Public Service Broadcasting: BBC Centenary

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating and welcoming my noble friend back to his rightful place on the Front Bench. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for securing this debate.

I declare my interests in the register and, if noble Lords will forgive me, I will highlight a correction recently made to them. I have been undertaking work for Vitrifi Ltd, a telecoms business that is part of a fund managed by Octopus Ventures, which I had incorrectly declared as working for Octopus Ventures. My entry in the register now accurately reflects that I am working directly for Vitrifi, and I hope that noble Lords will forgive my inaccurate previous statement.

As many noble Lords have said, public service broadcasting and broadcasters enjoy broad public support. Inquiries by committees of both Houses have consistently found support not just for the principles of public service broadcasting but for the programmes themselves. But the world is very different from 100 years ago, when the BBC was born—both the media landscape and British society. We no longer sit in our living rooms, watching linear broadcast channels all together as a single family unit on the single family TV set: the landscape is now multimedia, multidevice and multiplatform. We have and need public service media, not just public service broadcasters.

Society is also very different from 100 years ago: it is more diverse and more open. Our digital native children and grandchildren access media completely differently from the way that we in this Chamber do and did. As we heard, viewing of BBC channels, for example, by 16 to 34 year-olds has halved over the last 10 years, according to our Communications and Digital Committee report. So, if we value public service broadcasters—I do not think that anyone has spoken today from a position other than valuing them—we should not be afraid of change. In fact, I would argue that updating and changing to reflect the modern world is essential to maintain the public glue and the very value that we all hold so dear in our public service broadcasters.

Noble Lords may call me naive, but I worry that in public debate we too quickly move to hero or villain. It is very hard for individuals and institutions to admit mistakes or that that they could do better without immediately being castigated as the villain. It is also very hard to take risks and to change if you are put on a pedestal as the hero. It is entirely possible both to be incredibly proud of an organisation, its role in society and its performance and to acknowledge that it can and should change and do better.

That is where I am about public service broadcasters in the round. Our PSBs are one of the things that hold our country together. Like many of my fellow citizens, I am incredibly proud of them. I watch and love their content, and I think they could do better. Indeed, we could help them do better. There is something for all of us in helping them to do that. As a number of noble Lords have said, legislation is clearly needed to recognise that existing rules that worked in a linear TV and radio world need to be updated to reflect the digital age of streaming and global tech platforms. Clearly, prominence rules need to be updated, but we also need things such as the Digital Markets Unit in Ofcom to be put on a firm legal footing. I ask my noble friend the Minister to confirm that that legislation will be coming soon.

There is clearly work for government to do as well. It needs to face into the difficult decision of funding the BBC. Our generation here today might just about be able to get our heads around a licence fee being linked to a television set, but that is impossible for my children, who consume almost all their media on other devices. I fear we risk the credibility of our system of funding the BBC by tethering it to an increasingly anachronistic model of media consumption—that of just the television set. I do not pretend that replacing the licence fee as it stands today is easy, but just ignoring the need for change is definitely not the answer.

As a number of noble Lords have said, the public service broadcasters themselves must work much harder to appeal to all groups, especially young people and those from more diverse backgrounds, both urban and rural. As with the funding decisions, this is really easy to say, but it is much harder to do well. That is what will mark out successful public service broadcasters and media organisations worldwide. It is those which develop platforms and programmes that make us all feel welcome and have something for all of us to treasure that will flourish in the future. We need our wonderful public service broadcasters to stand up to that challenge.

We as parliamentarians have a role to play as well. Our public service broadcasters are the envy of the free world, and it has been all too fashionable to bash many of the establishment organisations in this country. It is hugely important that we do not fall into that trap. Nor should we put them on a pedestal. Our role as parliamentarians should be to be hugely proud of our public service broadcasters but also to challenge them to do an even better job. One hundred years ago, it was the most fantastic moment that the BBC was born. We need to both respect and challenge our PSBs to deliver for another 100 years ahead.