BBC

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to introduce the debate under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. The reason why I sought the debate was a strong interest in how the BBC is scrutinised and what is happening in this organisation. My first recollection of the BBC is from the time when I used to go back to Poland, in communist times, and see my grandfather. At the end of the day, we would draw the curtains and quietly listen to the BBC World Service. Of course, in those times, it was illegal to listen to outside broadcasters. If people were caught, they were punished. My grandfather and many other Poles behind the iron curtain were very relieved and grateful to be able to listen to the BBC World Service because it brought them the truth, which, regrettably, they were not able to get from communist propaganda and the media there.

The experience that I have described was very positive, but I want now to read out a quote from The Economist in July 2010 that encapsulates my thinking and that of many other Conservative MPs. It says:

“Here is a curious paradox about British conservatives. Challenge them to defend grand British institutions, from the Royal Family to the House of Lords or the lack of a written constitution, and they argue passionately about the dangers of tampering and meddling with things that evolved organically over time. They will talk about the British genius of leaving well alone. Perhaps you would not start from here, they may concede, and parts of our system may look a bit odd to outsiders, even extravagantly so. But these fragile accretions work rather well, they say, and would not survive piecemeal attempts to reform and tweak them. If it ain’t broke, in other words, don’t fix it.

And yet, get the same British conservatives onto the subject of the BBC, and they turn into wild-eyed Jacobins, yearning to punish and slash and burn and stick the heads of senior BBC staff on spikes.”

I have to say that that rather encapsulates my thinking about the BBC. I do not understand what it is about this organisation that gets my blood pressure rising and gets me so upset and irritated. I hope to be able to raise some of the issues that certainly frustrate me as a parliamentarian and a representative of taxpayers.

The BBC was set up in 1929, and of course I understand that in the late 1920s it needed to have state funding. However, the 1920s were a very different era from today. We have to think—I give this very important challenge to my hon. Friend the Minister—about how appropriate it is in 2012 for this broadcaster to receive such huge amounts of taxpayers’ money. The BBC is insulated from reality with that comfort blanket of taxpayers’ money. It knows that, no matter what it does, billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be poured into its organisation. I feel passionately that there is a lack of urgency, a lack, if I may say so, of innovation and a lack of determination to compete due to the secure nature of its state funding. I would like to know from the Minister what plans he has to ensure that more commercialism is brought to the BBC and that it is forced to pay for itself, rather than relying on taxpayers’ money.

I personally object to having to pay £145.50 every year to have a television licence. The public affairs department at the BBC keeps telling me how wonderfully cost-effective that is—much cheaper than any other broadcaster—but I personally object to having to pay £145.50 for the privilege of having a television licence. In 2012, it is somewhat out of date that citizens have to pay for the privilege of owning a television set. One should automatically be able to have a television and watch it without the need for a licence.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on succeeding in securing so important a debate. I recognise his doubts in relation to the licence fee and the guaranteed income that the BBC receives. Would his doubts be satisfied if there were greater transparency over how that money was spent? Every local authority in England publishes every invoice for amounts in excess of £500. Does he think that that would be an admirable model for the BBC to follow?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I completely concur. The BBC has been guilty in the past in the sense that trying to extract information from it has been like pulling teeth without anaesthetic. I do not understand why it has to have this cloak-and-dagger mystery surrounding how it spends taxpayers’ money, because at the end of the day—we must remember this—it is taxpayers’ money. I want to ram that point home over and over again. We are scrutinised here in the House of Commons because we are funded by taxpayers. The BBC is also funded by taxpayers and it has to be as transparent as Parliament is trying to be.