Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Pannick and Baroness Kidron

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 29th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I have added my name to Amendment 32E from the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and I agree with all the speeches that have been made in this debate. The process for setting the licence fee is manifestly inadequate; it lacks transparency, fails to identify—far less promote—any coherent principle, and allows and indeed encourages a last-minute political fix. Does the Minister really think that this is a satisfactory means of promoting the independence and efficacy of the BBC?

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I am also a member of the Communications Committee. My noble friend Lord Best set out our position so well that I shall not repeat it, but I wanted to add one thing. I could not possibly exaggerate the feeling of those who came before us giving evidence that the BBC must not only be independent from the Government of the day but must be seen to be independent. That is really what these amendments are struggling to insist on—that it is truly seen by all parties as independent.

On a secondary point, while we did our review I was struck by the huge number of duties that the BBC was given, many of which were very right-minded, about regions and nations and the types of programming that it must do, as well as about training. Those are all things with a cost, and a subset of the amendments is the suggestion that somebody independent gets to look at the duties of the BBC and set them against the cost of doing those duties. Perhaps we will have more reasonable conversations about what those duties ultimately are when we understand what they cost.