Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord St John of Fawsley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I am sorry; I have not yet resumed my seat. I was only collecting my notes. I shall not delay that event very long.

[Lord St John of Fawsley]

My Lords, I have been entirely convinced by the noble Lord’s eloquence in support of Welsh as a living language which it would be a tragedy to have lost. However, I think I detected, in the middle of his eulogy to the Welsh language, a Latin phrase. Would he add his zest and enthusiasm to reviving Latin as a spoken language?

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

It is very late in this debate but I wholeheartedly agree. A survey carried out about 100 years ago showed that of words in general common parlance in the English language, 75 per cent were of Latin derivation. In Wales, it was well over 85 per cent. I believe that Latin should be revived, not as a dead language and not as a part of history, but as part of the building blocks of the languages that we use from day to day. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention.

I wish to raise a very narrow lawyer’s point. It would be ideal if the licence fee or an appropriate and guaranteed part of it could be diverted across to S4C straightaway without passing through the hands of the BBC at all, but I doubt very much whether that would be possible under the 2006 charter. I will not go into great detail about that now. If you try to deal with the licence fee then a price has to be paid. The Government, not cynically, but I think quite deliberately, are acting in a mercenary way. They are saying that they would be saving 94 per cent of the DCMS’s expenditure on S4C by transferring it to the licence payer. That is exactly it. In so far as the effect of that is concerned I will refer only very briefly to Article 47 of the 2006 charter, which sets out, almost like the main clause in the memorandum of a company, the main purposes. Article 47(4) says:

“However, the BBC may use these general powers only for the purposes set out in articles 3 to 5”.

Articles 3 to 5, of course, govern the situation completely in this connection. Article 3 says:

“The BBC exists to serve the public interest … The BBC’s main object is the promotion of its Public Purposes”.

Then it says this:

“In addition, the BBC may maintain, establish or acquire subsidiaries through which commercial activities may be undertaken to any extent permitted by a Framework Agreement”.

In other words, is the price of diverting part of the licence fee to S4C the fact of making S4C a subsidiary and slave of the BBC? As a lawyer, or an ex-lawyer, I have grave doubts that that is exactly the case; if so, it is a price that simply should not be paid.