Future of the BBC

Austin Mitchell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I am grateful for a little space from the Minister’s table to comment, because I will not follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) in his ludicrous accusations of bias in the BBC, about which he is as wrong as he was all those years ago about televising Parliament. However, he mentioned, in his back-handed way, quality in the BBC. We are about the get the document “Delivering Quality First” from the BBC, in which it will tell us how it will deliver a 20% reduction in spending and a 25% reduction in overheads. That is far more than can be gained by any reduction in fees paid to Jonathan Ross or “Paxperson”, or even in the director-general’s ludicrous salary.

This is a serious issue, because cuts cannot be made on that scale without damaging the BBC’s quality of production. This is a national jewel—a national asset—and we propose to inflict devastating cuts in production and staff, in the BBC’s scope and artistic integrity and, above all, in quality. Quality costs in television, and it must be financed.

Here we are damaging this precious asset as a result, it seems to me, of a dirty deal that was arrived at between the Conservative party and the Murdoch interests. In return for the Murdoch newspapers’ support, the Conservatives agreed in opposition to prune the BBC, as James Murdoch had asked for in his MacTaggart lecture, and to give them the ability to take over Sky. Part of that deal has now fallen through, but it is important—I wish the hon. Gentleman had mentioned this—to stop the decimation of services in the BBC. It must be stopped.

Far from using the licence fee as a stranglehold on the BBC to enforce reductions, we should pass at some stage a supplementary licence fee increase to save it from these cuts, which will be compounded by taking on the burden of the World Service. It is not now a matter of grumbling about bias at the BBC and making snide remarks about the salaries paid at the BBC. It is not now a matter of handwringing; it is a matter of fighting to save the BBC.