Channel 4: Privatisation (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests and take this opportunity to thank the late David Rose, who gave me my first opportunity to direct a film when I was not yet 24 years old and there were no women directors around. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Best, who is a diplomat of the highest order and an excellent chairman of the committee, and to the Secretary of State for heeding our call in her wonderful decision not to privatise Channel 4.

I thought that I would be providing an alternative view, but it turns out that I rise only to support the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which I am happy to do. I want to draw attention to an influential report, A New Destination for the Arts, which many noble Lords may remember was published in 2015 by GPS Culture. It made a very strong case for the transfer of public arts funding to the regions and nations. The report became the zeitgeist for a couple of years, and was responsible for a huge shift in attitude, with vast sums of public money and some private funds going from London to the regions. The report argued that London had drawn further and further ahead of the rest of England in its dominance of cultural life and that unless decisions on programme design and funding allocations were taken at local level, the privileges and concerns of a metropolitan elite would always prevail, thereby leaving the nations and regions behind in relation to the cultural, economic and social benefits of the creative industries. Crucially, that also leaves them out of the financial support and training of creative talent.

I hear those noble Lords who talk about reallocation and the dearth of talent. There has been a presumption in this debate that all the talent lives in London. I would say that while there is a presumption that most of the talent works in London, it does not necessarily live there, and this is a huge opportunity.

Furthermore, the report gave evidence that the rebalancing would have to be at sufficient scale to reduce the risk of parochialism and ensure the creation of creative communities, which rely on a mix of skills and competencies to make creative collaboration and production sustainable. The same argument pertains here. We have seen what the BBC’s move has meant in Salford; we have seen the “Game of Thrones” effect in Northern Ireland and that of “Doctor Who” in Cardiff. Controversial and expensive as that BBC move to Salford was, it has had a significant economic and cultural impact, with a growth in opportunities for local employment and training. We can see that a more diverse group of decision-makers eventually ends up making our screens more diverse. That includes the vast numbers of UK citizens who live outside London and are currently under-represented, not only on the screen but particularly behind it.

I accept Channel 4’s arguments that moving its production spend and not its headquarters would make the greatest difference, that it is a publisher and not a producer, and that it wishes to stay close to its advertiser clients. But as the report articulates, it is only by creating an entire environment, sufficiently large and powerful that commissioners and production staff live and work, side by side, outside the capital, that we will see cultural change. What we have to decide is what we want to see in cultural change. Equally, I accept that if the Government were to insist on the superficial act of moving the headquarters but leaving the production spend with companies largely based in London, the cultural dominance of decision-makers in London would remain. The more exponential benefit of production spend is a greater contribution, so it is an all-or-nothing picture.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, will laugh if I disagree with Enders, because I often disagree with Enders. However, I think its assumption that the talent is in London and it has to move that way is false. As someone who plays host to at least 30% of the members of the Newcastle acting community who have to leave their families, their houses and their homes to come to London but who cannot afford to live and work away from home unless they B&B with me, I think we have to take this seriously.

I would like to make it clear that Channel 4 exceeds its current remit and that my words, and possibly those of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, are applicable to any major institution in the cultural industries. Whether it is for Channel 4 to fulfil the vision of moving something up north is an open question but, unless it is done by someone in the cultural industries, we are going to have an industry that is perpetually out of balance.

Our public broadcasting is the envy of the world. Its independence is an essential aspect. Channel 4 is an independent statutory organisation that enjoys sole responsibility for delivering undertakings on a 10-year licence, which it is in the middle of, so I do not understand on what basis we are insisting that it does anything—because, until it fails to meet its existing obligations, I do not see a role for government in moving it anywhere. While I personally would be delighted to see Channel 4 do its brilliant work of making distinctive and innovative programmes and challenging and inspiring further from this House than Horseferry Road, that is a decision for the Channel 4 board, not for the Secretary of State.