Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not come to speak on this—I am a complete outsider as far as the media are concerned—but having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Grade, before the Division, I will.

This is unfortunate. I know that it is fair enough to make the point that we did not have these discussions on the draft Bill; I will not make a serious complaint about that, because things in the Bill have been added since the pre-legislative scrutiny. However, on what I know about the media, I certainly take the point of what the noble Lord, Lord Grade, said, that in the end this is basically all about the attempt to force the BBC to go down to a subscription channel basis, and I fundamentally disagree with that. The BBC has not helped itself in the last couple of years; as an outsider I have watched in the other place some absolutely inept performances in front of that Select Committee by very highly paid people, who on some occasions are inarticulate beyond belief. You can imagine where the groundswell against it comes from.

I fully accept that there has been an attempt to do something about the banker-style salaries. I fully accept that you need the best people, and it is a competitive market. I have nothing to declare, by the way. While Murdoch’s alive, I do not do Sky. I sacrifice Formula 1 and everything for that. There will come a day when I can have Sky, but it is not there at the moment. The fact is that there is a disparity when one sees the cost of what is advertised—but then you do not see the full cost of the BBC, for example. When you turn the radio on in the morning, you expect it to be on, but you do not see the separate figures for that. It is a bit like other services, whether schools or hospitals. When you walk through the door you do not see a price on the top—although now you do with universities, where the cost of walking through the door is nine grand a year. It is not quite like that; it is not put across that way. Therefore you do not have the marketing. The BBC has no interest in having the marketing to compete with the marketing that Sky does to make it seductive.

That is the only point I want to make. There is a conspiracy—no question about it. I freely admit that I was very tempted after it went to the Commons; I was not sure whether it would be put in the Commons or the Lords. When the arguments were first put they were very seductive on decriminalisation. I have friends who are magistrates, and they say, “Jeff, it’s nonsense. We parcel them all up—we do them all together”. On the time argument, the noble Lord, Lord Grade, said that it takes 3 minutes and 13 seconds. That is exactly believable—talk to magistrates. That is the way it is done. There is no time factor in the courts; there is no question about that. If anyone wants to go to jail in this country, it is very easy to do it—just do not pay the fines. Lots of people make a business out of that. Therefore the BBC is an excuse. However, I fully accept that there is an underlying issue. The BBC staff have to up their game when they appear before Select Committees, but we have to bear in mind that at the end of the day there is a seductive and well funded attempt here to force the BBC to go to a subscription service. We ought to oppose that at every step of the way.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I, too, support the proposition that Clause 59 should not stand part of the Bill. The arguments have been very eloquently made, in many cases by people who are broadcasting professionals of many years’ experience. Of course I have nothing to offer in that sense. However, I fear that this is largely an ideologically driven suggestion. Whether it is intended to end up with subscription fees or not, I do not know, but I believe that it was suggested to fundamentally weaken the BBC by those who, for whatever reason, are not supporters of the organisation. I firmly declare myself a very firm supporter of the BBC in its various forms—radio, television, and not least the World Service, which is a tremendous organisation; what it achieves with the money it has is superb.

I would like to know, if the Minister can say, how decriminalising non-payment would be likely to reduce the number of those who, for whatever reason, refuse to pay the licence fee. I understand that the figure is around 5% on an annual basis. How would decriminalisation be likely to increase the payment of the fee? I cannot see any way in which that would be likely; in fact, the very opposite is almost certain to happen.

The other aspect is that the clause mentions monetary penalties for those who do not pay the fee. I am sorry, perhaps I am missing something, but if someone does not pay the licence fee, how will a monetary penalty imposed for not paying it make it more likely that the fee itself will be paid? I do not see the point of that.

It worries me that the BBC has often been undermined, and not just by the present Government; I have to say that on many occasions my party, when in government, did not exactly hold back from undermining the BBC or attacking its integrity or that of some of its reporters, which I thought was at best unfortunate if not misguided. So I do not make this a particularly party-political issue, although we have the Government that we have for the moment. I very much hope that this time next year there will be another party in government, my party, and that we will be prepared to say that we will not go ahead with decriminalising this offence.

My final point is a word of warning to the BBC’s many supporters in this Room. I suspect that even those who are in favour of decriminalisation are supporters of the BBC. We have heard from a producer today, and that was very valuable. However, anyone who read Olenka Frenkiel’s comments in the Guardian last Friday must accept that there are still problems that the BBC needs to address if it wants to broaden and deepen its support. It needs to treat its female staff—I am talking not so much about presenters as about reporters—in a far better way. I was really taken aback by what Olenka Frenkiel had to say. I thought that recent cases had meant that the BBC had turned round, but it appears that in that respect it has not.

If decriminalisation does go ahead at the end of the review, it will not help the BBC. Those of us who treasure the BBC and what it does, and who want to allow it to continue as far as possible into the future in the face of some pretty fierce competition, need to support the licence fee, what it stands for and what it is used for. If that is what we are going to do, we have to ensure that as many people pay it as possible, and I do not believe that the suggestion in this part of the Bill would achieve that purpose. That is why I oppose it.