BBC Funding

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

That thorny question is one for the future funding review, but it is important. We want to ensure that the BBC has a sustainable income, but also that the sources of that are fair. I have pointed already to the declining number of people who are paying for a licence fee and the declining number who watch television live. Funding models which are predicated on some of those conceptions of the past will look increasingly anachronistic as we move into the BBC’s next century. We have also seen licence fee evasion rising, so it is right that we look at this to make sure that we are coming up with a good answer to the difficult question that the noble Lord poses.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, have the Government looked at models of public service broadcasting in comparable countries in terms of both international and domestic activities? In the United States, France and Germany the international dimension of Voice of America and so on is publicly funded, but here the international dimension of the BBC has been financially squeezed by the Government in recent years, which is a disaster for British foreign policy.

In France, Germany and the Netherlands the domestic side is also substantially publicly funded, while in the US it is not; it is given over to commercial interests. The Minister will be as painfully aware as the rest of us of the destructive impact that has had on maintaining a national dialogue at the centre of democratic politics in the US; instead, it encourages culture wars. There are powerful commercial interests in this country—the Murdoch press more than anything else—that would very much like to see that happening here, and it is not at all clear that all members of the Conservative Government are still committed to the principle of public service broadcasting.

Can the Minister, as a One Nation Tory and not a member of any of the “five families” on the right, say that he, at least, is committed to the principle of public service broadcasting, which implies a broadcaster that one can trust—the BBC comes out high on public trust in all public opinion polls—and a substantial chunk of public funding?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The whole of the Government are committed to the BBC’s important role as a public service broadcaster. My right honourable friend in her Statement in another place rightly called the BBC “a great British institution” that

“plays a vital role in our culture and creative economy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/23; col. 514.]

As we look at future funding options, we will look at how public service broadcasting is delivered in other countries, both the ways in which that is done and the pros and cons of those models.

The noble Lord is right to highlight that the BBC plays its role in a globally exceptional way. I have already talked about the more than 360 million people who tune into and rely on the BBC World Service for impartial news and analysis. We should be very proud that it is our national broadcaster that people across the world tune into, and we want to ensure that it is sustainably funded for many decades to come.

Classical Music

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, anyone who has heard the annual performance of “Messiah” by the Halifax Choral Society, with the Black Dyke Mills Band and orchestra, will know that we are not entirely without some high-quality music in Yorkshire. The classical music industry is a net surplus invisible exporter for this country, and it is absolutely vital that we keep supporting it. I declare an interest as a former chair of Voces8, which spends quite a lot of time touring on the continent and in North America. Are the Government now within sight of getting rid of these bilateral arrangements, which do not really provide for orchestras and others to do proper tours of the continent—all the way from school orchestras such as the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, which is superb, to classical orchestras as such?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We are tripling funding for the Music Export Growth Scheme to more than £3 million over the next two years, which will enable more touring artists to break into new international markets. We are also expanding our Export Support Service to further help creative exporters, including touring musicians. We want our musicians to tour the world so that their work can be enjoyed overseas, just as it is here in the UK—including in Yorkshire.

Music Education

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the aspirations of the national plan. The difficulty will be in how we deliver against the background of a continuing squeeze in school funding, low pay for teachers leading to well-qualified staff leaving the profession, and the likelihood that state schools will continue to be underfunded for years to come.

We all recognise that substantial additional funding will be required to implement this plan. Since that is not going to be available, we need to look as widely as we can for partners in delivering music opportunities for all children. So I want to talk about partnerships in delivering musical education to state school pupils in less prosperous areas—the sorts of places where schools cannot ask parents to raise additional funds for instruments, for visits to concerts or for peripatetic teachers to come in. I want to talk about partnerships not just with music hubs but with the music industry, independent schools and the charitable sector—forms of partnership that are touched on in the report but, I feel, are not being given sufficient attention.

I approach this from the experience of chairing the trustees of a musical performance and education charity for the first 12 years of its growth: the VOCES8 Foundation. During the pandemic, I learned more about the depth of the music industry’s involvement with education and young musicians from the partnerships among singing ensembles that VOCES8 formed through its successful series of online concerts.

I have also seen a little of musical education on the ground from my children’s experience in state schools, and in the Centre for Young Musicians in London, and now from my grandchildren’s primary school and my grandson’s activities in the Wandsworth music hub—like other hubs, an invaluable Saturday school, with enthusiastic teachers, that offers different kinds of musical experience, from classical to jazz and Afro-Caribbean. My grandson’s violin teacher there last year was a young student called Braimah Kanneh-Mason, something of a perfectionist who nevertheless conveyed his enormous enthusiasm through his teaching.

The VOCES8 Foundation was founded by former Westminster Abbey choristers to provide top-quality musical performance and to bring that performance into schools, to expose children to the wonders of singing and to teach them to sing. As we have grown, we have discovered that many primary schools have no teachers with any musical skills, and we have run a number of course in basic music skills for teachers as a result. The London Institute of Education published some research 10 years ago on the strong positive effect on schools of regular collective singing;

“transforming children through singing”,

as the Voices Foundation, another invaluable charity in this sector, has put it.

We have concentrated much of our educational work on introducing children from schools in disadvantaged areas to singing, first in unison and then in harmony, developing and publishing easy pieces, as the Voices Foundation and others have also done. We have then offered progression in singing, from encouraging a capella choirs in secondary schools to coaching talented teenagers and including them in our summer school—in partnership with another musical charity, Future Talent. I recall a concert provided by pupils from the five Grey Coat Foundation schools in which their a capella choirs performed, in some cases singing pieces that their own members had composed. We have trained what we call young leaders to lead choral singing in their own schools, and we form a group of VOCES8 scholars every year from graduates of the music colleges, who start their careers singing together and work in schools together.

The most dispiriting experience I have had in Whitehall was not long before the pandemic, when I took our educational directors into the Department for Education to meet the Minister for Schools. We planned to discuss our hard-won experience in working in schools where music was almost absent, the techniques we had learned to bring music back and the case for closer partnerships between government and charitable providers. Instead, we were given a lengthy lecture on Nick Gibb’s scepticism about innovation in musical education, with a strong undercurrent that outside providers were more trouble than they were worth. He did offer me a half-apology the following day, but it left our educational team deeply disappointed.

I hope the Minister will assure us that the DfE is now committed to the widest possible partnerships with other providers in musical education, as the national plan at points suggests. I would have placed a stronger emphasis than the plan does on partnership with independent schools. Their facilities are far better than those available to most state schools and their teachers, in my experience, are glad to help talented youngsters from the state sector—although some head teachers are reluctant to share their space with non-paying pupils. Saturday music classes provided by independent schools in partnership with state secondary schools work well in several places. The DfE should press independent schools to regard such provision as part of the public benefit that justifies their charitable status.

I learned from VOCES8’s co-operation with other ensembles during the pandemic that a significant proportion of professional music groups regard education as a natural part of their work. An effective national music strategy should make more of what such groups can offer too, encouraging them to affiliate youth choirs or instrumental ensembles, even to promote joint concerts in which talented youngsters have the chance to contribute to great music with more experienced performers.

I have a lovely memory of sitting in a crowded Albert Hall for a concert in which Apollo5, our second professional ensemble, and hundreds of children from Surrey schools performed, and one of the songs which they sang had been composed by one of the young people in the choir. It was a tremendous opportunity for children to feel that they were performing well for a large audience.

The charitable sector can also raise and provide additional funding at a time when state funding will be limited at best. The VOCES8 Foundation raises almost all its funding for education from private contributions, charitable trusts, our supporting group of “friends” and the surplus from performances. Next Tuesday, I will be watching singing classes in three Bradford schools, followed by a VOCES8 concert in Bradford Cathedral, all funded by contributions raised jointly by the cathedral and our foundation. The latest significant donation to our educational work has come from an American singer who likes our work and who recently recorded with our professional ensemble: Paul Simon.

As our latest Prime Minister has said, we cannot rely on the state to solve all our problems, in musical education or in other areas. The way forward has to be the widest possible partnership with the significant number of charitable providers, well-resourced independent schools and the music industry as a whole. I hope that the DfE is now much more open to that than it was a few years ago when I took our educational team to see a Minister who has now just returned to the department.

Public Service Broadcasting (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the several speakers who have talked about the need to get more broadcasting content out of London. As a resident of Saltaire, I have to make a certain comment and declare an interest. We are a wonderful 19th-century model village. We have had four television crews filming at weekends in the last two and a half years, most recently for the BBC’s next series of “Gentleman Jack”, which does make it a bit difficult to get around the village.

We are all aware that the idea of public service broadcasting in the UK is now in question. The advisory panel on public service broadcasting appointed last November was tasked, in the first of its terms of reference, to consider:

“Whether the concept of public service broadcasting is still needed”.


I was happy to read that it went on to add,

“and, if so, what a modern PSB system should contribute to economic, cultural and democratic life across the United Kingdom”.

This is not just about market economics.

I welcome this report and the report in March this year from the Commons DCMS Committee, The Future of Public Service Broadcasting, which comes to very similar conclusions—no doubt to the dissatisfaction of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. As others have, I note the firm conclusion that:

“Public service broadcasting remains essential to the UK media and losing it would leave UK society and democracy worse off”.


It also says:

“Our evidence overwhelmingly indicated that public service broadcasting is as important as ever to … the UK’s image on the world stage.”


I also welcome the emphasis on bringing the nation together rather than tearing it apart, as the bitter war between partisan media has done in the United States. I was struck by the comment that Frank Luntz, the American conservative political strategist, made in the Times two days ago, in which he deplored the “unbearably toxic” polarisation of American politics and went on to say:

“I’m here to warn you that if you don’t learn from what happened in the US you’re doomed to repeat it”.


There are those on the right of British politics who are doing their best to provoke a culture war here, the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, among them. It is a wonderful way to distract attention from inequality and social and economic disadvantages, attacking liberal elites while sparing the rich from criticism. A new report from King’s College London remarks that

“culture wars are a top-down phenomenon, where political and media discussion encourage division”.

In contrast, a healthy democratic society needs to share a common discourse, and public service broadcasting as part of the mix of media helps to maintain that common ground.

We all recognise that the Martin Bashir affair has shaken the BBC’s reputation and clearly requires lessons to be learned, but we should also recognise that it pales in comparison with the behaviour of News Corporation in phone hacking and corrupt payments over several years. That has not stopped News Corporation attacking the BBC. I am bored stiff with the stream of negative stories that the Times publishes to denigrate the BBC, alongside its attempts to promote Times Radio. The Daily Mail is worse, of course, but for the full Fox News paranoia one has to turn to the Spectator or the Telegraph. Charles Moore, the noble Lord, Lord Moore, who sadly is not here today, wrote in the Telegraph on 1 May that

“the BBC’s greatest single aim is to get rid of Boris Johnson.”

That is a statement worthy of Donald Trump.

Oliver Dowden has called on the BBC to reassert British values. With all its faults, the BBC does represent British values, and is respected around the world for doing so. It nurtures and promotes British talent, at the heart of our thriving cultural sector. Its children’s TV and educational content are invaluable, including BBC Bitesize—as I discovered when teaching my grandchildren during the lockdown.

In contrast, many of those who bang on about sovereignty and Anglo-Saxon superiority sail under false flags. GB News, to be launched with union jacks flying, is owned by a consortium of American investors and British expatriates and promises us a programme called “Wokewatch”, modelled on right-wing American attack lines. The Daily Telegraph, for which the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, writes his nationalistic op-eds, has long been owned by brothers who avoided British tax by commuting between Monte Carlo and the Channel Islands. News International is headquartered in Bermuda and run from New York. In David Goodhart’s terms, these are the people from anywhere, in contrast to the staff of the BBC, who are rooted in the UK.

A purely commercial media sector, largely foreign owned, would impoverish British culture and society and undermine the sovereignty that this Government claim to be reasserting. Public service broadcasting is an important phenomenon in maintaining a coherent society and helping to promote a reasoned political debate. Yes, the corporation makes mistakes, and the toleration of Martin Bashir was a serious error. Yes, the funding model will have to be adapted as new media continue to reshape communications. Yes, it has to do a lot more to attract the younger generation. But the experience of the pandemic has shown the value of a trusted source of news and information to which all our citizens can turn. That is a vital part of a democratic, open society.

Digital Identification Protocol

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord raises an important question. It will be through the transparency that I mentioned earlier, with the publication of the trust framework alpha and a second iteration, a beta version, which will be tested before going live.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The Minister rightly stresses the importance of building public trust in all this. Given increasing concerns about the partisan fashion of so many recent public appointments, what are the Government doing to build broad support for forthcoming key appointments in this field, such as the new Information Commissioner, the new chair of the board at the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, and others?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely do not accept the noble Lord’s assertion about the political complexion of recent appointments. All go through the public appointments process and are entirely transparent.

European Union: Visa-free Touring for Musicians

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government had an agreed position, which was to extend the list of permitted activities for short-term business visitors. The EU rejected that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we understand that there are different views as to what actually happened but given that musicians from the continent have been performing in Britain for the past 250 years, and that British musicians now perform on the continent on a regular basis, this is a win-win situation. Cannot the Government therefore take an initiative to reopen negotiations on this topic, which would clearly be of benefit to both sides to succeed in? I declare an interest as a trustee of the VOCES8 Foundation, which provides not only performance but musical education in France, Germany, Italy and Belgium.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am afraid that I will have to disappoint the noble Lord, as I have done on previous questions on this point. We secured a deal that delivers on the result of the referendum. The agreement is not going to be renegotiated. Our job now is to implement it as well as possible.

Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this is the third SI on this topic that has come before Parliament since the beginning of 2019. My colleagues have been dealing with similar revisions to already revised statutory instruments on other aspects of leaving the EU, and on a wide range on subjects. At least here we have the excuse that the CJEU’s ruling on the privacy shield, Schrems II, has necessitated further provision. In a debate earlier this afternoon, the noble Lord, Lord True, told us that the two previous drafts on public procurement had set out adjustments necessary for a no-deal outcome, but that the one we were considering today set out the detailed implications of a deal in that area. I am not sure whether I understood or believed his explanation.

I have several concerns about the implications of this SI. I was told in a briefing a week ago that Dominic Cummings detested the EU’s general data protection regulation and was determined that UK legislation should diverge from that standard. Now he has left the Government, but I am not yet sure that his influence has disappeared. The terms of the UK-Japan trade agreement appear to offer individuals fewer protections for their personal data than under GDPR, as many commentators have pointed out. It states that

“each Party should take into account principles and guidelines of relevant international bodies”,

such as the OECD. The Minister will appreciate the level of concern among the engaged public about lowering the protection for personal data now that we have left the EU. I thank her and her colleagues for offering briefings on the evolution of the Government’s digital strategy to interested Peers and I look forward to reassurance on this important principle.

The free flow of data across borders is a vital element in the digital economy, under appropriate regulatory conditions. I was concerned to read in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s comments on this SI that

“DCMS told us that the Commission was currently assessing the UK for adequacy under both the General Data Protection Regulation and the LED.”

Can the Minister tell us when the Commission is expected to complete this assessment?

Then there is the question of data sovereignty, which of course was one of the issues in the Schrems II case. My colleague and noble friend Lord Clement-Jones has written powerfully about the need to hold on to our national data assets as the foundation of a strong domestic base for digital enterprise but also as a matter of national and personal security. I note that health data has become a sector particularly vulnerable to multinational companies and hacking.

The UK Government are peculiarly relaxed about UK public data being stored on servers in the United States, in spite of the provisions of US law that make all data stored in the USA subject to surveillance, as others have mentioned. Our current Government, from the Prime Minister downwards, have an obsession with protecting the UK’s absolute sovereignty from any incursion by EU regulation or law but seem entirely relaxed about extraterritorial American jurisdiction and surveillance. Many of us anticipate that, outside the EU, the UK will not prove to be an independent sovereign state—let alone a sovereign equal of the United States and China—but will become more and more dependent on the United States and a follower of American rules and regulations. If the UK supervisory authority is to diverge from the GDPR, it is most likely that it will converge on US regulation and take the American side in likely disputes with the EU. Do the Government plan to ensure that UK public data is stored in the UK rather than in the United States?

The law enforcement directive struck a careful balance between personal rights and national security. UK officials and Ministers played an active part in negotiating its terms. Our Government were one of the most active in pressing for further data exchanges related to cross-border crime and terrorism, from aircraft passenger names to intelligence on suspects. Cross-border travel, and cross-border crime and terrorist attempts, will not stop now that we have left the EU, but we need to ensure that such exchanges of data are tightly regulated and scrutinised. Until we left, the CJEU provided that scrutiny. Can the Minister tell us what shared mechanism will now be established to scrutinise such exchanges, strong enough to satisfy defenders of civil rights and personal privacy both within the UK and the EU? How confident is she that the UK will be able to ensure its security by maintaining access to these vital but highly sensitive databases?

I recall hearing Conservative MPs assert that we had no need of Europol—for example—when we left the EU because we could rely on our membership of Interpol. That level of ignorance about the quality of different international bodies, that assumption that an organisation that has Russia and China as significant members is preferable to one in which we shared more information with our democratic neighbours, leaves some of us close to despair about where the Government may be drifting.

I have one final question. How do the Crown dependencies fit into this post-Brexit pattern of data exchange? Can we be confident that their regulation is as tight and as open to scrutiny as within the UK and on the European continent? We do not want an offshore world around our shores through which financial data, dark money and criminal assets may flow unseen. What discussions are the Government engaged in with the Crown dependencies to ensure that no loopholes in our post-Brexit regulation of data are left on our doorstep? The Minister may wish to write to me on this matter.

Charities: Funding

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of requiring greater transparency in sources of funding for charities based in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government understand that there is a tension between transparency and donor anonymity. We encourage greater transparency across the charity sector as a matter of good practice. However, it is our assessment that the current level of legal transparency regarding sources of funding for charities is appropriate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

Charities are there to serve the public benefit, and I would have thought that that would require a duty of transparency, not simply one that the Government might politely ask. Should the public not know where a charity’s major donations—over £5,000 or £10,000, say—come from, whether from foreign Governments or state-owned companies; sometimes hostile states; religious foundations of different faiths; sponsors of extreme positions on the margins of democratic politics; or from wherever? Is that not something the public should be informed about?

Historic Statues

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord’s suggestion chimes very well with our approach. It would be enlightening to hear what children think: they normally tell us the truth. I am happy to pick that up with colleagues.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, is this not exactly an area where national government should resist interfering too strongly? Most of the statues in Bradford are of local people—Samuel Lister, Titus Salt, WE Forster, JB Priestley—and we are having a local discussion about the appropriateness of the statute of Sir Robert Peel, with petition and counterpetition. That is encouraging local debate about our history. Should this not be left to local communities and local authorities? Central government, which already tells local government far too much about what it should do, should leave well alone.

Covid-19: Artificial Intelligence

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, although I am sure he would acknowledge that the quality, size and integration of those datasets vary considerably, as the recent report highlights, between different sectors of the economy. Again, the National Data Strategy and the consultation on it will be important mechanisms for addressing the issues that the noble Lord raised, as well as the open data initiatives and pilots that we are already running.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) (V)]

My Lords, the National Data Strategy has been published for consultation. Can the Minister assure us that the House of Lords will be included in that consultation? Perhaps the Minister would like to organise a webinar for interested Peers and guarantee that we can have a debate on the issues. The CDEI report notes that social care has been much less able to cope with providing data than the healthcare system because the level of training, funding and data collection in social care is so much lower. What plans do the Government have to help to improve that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My understanding is that the consultation on the data strategy is open to everyone, but I am very happy to go back to the department and explore whether we can have a webinar for those Members of this House who are interested in taking part. Obviously, your Lordships’ Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence has been very influential already in our thinking. In relation to social care, the noble Lord referred to training and funding; it is also fair to say that the fragmentation of that sector is also a barrier to the adoption of AI, but we are also focusing on this.