BBC Charter

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate, although I rise with some apprehension, as the register notes my membership of that endangered —nay, condemned—species, the BBC Trust. I acknowledge, too, a previous speaker in the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, who led the BBC Trust for several years with that considerable élan for which he is renowned and which was demonstrated again here this evening.

Perhaps I should also acknowledge that, earlier in my career, I worked for the BBC World Service in its then iconic home, Bush House. In many ways, those were the happiest days of my career—there was a real international atmosphere and purpose, which prepared me well for a later career in the United Nations. The strength of the World Service, much respected in this House, stems in large part from its membership of the wider BBC family.

Over the past few months, there have been many meetings between the BBC Trust and officials of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, including the Secretary of State, Karen Bradley, about the new charter. When it was published on 15 September, the chair of the trust, Rona Fairhead, welcomed it. She noted a more transparent process for setting the licence fee, but added that the Government should go further and that future funding proposals should be subject to external scrutiny. We cannot have repeats of past settlements, much commented on in this debate, that were negotiated behind the closed steel doors of the Treasury.

The BBC cannot and should not be subject to the intense political pressure it was in 2015 when forced to take responsibility for free licences for the over-75s, a measure introduced by the previous Labour Government. If the subsequent Government disliked that measure then they should have had the political courage to repeal it, rather than the Chancellor issuing a diktat that challenged the very independence of the BBC and resulted in a 20% cut in licence fee funding. Welfare reforms cannot and should not be dumped on the BBC; it is not an arm of government, and any similar force majeure would be a serious assault on its independence. I would welcome the Minister’s recognition of that.

The draft charter is a step forward, as it recognises that the Government must consult the BBC in advance. In my view, future charters should be published no later than eight weeks in advance before a final determination is made. However, the consultation must be broader than at present, and I firmly believe that Parliament and the public should be consulted widely in future.

I return to my concerns about the World Service. That oft-stated critical purpose,

“Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK”,

is surely more critical now than perhaps at any time in our modern history. We are a truly international people, having made a huge contribution to the wider world, but that very engagement has also been a two-way process and the BBC should reflect that, not only in the World Service but in its domestic services, given our increasingly diverse population.

With regard to the World Service, will the Minister clarify the situation regarding the future BBC Korean service? I do not expect him to answer now, but I would be grateful if he would be so good as to write to me at some future date. There can be no doubt in this House that there is a need for a BBC Korean service in one of the most closed societies in the world. Here I acknowledge the championing by our colleague the noble Lord, Lord Alton, of human rights and the establishment of a Korean service. Now is not the time to back away from a much-needed service.

As we as a country take the now ineluctable step of leaving the EU, we must do everything we can to demonstrate that this is not a country in retreat, which might be easily deduced by many, but one that still has noble international ambitions and some of the finest institutions in the world. That is surely what the BBC is, and no European broadcaster, or for that matter North American broadcaster, would contest that statement. We must also note that the BBC is one of the few public institutions these days capable of uniting people across the UK. As a nation, we can ill afford to put that at risk.