Diversity in the Media

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady King for introducing this debate, which is important and always current. It is more than 50 years since the Race Relations Act was passed in this country. In 1965 many people thought that a new dawn had broken. In 1975 we had the Sex Discrimination Act, which sat alongside the Equal Pay Act. The disability lobby, after much innovative and sometimes brave campaigning, saw the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

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[Baroness Prosser]

The disability lobby, after much innovative and sometimes brave campaigning, saw the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The Equality Act 2010 introduced the public sector equality duty designed to require public bodies to consider the possible impact of their decisions on what are known as protected groups. These include, in addition to the groups mentioned above, age, sexuality and religion. All this legislation and yet here we are with masses of evidence that for many people none of the above seems to have entered their psyche.

Just last week there was a piece in the Guardian on a report entitled Cut Out of the Picture commissioned by Directors UK—this is the report that my noble friend Lady King quoted earlier. It is a report about the film industry, but what goes on in film has a knock-on effect and an influence on what is shown on our TVs and what we read in the papers; that is, on how the world is depicted. The findings are pretty shocking, showing that matters on the gender front have barely improved with 11.5% of directors being female in 2005 and a measly 11.9% in 2014. The report covers more than gender parity, calling for an amendment to film tax relief to require all UK films to account for diversity, and an industry-wide campaign to rebalance gender equality. Apparently an equal number of men and women are choosing to study film, but women drop out at every level, particularly as budgets increase. What kind of bias pops into the head of the person with the funds who says, “Be careful here. Mustn’t upset the norm. Let’s stay with the status quo”. Only 3.3% of blockbuster movies were directed by women and yet, at the other end of the scale, 27% of short films with a limited budget had female directors. That sounds like a big and unnecessary loss of talent to me. Publicly funded films have the worst reputation, with the figure for female directors falling from 32.9% in 2007 to just 17% in 2014.

If we turn to TV, the situation is not much better. The female TV population is younger than in real life, with 47% of females being aged between 20 and 39 compared to the real-world figure of 26%. Men on TV outnumber women by six to four, when in reality of course women make up 51% of the population. Other protected groups fare even worse. There is just a 2.5% disabled presence on our screens compared to 20% in the community at large. Older people do no better. For example, there is only 15% representation of women aged over 55—precisely half of that of the real population.

These matters are important not just to demonstrate even-handedness or fair dibs at jobs and possible fame and fortune, although of course all of that is important. What really matters is the message it sends out. For example, how would an Asian woman aged over 60 feel if she never saw a serious representation of herself, be it in a play or a factual programme? The only person we ever see on TV in a wheelchair who is not there to talk about disability or Paralympic sport is Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, who was of course already a TV presenter before he was so shamefully attacked by an al-Qaeda gunman. People who are physically handicapped can be just as capable as anyone else of being an actor or of speaking up generally but somehow it does not happen. Despite the fact that the world of entertainment has always had a significant gay presence, it could only ever be recognised by jokes or innuendo. LGBT actors or presenters being depicted as ordinary citizens would be a welcome change.

Behind the scenes, work is going on to improve the employment levels of the various protected groups. Under the Communications Act 2003, Ofcom is required to take such steps as it considers appropriate to,

“promote equality of opportunity in relation to employment by broadcasters and the training and retraining of persons for such employment … promote the equalisation of opportunities for disabled persons in relation to such employment, training and re-training”.

The Act also provides that Ofcom must require holders of a TV broadcast licence to,

“make and from time to time review arrangements for: promoting, in relation to employment with the relevant licensee … equality of opportunity between men and women and between persons of different racial groups; and … the equalisation of opportunities for disabled persons”.

The public sector equality duty also of course applies as appropriate. A 2014 survey carried out by Creative Skillset shows that there is room for improvement here, with, for example, only 5% of the workforce having a disability compared to the estimated 11% of all UK employed. Research by Directors UK found that only 1.5% of British TV programmes were made by a black and minority ethnic director, while only 14% of dramas had been directed by women.

In my humble opinion, things will improve only when the current decision-makers see that change will bring some advantage to themselves, or alternatively when they see that not making changes will bring a disadvantage. I do not know enough about the film tax relief mentioned earlier in my speech to say whether such a measure would be possible or would make a difference. I do know, though, that what gets measured gets done and that if the measurement of equalities’ advancement and change were to be taken into account when determining the salaries and bonuses of decision-makers, for example, change would then leap over the horizon. As my friend Lord Morris of Handsworth used to say, we have enough policies to paper the walls of the conference room, it is time to take action. We have had 51 years of legislation and progress has been far too slow. Only bold steps will make change come faster.