Public Service Broadcasting (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, in the 1980s, while both my gender and geography were against me, I was able to begin my directing career at Channel 4 and subsequently build it at the BBC. Since that time, I have worked across the creative industries from Hollywood studios and streamers to independents and PSBs. With that in mind, I draw the attention of the House to my interests on the register in relation to the tech sector and as director of a TV and theatre company. It was a privilege to be a member of the Communications Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, at the time of the report’s inquiry. I would like to associate myself with his words at the beginning of the debate.

I want to talk briefly about three things: the urgent need to support a national broadcaster; the funding model of the BBC; and who the competition really is. It is striking that, for a much-loved institution, the BBC attracts so much ire. It manages to upset the left for its failure to give it a platform and the right for being a hotbed of liberals. It is accused of failing the young as they abandon it for YouTube, and failing the old, in the debacle of the over-75s licence fee. Perhaps it is the role of a Cross-Bencher to point out that, if it is upsetting both sides, it is probably doing a reasonable job.

In a time of division, culture wars and disputed realities algorithmically pushed to highlight our difference, the nation’s broadcaster should not be a comfort to any one view but an instrument for, and a mirror to, us all. The danger of this moment is that our divisions—symbolised by our fragmentation north and south, Brexit or not, urban or rural, nationalism or unity—overwhelm our common interest. The vast majority of our witnesses made the case that, more than ever, we need a broad expansive space in which to see our collective selves, not a narrowed-down public broadcaster doing only what commercial players are not motivated to do, which, ironically, is likely to result in a diet that feeds only an urban elite.

I would like to underline that it is breadth of experience, shared across class and region, across all of our fault-lines, that must be the ambition: to enjoy the talent shows, our national obsessions of housebuilding and watching other people cook; to watch “Small Axe” or “Line of Duty”; to hear the nightly news—which is still trusted above any other—as one nation. Streamers and video-on-demand services are deliberately designed to offer a personalised world. When I choose content based on my interests or characteristics, I am offered more of the same. While it feels comforting to be reflected, it automatically demotes content based on other interests and alternate characteristics. The BBC is unique in that its role is to ensure that we all see ourselves not as individual islands but in the context of each other.

Turning to the licence fee, the Committee was clear that the process should be transparent and based on the duties that are set out. It is not right that the BBC is asked to invest in infrastructure or give free licences if that takes away its ability to provide the programming that the nation demands. I support the recommendation absolutely but, perhaps somewhat controversially, I increasingly accept the argument of those who say that times have changed and that the licence fee, while still extraordinary value for money, is organised as something of a poll tax—neither based on usage nor ability to pay.

My personal view is that the BBC should have a ring-fenced settlement from central taxation. While I share the fear of political interference, I am not sure that the perennial threat to the licence fee—whether freezing it, forcing it to be spent inappropriately or legitimising non-payment—does not amount to political interference by less transparent means. It is in the national interest to fund and protect our national broadcaster, because our prosperity and identity are better held in public together, rather than as an ever increasingly divided nation distracted by its own atomised furies. Undoubtedly, it is irksome to each successive Government to feel the bite, especially when they hold the potential to defang it, but while it is a temptation to disempower the BBC, it should be resisted. Whatever our starting point, we all lose if we do not have one eye on building our common identity.

Finally, can we put to bed the notion that the battle for control of our attention is between the BBC and commercial radio, local press, Sky or even the streamers? It is, of course, the platforms—YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok—that dominate our cultural and information technologies and who fuel the ever more fragmented and personalised realities, artificially promoting false binaries and extremities at the expense of a collective experience.

Neither culture nor politics is a zero-sum game. It does not follow that, if the platforms or streamers have content, we need none in our collective hands. The PSB system offers the opportunity of a contemporary and collective vision of what binds us at a crucial time in which we are readdressing our role on the global stage and working out what being a United Kingdom means. By all means, let us continue to discuss the detail, but let us not misunderstand the purpose. As this excellent report concludes, the PSB system is more vital than ever.