Public Service Broadcasting: BBC Centenary

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Foster for his characteristically excellent opening speech to this debate and welcome the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, back. Keeping up the “Doctor Who” theme, I see him as the David Tennant of the House of Lords Benches.

The origin of the word “broadcast” was “to sow seed widely”, and that is what our PSBs have done, beginning with the BBC and its mission to inform, educate and entertain. They have made culture, news and other people’s experiences and lives available to all. Before the BBC started universally beaming into homes via the radio, the vast majority of the population did not have access to plays, stories and music. I heard Harold Pinter recollecting, in a recent programme, how, as a working-class teenager, listening to the Third Programme opened up a new world and set him on his creative path. He was not alone: it led to the formation of a whole new generations of artists.

Factual programmes such as “Woman’s Hour”, established in 1964, linked women with each other in a ground-breaking way, allowing isolated individuals to understand that their experience was not unique. Then there are the programmes for children. Just go for a stroll with my noble friend Lady Benjamin anywhere and her “Play School” babies flock, united in shared memories.

It was the BBC that came up with the idea of television. There was radio and there were the movies. The BBC put the two together, movies and radio, and it has continued to lead as an innovator—not something that has been much mentioned in this debate—working in the public interest with the likes of iPlayer and BBC Sounds, not just establishing new technologies but setting standards for the whole media industry. It led on rolling out the digital switchover and created two new consumer platforms, YouView and Freeview Play, which made online TV available to all UK audiences.

Every £1 of BBC R&D spend contributes up to £9 in value to the UK creative industries and beyond. As the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, and my noble friend Lord Foster said, the streamers love the UK partly because of this trail-blazing R&D, as well as the skills and infrastructure that the BBC and other PSBs provide. Companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney have flocked to these shores, making the UK their production base because, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones has already said, they get what our PSBs contribute and they understand the value of investing in them. Netflix alone is involved in more than 40 co-productions in the UK, worth tens of millions of pounds.

“A big benefit of a co-production model is we have partnerships with PSBs that have great creative instincts. We defer to them creatively.”


Those were the words of a Netflix executive.

However, the Government do not seem very grateful. They do not seem to understand what the streamers do. As my noble friend Lord Foster said of the BBC, they have consistently undermined an institution that is the backbone of these creative industries, doubling its money, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, so far as investment in the creative economy goes. It is a rare sector of the economy that still, despite all the efforts of Brexit, thrives.

The effect of initial BBC spending multiplies as it ripples through the economy, from region to region and sector to sector. It is pivotal in supporting our creative industries through the innovations I mentioned, but through skills and training as well. It feeds directly into levelling up. We have a Secretary of State for levelling up, so I presume it is still a government commitment. The BBC makes programmes across the country, boosting local economies and utilising local skills. It costs 44p a day and offers exceptional value, supplying British content via television, radio and the internet, universally available to everybody, in all parts of the UK.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said, it supplied a lifeline through the pandemic, providing news that the public trusted and essential support through Bitesize. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned how women’s football found its audience through pioneering coverage on the BBC, and now Harry Kane invokes the Lionesses as the World Cup team’s inspiration. It supplied superb coverage of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s lying in state and funeral and, as my noble friend Lord Razzall mentioned, the BBC and our other PSBs supply top-quality journalism in covering the war in Ukraine—not something the streaming services will ever provide.

Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, pointed out, this Government’s 100th birthday present to the BBC is to freeze the licence fee, effectively depriving it of £3 billion over the next five years. We think the Government are putting their determination to weaken the BBC before the national interest. Most recently, we have seen the consequences for the World Service, mentioned by so many across the House, such as the loss of 382 jobs and changes to delivery that mean nearly half of all 41 language services will become digital only. Of course we have to move with the times, but these cuts involve BBC Arabic radio and BBC Persian radio, both of which will cease. Digital is accessed via the internet, and the internet can be shut down by tyrannical Governments, as we are witnessing at the moment in Iran.

Does the Minister not agree with a former Foreign Secretary—a certain Boris Johnson—who described the BBC as the

“single greatest and most effective ambassador for our culture and our values”

and a crucial contributor to Britain’s role as a “soft-power superpower”? In which case, can the Minister answer the question from these Benches and from the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about why there is not more funding?

As my noble friend Lord McNally brought to our notice, the cuts to local radio are equally alarming. In the words of NUJ officer Paul Siegert:

“This is the biggest threat facing local radio since it launched in 1967. The key to its success over the past 50 years has been its localness.”


Does the Minister not agree, and how can local radio be local when it comes off air at 2 pm? Just last month, local radio stations took turns to interview the then Prime Minister, Liz Truss. The quality and depth of BBC local journalism was on display, and it was a triumph for local accountability and the power of local media. Does the Minister not agree that these cuts in radio, both across the World Service and domestically, provide an incredibly convincing argument as to why we should protect and finance the BBC properly?

I am afraid that the Government’s gloomy attitude extends beyond the BBC to public service broadcasting in general, with the threat to Channel 4 through privatisation. As so many people have talked about this, I am going to cut my speech on this point. However, contrary to what the April White Paper claims, and due to the expansion of its digital channels, Channel 4’s viewing demographic is young and diverse, and advertising revenue has increased over the last two years. The fact is that Channel 4 is in rude financial health and does not need privatisation to prosper. The Secretary of State has said that she will re-examine the business case. I hope the Minister accepts that the figures in the government paper need re-examining, too—as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said—as many are plain wrong. The other pressing need is for a media Bill, as many noble Lords have said, both to ensure prominence and to reform listed events.

In the words of Sir Peter Bazalgette:

“One of the justifications for the intervention in the marketplace that is the BBC is the value of the creative industries democratically, culturally, socially and economically.”


That is the point. Our public service broadcasters are much more than what we see on their screens, and the BBC’s original mission has never been more important. The first episode of a recent programme “How the BBC Began” was titled “Accident and Opportunity”—how true. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said, the BBC is a unique and glorious aberration. Once gone, it is never coming back, and with it go our other public service broadcasters. The BBC is 100, ITV is 67, Channel 4 was 40 yesterday—long may they last.