively British cultural content and the values that underpin them will be diluted and lost.

Her Majesty the Queen, when addressing COP 26 earlier this week, urged the participants to move beyond the short-term political and become states men and women. The same challenge should now be made to the Government in respect of our cultural and creative industries, and in that we need the support of the Conservatives on their Benches in drilling some sense into the Government about their responsibilities. Let us celebrate the success of the past century but, more important still, put in place the legislation and funding which will allow the BBC to be the iron pole of excellence around which we can foster and encourage our creative industries in the decades to come.

Ofcom: Appointment of Chair

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

Lord McNulty?

[Lord McNally (LD)]

It is McNally—the noble Lord and I have known each other for only 30 years. It has already been pointed out that Ofcom will shortly be given unprecedented responsibilities for regulation, once the Bill on internet harms has passed this House. Noble Lords have already expressed widespread concern about how this appointment is being made. The Minister mentioned that an appointments panel is about to be appointed. Would it not restore public confidence if that panel were genuinely cross-party and independent in its judgments?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the appointments panel will of course be governed by the public appointments rules. The job description and the names of those on the assessment panel will be available on the public appointments website when the campaign relaunches. The noble Lord is right also to point to the importance of the ongoing preparatory work for Ofcom’s role in online safety.

UK Journalism (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, when I was a lad growing up in the north-west, there was a programme on Granada Television called “All Our Yesterdays”. Looking round the Room, I am reminded of that programme.

[A noble Lord]

Speak for yourself.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

Since I am not a member of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, I have the opportunity, without any self-interest, to pay tribute to him and to the other members of his committee for a job well done.

I can tell the noble Lord that, when I was leader of the Lib Dems in the first decade of this century, there were regular sorties, partly from down the Corridor, to try to wind up this committee, or make it a temporary committee. I say to the members of the committee and to noble Lords, “Cling on to this committee, because it has never been more needed than it is today and will be in the future”.

There have always been tensions between journalists and politicians. The late Simon Hoggart put it best when he likened the relationship to that between a dog and a lamppost. But we have to remember that, 30 years ago, David Mellor warned journalists that they were drinking in the “last-chance saloon”. Today, we have a former Daily Telegraph journalist in Downing Street, and the press, I suspect, feels more secure than ever from real regulation and accountability.

Only recently I was contacted by a lady whose daughter had been killed in a hit-and-run accident and who had been forced to suffer the tragedy of her loss but also the cruel insensitivity of the behaviour of the Daily Mail. She found that IPSO did not answer her complaint. I know the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, will be speaking later, but the truth is that IPSO does not fit the criteria that were set out in the Leveson report for a truly independent regulator.

There are those who would argue that Leveson is now in the past and that the new technologies make the old print media merely a sideshow. I am not sure that Leveson is now yesterday’s news. It was the first time in decades that anything remotely approaching a workable framework had been passed by Parliament. We now have a statutory body, the Press Complaints Commission, which is a model of arm’s-length independence, permitting no political interference. We have a recognised press regulator, Impress, which complies with all the Leveson criteria for independent and effective regulation and now has over 100 publishers signed up to the editorial code that it imposes. That structure protects the public from press abuse, protects journalists from being pressured into unethical and criminal behaviour and protects the whole concept of a free press from being pressured into a race to the bottom.

If the opportunity to build that groundwork around our media is refused by the big media owners, they cannot expect to be excluded from the provisions of the upcoming online safety Bill. My view is that we should split Ofcom into a technical and content oversight organisation, and allow no carve-out for print media from regulation by a revamped Ofcom. This makes sense as the line between print and online news becomes more and more blurred.

One other aspect of the report to which I draw attention is media literacy—the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, referred to it in detail in the report. The famous quote after the extension of the franchise in 1867 that now

“We must educate our masters”

is more true than ever. The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, also referred to the need for the BBC to mend its ways.

Perhaps, in that process, I might make another suggestion. Perhaps the print media could take a leaf out of their own financial pages. Often, when there is a story carried in the financial pages, you will see at the bottom, “The publishers of this newspaper have a financial interest in the takeover”, or whatever it is. So perhaps when the Times, the Mail or the Telegraph run their almost-daily anti-BBC stories, we could have a little note to say, “Our billionaire, non-UK resident owners will become even richer if they can succeed in reducing the funding and reach of the BBC.” It is just an idea.

In short—my five minutes is up—I think that this is a job well done by a very important committee and a useful primer for the online safety Bill to come.

Channel 4: Funding and Governance

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

There is no doubt that Channel 4 has performed very well recently but, as I mentioned in an earlier answer, all linear broadcasters are facing significant challenges from developments and disruption in the sector, including from international players. The consultation will give us the time and the information to consider how Channel 4’s future is best served.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, is it not quite clear that the Secretary of State and Mr Whittingdale support public service broadcasting like the rope supports the hanging man? Is it not time that the one-nation Tories stood up for one of the great creations of Willie Whitelaw, an organisation that has fulfilled its remit in spades?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware that I have often quoted both my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and the Minister for Media and Data, who have both been absolutely clear about wanting to see a thriving PSB sector, which is particularly important in a time of misinformation and disinformation.