BBC: Freedom of Information Legislation

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hoey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to amend Freedom of Information legislation to ensure that the British Broadcasting Corporation is more transparent.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the BBC is a public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act. As with other public service broadcasters under the Act, the right of access extends to all information held other than that held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature. There are no plans to amend this provision.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the BBC is a huge institution that took £3.5 billion from the public last year, yet it is the least transparent in its attitude toward freedom of information requests, using, as the Minister has just said, journalism as a broad way of getting out of FoI. BBC Northern Ireland is particularly bad: it even refused an FoI request to tell us what it paid the polling company LucidTalk, which it employed when it could have used other existing polls. The BBC is unaccountable, and now that GB News is established and it has some rivalry, when will the Government change the FoI rules to ensure that the BBC becomes more transparent and more accountable for our money?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As I said in my initial Answer, there are no current plans to amend the rules. As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, requesters have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner if they believe that a public authority has not complied with the Act. However, my understanding is that in no recent decisions has the Information Commissioner upheld any appeals against the BBC based on journalistic and other exclusions.