BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

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[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

That this House takes note of the role of the BBC and public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom’s economy and creative culture.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former BBC governor. I had not realised how popular this debate would be, so I ought to apologise to Back-Bench speakers. I can only offer them the advice of the late and dearly lamented Nicholas Parsons and remind them to speak without hesitation, repetition or deviation.

I left home this morning listening to the dulcet northern tones of my noble friend Lord Bragg, who was in mental combat with three professors on quantum mechanics. The podcast of that programme will be listened to by millions of people all over the world, and that will promote British culture and British values. It is another example of soft power, as it is commonly known.

It is also interesting—I had not realised that my timing was so good—that a new Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, has been appointed. I looked with interest at his old quotes. He said:

“The BBC needs to be closer to, and understand the perspectives of, the whole of the United Kingdom and avoid providing a narrow urban outlook.”


I suppose that is a matter of opinion. I have never seen the BBC as doing that, given the range of regional broadcasters that it has. He went on:

“By this, I don’t just mean getting authentic and diverse voices on and off the screen—although … this is important … But also making sure there is genuine diversity of thought and experience.”


He went on to suggest that some people think that Sky and CNN are better news providers and prefer them to the BBC. There are bound to be some people who think that; it is a question of taste. He does at least end on a positive note, which I welcome. He said that the BBC has to find its place in the age of streaming and subscription sites, such as YouTube and Netflix, but he also said that,

“the BBC is an institution to be cherished … We would be crazy to throw it away but it must reflect all of our nation, and all perspectives.”

I certainly agree with that, and I refer to our previous Culture Secretary, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who said:

“We would be much less informed and inspired as a society if we didn’t have a healthy pluralistic and universally available PSB system.”


That puts it in some kind of perspective.

I shall cite one more quote. It is from a briefing I had from BECTU, a broadcast trade union, and addresses value for money for customers:

“The annual cost of the License Fee is £154.50 per household. This funds all BBC TV output, iPlayer, BBC News, BBC Weather, BBC Radio (as well as other public service broadcasters). It is a unique mix of entertainment, news and information. For comparison a standard Netflix subscription cost £108 per year and only includes access to their streaming service. A digital-only subscription to the Times costs £312 per year. It is impossible to argue that the License Fee does not represent value for money in the modern media market.”


It ends on one interesting little line:

“It is also important to note that the Netflix model is based on a long-term debt of over $12 bn.”


That concentrates the mind a bit.

In introducing this debate, I want to focus on the BBC’s contribution to the cultural and creative economy, as the title of the debate states. I am an avid viewer and listener across a range of channels, including Netflix, and I recognise that we live in a global multimedia world. I cannot help reflecting that when public service broadcasting began, Lord Reith, the first director-general, coined what I believe to be one of the best ever mission statements. He said that the role of the BBC was to “inform, educate and entertain”. Those criteria are still relevant to public service broadcasters in today’s multimedia environment.

To put creative industries in context, they contribute some £100.5 billion to the UK economy, and public service broadcasters make an enormous contribution to the industry. The BBC is the biggest single investor in the UK creative industries. It contributes hundreds of millions of pounds to the wider sector. Every £1 spent on the BBC through the licence fee produces £2 in value through jobs, economic opportunities and expenditure. The Impact of a Change in the BBC’s Licence Fee Revenue report, produced by PwC in 2015, found that every £1 increase in licence fee revenue would generate about 60p of extra economic value. Conversely, a 25% decrease in the licence fee over five years would slash GDP by £630 million and lead to 32,000 job losses.

BBC research and development alone delivers significant value to the creative community, the wider industry and the UK economy. Every £1 spent by the BBC on research and development during the last charter delivered a return of at least £5 to £9 to the UK. That equates to a total economic benefit of between £827 million and £1.4 billion in the period 2007 to 2016.

The licence fee underpins not only the BBC but the competitive environment that supports the success of UK broadcasting. When the BBC performs well, commercial broadcasters raise their game to compete for audiences, which challenges the BBC to aim higher. In other words, it is a positive feedback loop, not a zero-sum game.

BBC investment over many decades has helped to develop significant creative economies across the UK. It has major production centres in Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Salford, Bristol, Birmingham and London, so it is not true to say that it is just urban—although those are urban centres. Its range is far and wide, and over 50% of the BBC’s employee and network television spend is outside London. This investment has driven not just BBC creativity but significant hubs of independent production. For example, Bristol has become an international hub for natural history production, following decades of BBC investment in its Natural History Unit, and Wales is home to BBC hits such as “Doctor Who” and “His Dark Materials”.

The BBC has announced further plans to support small and emerging independents across the UK. It already commissions significantly more small producers and out-of-London producers than any other broadcaster, and these new measures will boost the strength of UK production across the country. The measures will include a £1 million small independent fund to support small and emerging companies; bespoke deals such as tailored cash flow terms, shared risk arrangements and help securing third-party funding; and tailored events to build stronger connections between emerging small companies and the BBC. Public service broadcasters employ over 500 trained journalists, and sponsor journalists for local media, and a significant number of apprentices.

On the apprenticeship front, it was interesting to see that the BBC spent over £7 million in 2017, rising to £12.7 million in 2018, on entry-level schemes and apprenticeships. It has also ring-fenced work experience placements for unemployed young people via Jobcentre Plus, and visited over 1,000 schools through the BBC Young Reporter project to help develop media literacy skills and inspire the next generation of journalists, no matter what their background, in order to give everyone with the potential to succeed the opportunity to work in the industry, and not just in the BBC. It has also launched a pre-joiner programme, Get In To Media, developed with support from the Sutton Trust and MyKindaFuture.

The next generation of young journalists, producers and directors will make a vital contribution to the creative economy. Interestingly, the BBC has banned unpaid internships, and all the work experience placements are capped at two weeks, except in rare circumstances. Therefore, a huge contribution to the creative economy environment is made not just by the BBC but by all other public service broadcasters.

In a speech by the chief executive of ITV to the APPG, she said:

“The name will need to change because”


public service broadcasting

“won’t just be about broadcasting in future.”

That is absolutely true. We are moving into an era of streaming as well as broadcasting—in fact, we are not moving into it; we are already there. She continued:

“But the job of making programmes with a public purpose, available to everyone, is essential in the 21st Century. A gold standard of trusted national and local journalism amidst the anarchy of fake news.”


That is a very pertinent comment.

I want to talk about the future. We are now in a post-Brexit environment where our flourishing creative industries will make an even more vital contribution to the UK economy. Public service broadcasters, which are the envy of the world, do much to promote UK culture and values, as I have already said. The current arrangement with the licence fee, and with advertising supporting the other public service broadcast channels, is a delicate balance. As I explored earlier, changing the BBC to a subscription service or making it dependent on advertising will undermine public service broadcasting.

I hope that in replying the Minister will let us know the Government’s intentions. Do they recognise the importance of public service broadcasting to the creative economy? I—and, I think, many others—dispute the idea that changing from the licence fee will be an easily achieved objective. I, along with many others, believe that, no matter what threats might emanate from the Government, there will be a fight to preserve the independence of this vital asset, which is admired by practically every other country around the world as an independent—I stress that word—public service broadcaster, and I believe that everybody in this Chamber will join in that fight to preserve the vital nature of public service broadcasting.

I have tried to restrict my contribution to this debate in the hope that a few more minutes might be available to others, but I end by quoting the words of one of my favourite songwriters, Joni Mitchell, who said that

“you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

I hope that we never see the day when the BBC and public service broadcasting in the way we know it today—independent, wide-ranging and serving the needs of our nation—ever disappears.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I thank everybody who has contributed to this debate. Perhaps it did not quite go the way that I wanted it to go. In my contribution I decided that I was going to accentuate the positive because I knew that there would be many others who would point out the strange decision of the Government not to appear on the “Today” programme—certainly until recently, when, feeling either inspired or compelled by the coronavirus, the Secretary of State for Health did appear on there. I hope that is an omen. The Minister was saying to us, “It is not true, all this”, and then, “I cannot possibly comment”, which is slightly different.

What I really wanted to get across in this debate, because I thought it was vital, was the fact that—as quoted from The Leopard which the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, referred to and which is one of my favourite books as well—if we want things to stay as they are, there will have to be changes. That is a much-used quote but an appropriate one in the circumstances. We cannot say in this digital streaming environment that everything will be the same. If we look at the listening and viewing habits of young people, who have been referred to one or two times in this debate, we know that they are not necessarily the most avid consumers of public service broadcasting. That is not to say that they do not use it at all; they do, which is why the BBC has focused on things like iPlayer, BBC Sounds and podcasting. Those are signs of change.

My intention in this debate was to signal how fundamentally important to the future of the economy of the UK in what I described as the post-Brexit environment the creative economy and the creative culture is. The BBC and public service broadcasting, as we have heard today, is demonstrated in a vast array of wonderful programmes. We only touched on a few. One of my litmus tests is whether new dramatists emerge—the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge or my other favourite, Sally Wainwright, whose next few episodes of “Last Tango in Halifax” are coming up. There is such wonderful content but, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, if we are serious about the future of public service broadcasting and its ability to survive in this rapidly changing environment, then somehow it has to have funding. All I ask is for a coherent, evidence- based debate.

When the Government say that they want all nations represented, I would like to see demonstrated how all nations are not represented in public service broadcasting. It is not good enough for the Government to just allege that is the case. As for impartiality, I attach an awful lot of importance to that and I want to go away and look at that. I do not think we can dismiss it. I certainly would not agree with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, on climate change, but that does not mean to say it should not be represented. As to the future of the licence fee, I do not necessarily share the views of all my colleagues. I think there is a sort of bargain to be struck—what I call the intergenerational bargain—between what we offer to young people and what we offer to the older generations. I sometimes feel the pendulum has swung the other way. I do not want to go into decriminalisation because that is another debate.

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I shall read it, not least to go through the Minister’s response. One thing we can say is that there seemed to be a united view across this Chamber about the importance of preserving public service broadcasting, not in aspic but in a way that ensures that it is vibrant. In a partial defence of the opposite Benches, there were at least three people who said to me that they would have taken part in this debate had they been able to, but I am not going to name them because I do not think that would be appropriate. Once again, I thank everybody. We have made an important contribution to the future of public service broadcasting and, as they say in the theatre, I think this one will run and run.

Motion agreed.