BBC Charter

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I too declare that I am a former employee of the BBC—but in the face of so many senior luminaries of the BBC, I should point out that I was a humble Scottish economics correspondent. My son works for BBC Children in Need, so I suppose his boss is Pudsey.

I shall take up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, made about the National Audit Office, because I am concerned about the implications of NAO audits of the BBC. The role of the NAO will be to look at the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries. The BBC is a global commercial enterprise. How can such a huge organisation, operating globally, function within the confines of a public service auditor?

My noble friend Lord Pendry talked about value for money and the “Wanted Down Under” programme. I have an even more serious addiction than the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who is addicted to BBC Radio 4. I am addicted to Radio 4 but I am also addicted to the World Service, particularly during the night. The value-for-money issues surrounding such intense public sector broadcasting are very difficult to quantify. Indeed, much though I am a huge fan of “House of Cards”, written by the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, the BBC has already revealed that the cost of two series of “House of Cards” for Netflix, viewed by 6% of the UK adult population, would allow the BBC to deliver 14 drama series, viewed by 71% of UK adults. I would love to see how the National Audit Offices manages to deal with that.

A number of references have been made this evening to training. The BBC’s training function has historically been the gold standard of broadcasting training, and it is regrettable that there has been a reduction in training expenditure. Not only does it create a much better environment for our creative industries by raising the skill levels of the people in those industries but—here I am speaking particularly about news broadcasting— it allows us to reach out to countries that do not have the benefit of a free media. That is an area that I would like the Minister to expand upon, if not this evening then perhaps in a letter, saying what guarantees can be given in relation to the whole provision of training.

I mentioned the BBC World Service but I have also worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Although my career is not as distinguished as that of the noble Lord, Lord Williams, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that one of the best aspects of public diplomacy that we have is the BBC World Service. It comes into its own in crisis situations, and it seems absurd that the Foreign Office is now absolved of responsibility for that function. It is absolutely critical that we do not consider cutting the funding of the World Service and that it should be expanded. Like the noble Lord, Lord Williams, part of my training took place at Bush House. Sadly, Bush House is no more but the World Service was an inspirational environment. I remember as a young woman being hugely affected by the comments of Terry Waite and John McCarthy. When they were eventually released following their kidnapping, they said how significant they found it being able to listen to the BBC World Service.

Similar things can be said about BBC Monitoring. In an environment in which we are concerned about international radicalisation, it plays a key part in our ability to understand what is happening in those parts of the world to which we do not have ready and direct access. Therefore, I urge the Government to look more seriously at expanding, rather than reducing, the monitoring service. This matter was mentioned earlier this evening.

Obviously, as a Scot, I am concerned about BBC Scotland. It has already made a number of announcements about how it will meet the new commitment to recognising national identity. However, I want to say a little bit about Gaelic broadcasting. Gaelic is one of the most significant minority languages in the United Kingdom that is still used. I am not a Gaelic speaker and I do not come from a Gaeltacht, the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland—although I am allowed to call myself a Gaelic granny because I have a four year-old granddaughter in Gaelic-medium education, which is enormously successful.

BBC Gaelic radio has been mentioned in the charter since the 1920s but, for the first time, BBC Alba is referred to in the charter. BBC Alba is very successful; 15% of the Scottish population watch it. There has been a huge interest in Gaelic among young people, and the channel provides fantastic opportunities to develop independent production—over 100 people in the highlands and islands of Scotland work in the independent production industry thanks to the opportunities provided by BBC Alba. However, 74% of its output is repeats. Wonderful though it is to see Rhoda MacDonald—one of the most distinguished Gaelic broadcasters, and who used to be one of my special advisers—on BBC Alba, seeing her 20 years ago every week is a bit disconcerting. As most of the programmes we see on BBC Alba are repeats, that makes the channel unsustainable. It is about funding. It is necessary that the BBC, at a UK-wide level, addresses the issue of how to fund the advancement of minority languages.

[Lord Birt]

I wonder whether the noble Baroness would like to say how the BBC can do that given the circumstances that I outlined earlier, in which it has effectively lost 25% of its core funding over 10 years.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I recognise that. Indeed, one of my criticisms is the reduction in funding, and we have had a number of references tonight to the change in the licence fee for the over-75s. There are areas where I would criticise the BBC. Some of those criticisms are of the bureaucratic structures around the BBC and non-programme making, which are necessary but sometimes have spiralled quite considerably out of control.

If you want to have diversity, you must recognise that there are many areas of diversity. Part of that includes minority languages. The Irish got it right to a T. They built their modern economy by recognising the value of Gaelic education in encouraging the development of modern languages. As a consequence, if you look at the number of back-office functions in Dublin for major multinational corporations, you will see that a lot of those are there due to that early investment in the Gaelic language and, through that, in modern languages. I do not, therefore, dispute what the noble Lord says about the impact of cuts; they are very considerable indeed.

My time is up. As somebody who was a BBC news trainee, I know that the worst crime is to go into the pips. However, one of the most important things for us to recognise is that there is a lot of bitching about the BBC. It is that same kind of negativity that has got us into problems with Brexit and so on. The BBC is probably one of the best standard bearers of British values and democratic values that this country can provide.