BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, want to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Best, who chaired our committee. I also pay tribute to my fellow committee members. These are warm-hearted tributes, and I will explain why.

Our report reminds me of how one produces a soufflé. We served up a dish which looks simple. It contains clear and straightforward observations and recommendations. But as with a soufflé, it involved hours and hours of toil and sweat in the preparation. Only members of the committee who were involved in this process can appreciate what agonies we went through.

What happened was this: we did not want to have an inquiry into every element of the BBC, so we said that we would focus on specific elements, one being the public purposes of the BBC. Little did we know what we were getting into. We thought that this arena, the arena of public purposes, would be a light stroll in a garden involving a pair of secateurs for a little light pruning. Instead, we found ourselves entangled, almost strangulated, in a thicket of six public purposes, a further six public remits, 28 purpose priorities and 26 service licences. Add to these Ofcom’s own public purposes.

Not surprisingly, we decided that what were needed were not secateurs but heavy garden-shears. So we came to the view: “Keep it simple, please. Get back to the simple Reithian mission—the three objectives—to inform, educate and entertain”. We were then encouraged by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford to add a fourth: to reflect—the right reverend Prelate has spoken today about the need to reflect beliefs across the country. So our report says that the BBC should reflect,

“the different opinions, lifestyles, beliefs and values of the nations, regions and diverse communities of the UK”.

I hope that the BBC will take note of the recommendation to reflect the range of different opinions across the UK, because I do not think that it has always done so. I have heard highly respected BBC commentators, such as Nick Robinson, say that the BBC has sometimes been slow to reflect public opinion on controversial subjects. He cited, for example, Europe and immigration. I suspect that that is partly the result of a metropolitan bias in news reporting. How often have we heard the anchor-man or woman on the “Today” programme as they introduce the weather forecast say, “It’s raining over Broadcasting House. What’s it doing in the rest of the country?” It was therefore very encouraging when our committee went to visit the BBC in Media City at Salford Quays. That move has been a great success and not just for the BBC but for the locality and the region. The same will be true, I think, as the BBC extends its presence elsewhere—for example, in Cardiff.

The Government will soon publish their proposals on charter renewal, so I shall make a few points about that. It is right, as has been said by many noble Lords—notably my noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who is not in his place—that the BBC should be independent and be seen to be independent. Points have been raised about how the process by which charter renewal takes place should happen. I listened very carefully to what was said. As I understand it, the provisions of the BBC charter and charter renewal might be put into legislation—an Act of Parliament—and decided by Parliament, but I wonder whether that might not make the process more political. I wonder if my noble friend Lord Fowler can imagine the kind of amendments and who might move them that such a Bill might attract. I look forward to seeing what proposals the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has when he comes forward with his proposed Bill. Let us judge it when we see the details.

On the licence fee, I would not want to see a repeat of last year’s process, which pushed on to the BBC the cost of free licences for the over-75s. Not surprisingly, that has led to calls for a more independent system for setting the licence fee, and our committee indeed recommends one. But I am not sure that it is quite as straightforward as that. At the end of the day, the level of the licence fee surely has to reflect the scale and scope of the BBC. At least under the present regime, that will, at the end of the day, be decided by the Government. But let us suppose that the Government were to adopt a system of licence fee settlement along the lines of our report, and that it should be handed to an independent body to make a recommendation. Surely, there would have to be factored into that process a view or calculation of what efficiency savings are required of the BBC. Every well-run organisation and company looks each year at how it can run itself more efficiently and cut costs where it can. The BBC should not be immune from that process.

That brings me to the tough choices that the management of the BBC has to confront. It is faced with demands from the public for extensive news and current affairs, loads of sport, top-class drama, brilliant wildlife programmes, high-quality entertainment, comedy, the arts and the list goes on. But of course the BBC has very little control over its funding, so the demands made of the BBC in the new charter must be realistic—ambitious but not overambitious. In my opinion, the BBC cannot do everything unless the public are really prepared to pay for it. Therefore, I do not think that the BBC should always try to compete with the commercial channels at every level. But that emphatically does not mean that the BBC should confine itself to output that the market will not provide—the so-called market failure model. It is not a binary choice. What I want to see is market enrichment.

The BBC makes programmes which inform, educate and entertain, but which are distinctive because of their high quality. Its programmes are innovative, break new ground and are challenging. It has been mentioned in the course of the debate that programmes such as “The Great British Bake Off” and that of the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, “In Our Time”, are wonderful and brilliant. The BBC can and does make a huge range of programmes, and here in the UK we are blessed with an abundance of creative people within the BBC and among the independent producers with the ideas, imagination and expertise to conceive and make these programmes. They will go on doing so as long as the BBC has clear objectives, its culture and ethos encourages them, and as long as it is not swamped by an incomprehensible hierarchy of public purposes and remits involving endless and pointless box-ticking.

Give the BBC a new, straightforward board structure, appoint independent people at the top and establish a clear regulatory framework, and then quite simply let it get on with the job.