Public Service Broadcasting: BBC Centenary

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for securing this debate and for his superb introduction. I agree with every word he said about the Government’s ideologically driven, utterly nonsensical proposed sale of Channel 4. I also echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, on the importance of that. I would join everyone in welcoming the Minister back, but, wary of setting off that ministerial carousel the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, referred to, I will not in case it might not do him any good.

On Tuesday I had an Oral Question about the teaching of philosophy in our education system. My supplementary question was about whether this could help to improve the quality of public debate and the state of the public sphere. It is interesting that I got the loudest intimations of support, from every corner of your Lordships’ House, that I have ever enjoyed when I asked that question. We know that the quality of our public discourse and political debate needs to be much better. However, it could be much worse, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, pointing to Fox News in the United States. The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, said that the Government have to answer the question, “What is public service broadcasting for?” My answer to that question is: to ensure there is a clear, funded voice expressing ideas, encouraging creativity and allowing the public to speak for the public good—not voices driven entirely by private profit and interests. I will come back to who owns the private broadcasters.

To be fair, as we are talking about public service broadcasting, I acknowledge that I have sometimes been a critic, particularly of the BBC. If the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, thinks that the BBC is too liberal, I invite him to consider the number of appearances of Green Party representatives on “Question Time” compared with UKIP, the Brexit party and their ilk. The maths is quite astonishing. We have seen a BBC that has been “small c” conservative; it kept giving a platform to climate change deniers long after most other international media outlets had given that up and were astonished that the BBC was still doing so. In a story in the New Statesman only this week, looking at the BBC’s economic coverage, economists express concern that the national budget/household budget analogy is utterly false and misleading for the public.

I speak as a former newspaper editor, so I know that editors have enormous pressures on them. A number of noble Lords have referred to the enormous pressures placed on the BBC in recent years. Those pressures have come from right-wing, profit-driven commercial forces. The media tycoons I referred to earlier have commercial and political interests in squashing the BBC. In recent years, sadly, their voices have been backed by the Government. They have often seemed to be joint voices, the two working together to attack the BBC and our other public service broadcasters. It is crucial that there is an alternative voice saying that we want a genuinely critical BBC which acknowledges that there are lots of different voices and approaches.

Particularly on that basis, a number of noble Lords have referred to the importance of local media outlets. Local BBC radio in particular is crucial—I appear on it quite often because I travel around the country a lot. It is so valued by local communities, particularly in times of crisis, of which we are seeing so many now. I would like there to be thinking about how we can fund more local public sector broadcasting and media.

The reality of broadcasting now is that everything is merged together: people often get what is called broadcasting, what used to be called newspapers, and social media through one device, and they do not necessarily make much of a distinction between them. Along those lines, I return to the issue of ownership and voices. The latest Media Reform Coalition report, from 2021, pointed out that 90% of national newspaper circulation is now owned by three companies. These voices are competing with the broadcasters. DMG Media, owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, has 38% of weekly newspaper circulation, and News UK has 32%. We need balance.

Speaking as someone with a degree in communication studies, I say that we have to start thinking about all of this as an interactive process. We are talking about broadcasting and audiences sitting there receiving the content, but we need to think much more about content created by individuals to whom technology is now available, with broadcasters picking some of that up and sharing it around. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I am probably one of the few Members of your Lordships’ House with a TikTok account. I would be interested to know who else has one; I will follow them.

We have to think from the perspective of young people today and make sure that they have a voice in mainstream sources, such as public sector broadcasting. We have to make sure that they are not drowned out by a few loud—inevitably right-wing—media tycoon voices.