Barry Sheerman
Main Page: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)
Mr Whittingdale
I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I have a lot of sympathy with him. The existing cost of the BBC licence fee is substantial for many families on low incomes. What we have said is that, subject to the conditions that I set out in my statement, we anticipate that the licence fee will rise in line with inflation from the beginning of the next charter period, but that will still represent a real-terms freeze. The BBC is quite at liberty to make the case, during the charter review, for more funding in order to provide more, but I would need a lot of convincing before going down the road of increasing the cost to families, for the reason that my hon. Friend has described.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State agree that this is an important time of change in broadcasting generally? The BBC is a national institution that dominates our country in many ways, but we also have a very intimate relationship with it. We have all grown up with it, and we know it intimately. We all have our foibles, and one of mine is that I cannot stand some of our broadcasters and would like to see them changed. I am thinking particularly of the family that seems to dominate “Question Time”. There are two great challenges for the BBC at the moment. It is British, and there is a bunch of people locally, in Britain, who would love to get in there and dismember it. We all know who they are—a mixture of Russian oligarchs, pornographers and goodness knows who else—but the real challenge is not the small people but the Googles and the global media people. They represent the real challenge, and we must protect the BBC, because it is British, and help it to stand up against that kind of globalisation.
Mr Whittingdale
I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not waiting for his invitation to go on “Any Questions”. I completely agree with him about the importance of the BBC. It is an immensely important institution, and our purpose during the charter review is to look at ways of strengthening and modernising it, precisely because of the technological developments and new services that have come about in the last 10 years. It needs to be modernised, but I certainly do not wish to destroy it or undermine it.