Gender Balance in Broadcasting

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Nadine Dorries

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Lady makes her point forcefully, and I shall come to the points that she and my hon. Friend have raised.

I have mentioned the editorial independence of the BBC, and it is important to point out that all broadcasters’ content and output services are exempt from the provisions of the Equality Act, to ensure that politicians do not interfere in the editorial independence of those broadcasters.

Ofcom, the independent regulator, also has a duty in regard to the promotion of equal opportunities, and we are in the process of reforming that. I must emphasise that that does not mean that we will take those obligations any less seriously. However, with the Equality Act 2010, we believe that equality duties will be undertaken more efficiently with legislation in one place. We will be consulting shortly on our proposals, and I hope that the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend will participate in the consultation.

I think that to talk about redressing the balance is to put it too strongly, but I want to use this opportunity to point out areas in which broadcasters have made progress. My hon. Friend and the hon. Lady have both, quite rightly, highlighted the imbalance that exists in broadcasting, but it is worth pointing out that 50% of BBC Trust members are women. The proportion of females on the BBC executive board is only 42%, but that is still a far higher proportion than is found on the majority of corporate boards. Within the whole staff of the BBC, women make up 49% of the total, and more women are joining the organisation than men at the moment.

[Nadine Dorries]

That is an interesting figure. If we were to look at the proportions of men and women among the total number of people in the House of Commons, we would probably find that they were about the same, taking into account the administrative and secretarial jobs. It does not actually mean anything to say that half the staff of the BBC are women. Those in the key jobs—the important, opinion-forming jobs; the ones that people listen to—are men. A bit like the House of Commons.

[Mr Vaizey]

Certainly as far as I am concerned, the people in the House of Commons who do the administrative and behind-the-scenes work are as important, if not more important, than those who do the front-of-house work. I take my hon. Friend’s point, however, which is to draw attention to the public face of the BBC and to ask how female-friendly it is. I shall come to that point later. Let me finish my short defence of the BBC, however. In BBC Vision, for example, 63% of the staff are women and, in the audio music division, 53% of the staff are women.

My hon. Friend talked about The Guardian’s recent interest in the number of female presenters on BBC radio and, of course, Jane Garvey has raised the issue on “Woman’s Hour”. I noticed that today a very rare event happened on “Woman’s Hour”, as a Conservative MP appeared and it was a woman, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley). That is, in a way, some progress. The BBC has some outstanding female presenters and it might amuse my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire to know that when the corporation sent us the list, at the top was Annie Nightingale. She can read into that what she likes. There were also Sarah Montague, Fearne Cotton, Shelagh Fogarty, who happens to be a personal favourite of mine, Jenni Murray, Lauren Laverne, Mariella Frostrup, Jo Whiley, Zoe Ball, Moira Stuart and, of course, Jane Garvey. If I might abuse my office, I am personally very disappointed that the BBC did not include Rachel Burden in that list. As hon. Members will be aware, she is the formidable female presenter on the BBC 5 Live Breakfast show, which is the show I listen to in the morning. There are some formidable presenters on the BBC.

In Channel 4, 58% of the employees are women, which represents a 1% increase on the previous year. Four out of seven of the executive team are women and so are six out of the 13 board members. Since we are trading names and numbers, as it were, Channel 4 also has a strong representation of women presenters, including Cathy Newman, obviously, who has recently joined Channel 4 News. Mary Portas, Kirstie Allsopp, Sarah Beeny, Katie Piper, Jo Frost, Anna Richardson and Davina McCall all lead their own shows.

There are also powerful women in the channel’s film and dramas: Vicky McClure in “This Is England”; Lauren Socha in “Misfits”; Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady”, who won the 2012 Golden Globe award for best actress; and Olivia Colman in “Tyrannosaur”. Channel 4 has the formidable Baroness King leading its equality and diversity practice and, behind the scenes, it has also tried to tackle some aspects of production where women are under-represented. Channel 4 has placed a special emphasis through its online education projects on working with female writers and developers, a group still under-represented in the digital media.

Those are the statistics and the points that might balance the formidable case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire. I noticed her reference to her spat with Andrew Neil, and I do not know whether she has talked herself out of appearing on “The Daily Politics” in future. I hesitate to make any joke about that, because when I heard that she had described Andrew Neil as an orange, overweight, toupee-wearing has-been, I was going to say that almost all those adjectives probably apply to me.

My hon. Friend made some very serious points and this has been an ongoing issue in the media, which is why we have very good campaign groups such as Women in Film and Television. The organisation Sound Women would not have been created out of thin air—there must have been a problem with women appearing on radio as presenters.

My offer to the hon. Member for Wells and to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire is to broker a meeting with both of them—if that would be all right with you, Mr Speaker, as they both made formidable contributions to the debate—with the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, and we will sit down and discuss this issue. It is an issue that we must keep pressing at. Some people might regard it as frivolous or something that makes good copy for a parliamentary sketch, but my hon. Friend made a valid and fundamental point: we want to hear a balance of voices on the radio and to see a balance of presenters on the television. We do not want to set quotas or diktats, but we do want to maintain a dialogue and pressure. I look forward to brokering that important meeting.

Question put and agreed to.

Press Self-regulation

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Nadine Dorries

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), whom I congratulate on securing this Adjournment debate. I am also grateful to have heard the contributions made by other hon. Members in expressing their concerns about press reporting.

As the hon. Gentleman said from the outset, this debate is not an opportunity to attack the press or to lose sight of the importance of a free press. It is worth recalling that more than a third of the world’s people live in countries where there is no press freedom. It is therefore important to emphasise that however the press may transgress, a free press is fundamental to our democracy. The independence of the press from state intervention is also fundamental to our democracy, and that is why this Government and previous Governments have always fought shy of statutory regulation of the press. However, the press are not immune from criticism, as we have heard from several hon. Members, and this makes the work of the Press Complaints Commission as important today as it has ever been. It is worth remembering that, as the hon. Gentleman said, the PCC covers not only Fleet street but the 1,300 regional and local newspapers. As he informed the House, the PCC was set up in 1991 to replace the failing Press Council, so this debate gives us an opportunity to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

The PCC was designed to deal with complaints from members of the public based on the terms of an agreed code of practice. Since it was established, it has handled tens of thousands of complaints and, as the hon. Gentleman said, the code has been amended more than 30 times. The PCC has also sought to expand its remit to more than just the handling of complaints: for example, it now runs a training programme for journalists and journalism students. It advocates on behalf of individuals to prevent intrusive stories appearing in the press—it is worth recalling that it can help individuals before a story is actually printed—and deals with the problem of media scrums by communicating with the whole press and broadcast industry as a story is breaking. It is right that it has evolved as an organisation and that the process of evolution continues.

Public confidence in the PCC’s work is vital. To maintain that confidence, not only must it be effective and robust; it must be seen to be effective and robust.

[Nadine Dorries]

Will the Minister say how many times the PCC has been involved in a story before it has been printed and how many media scrums it has assisted in dealing with?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am afraid that I do not have those figures to hand, but I will ensure that my hon. Friend is informed of them tomorrow by e-mail or letter.

It is my experience that the PCC has a strong appreciation of the need to be seen to be effective and robust. It spreads the word on what it does and what it can do. It seeks to be transparent in how it works and is extremely helpful in providing advice. It is always willing to discuss decisions and the reasons behind them. Of course, that does not mean that it will always reach what the complainant sees as the right decision. We have to be realistic and understand that that would be the case with any system, whether statutory or self-regulatory.

The PCC can and should constantly scrutinise how it works. It should listen to what others have to say, respond to them and act on the feedback. It will certainly have received significant feedback from tonight’s debate. I know that it receives useful and constructive criticism from other sources.