BBC Mid-term Charter Review

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I have not lost anything at all. It is very simple. The fact is that in Parliament, we have proper debates by elected people and decisions made on matters of public importance, whatever the outcome and whatever the views expressed. They are democratically decided. The decisions put across by the BBC quite often are the result of a kind of centrist viewpoint, which I will come on to later, which is inevitably not consistent with the views of the public who pay for the benefit, if that is what it is to be called, of watching and listening to the programmes in question.

The Government review recommends that the BBC publishes more information on how it carries out its work on impartiality and how it responds to Ofcom’s challenge to improve its performance. A new complaints system has been established under the principle of “BBC First”, but the question remains whether that has worked. The number of complaints made to Ofcom about the BBC’s impartiality has increased, and the evidence is that the BBC is not meeting this challenge.

It is understood that there has been substantial disagreement between the Government and the BBC during the creation of this new complaints system, but it is still found wanting and Ofcom needs to improve its own performance. It is also understood that many former BBC employees with BBC sympathies remain in Ofcom and are involved in this process. That also represents a problem, the ultimate result of which is unsatisfactory. Clearly, the Government are not sufficiently satisfied with the BBC at the moment, or with Ofcom’s performance on this vital question. That is bad news. As the Government point out, the BBC has failed to have a sufficiently robust internal system for identifying the statistical data to determine its analysis of complaints. The Government state that the independence of complaints handling indicates that the BBC can do more to ensure that audiences feel that their complaints will be fairly considered.

A number of points need to be made. I know something of this, because the European Scrutiny Committee, which I chair, took evidence from the BBC nine years ago on the issue of bias. We criticised the BBC on the question of the European issue before the referendum took place. The distinguished Lord Wilson of Dinton made same kind of criticism of bias in his own report. All these years later, the Government remain concerned even now that the manner in which complaints are dealt with, and the data involved, continue to be profoundly unsatisfactory.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am afraid that I am one of those who has been distracted, and I will not be able to remain to speak in the debate. I took a very great interest in the report by Lord Wilson of Dinton, not least because it did not denigrate the integrity of people in the BBC. It did uncover, however, an unconscious preconception about what certain views on the European community meant. The report was about the impartiality of the BBC when reporting matters concerning the European Union. It made a lot of people in the BBC extremely angry. People from the BBC told me that it should never have been commissioned, even though it was a totally objective report. When confronted with it, the BBC still gets very angry about it, which suggests that there is a different atmosphere in the BBC about certain issues. Nobody ever thinks that they themselves are biased, and the BBC does not think it is biased, but it can unconsciously produce a very one-sided approach to a particular issue such as the European Union—and, in that case, about the single currency.

[Sir William Cash]

Indeed. The proof was in the pudding and was demonstrated by the outcome of the referendum on 23 June 2016. My hon. Friend is right. Actually, this is about unconscious bias in some cases and very positive groupthink in others. That is where the problem lies—somewhere in between.

On a limited budget, the voluntary organisation News-Watch does the job extremely well. It states: “The BBC's continued stonewalling of complaints, inadequacies of Ofcom in its watchdog role and the lack of effective reforms proposed by the mid-term review to ensure impartiality remains a fundamental problem.” Thus, the national interest is undermined, and the right of the licence-fee payer to have a proper system in place is denied him. News-watch is calling—rightly, in my opinion—for much more radical reforms to ensure impartiality, with a fully independent complaints system, more transparency and accountability, and efforts to improve diversity of opinion among BBC staff through new staff-training initiatives to ensure impartial research and analysis. All those are urgent.

The mid-term review does not, in my opinion, provide a proper system for determining breaches of impartiality, and allows the BBC and Ofcom undue latitude in interpreting what the words “due impartiality” mean, leaving the BBC as its own judge and jury. Indeed, in the past year, the new BBC editorial complaints unit—otherwise known as the ECU—has upheld only one impartiality complaint. People simply will not believe that, but it is a fact. Neither the BBC nor Ofcom routinely publish detailed data on the vast majority of the nearly 2 million complaints received since Ofcom became the regulator in April 2017. The system is, therefore, not fit for purpose.

Ofcom’s own figures indicate that complaints relating to bias make up as much as 39% of the complaints, and complaints about misleading and dishonest content make up a further 26%, amounting to approximately 800,000 complaints about bias since Ofcom took over. Of the 155 complaints upheld or partly upheld by the new ECU system, only 33 were accepted as relating to bias, which is an absurd and minuscule proportion. We do not yet have the latest figures, those relating to 2023-24, but the provisional information indicates that the ECU considered 374 complaints, of which only 2.7% were fully or partially upheld and 89% were not upheld. The situation is shocking and demonstrates an intrinsic failure of the system. It must be made fully independent, and must not be judge and jury.

[Sir William Cash]

It is at the heart of the BBC’s priorities in theory, but not in practice. Ofcom is insufficiently independent, and it is understood that there are deep concerns about the entrenched ties between its content board and the BBC—which still persist—and, therefore, a lack of accountability. A mere 56% of the public now believe that the corporation is impartial. The BBC refuses to engage with complaints that do not refer to single programme items, and there is a lack of comprehensive research into audience perceptions of bias.

I noticed an important letter in The Daily Telegraph on 23 January this year from Baroness Deech, a distinguished Cross-Bench peer and King’s counsel who was a governor of the BBC from 2002. Regarding the publication of the mid-term review in January, she wrote that

“Complaints are seen by the BBC as very sensitive matters, threatening the independence of the editors: witness the lengths to which it has gone to keep secret the Balen Report on its bias against Israel.”

She argues that

“The best way to handle complaints would be to appoint an independent ombudsman from outside the media industry, supported by experts on the topic at issue.”

I believe she is right. She confirms that

“Ofcom is heavily staffed by former BBC and media professionals who may be as touchy as their current counterparts at the notion of bias at the BBC.”

It is not just a notion: it is clearly apparent, and that is what the public think.

It is also interesting to note the views of distinguished BBC insiders, who know how the system works on a daily basis and have been openly critical of the BBC’s performance while they were employed as top-line and experienced presenters and commentators within the BBC for decades. I recommend that anyone who is interested in this subject reads Roger Mosey’s book “Getting Out Alive”, which gives a very good insight into issues of bias by the BBC on the question of Europe. He recalls a “Today” programme meeting when Rod Liddle was confronted by a producer who said disparagingly,

“‘The Eurosceptics believe Germany is going to dominate Europe!’ This generated laughter from bien pensant colleagues”

about the ridiculousness of that idea.

“‘But what if it’s true?’ was the response from the editor, and he set the team thinking about items that would examine whether Euroscepticism had some well-founded beliefs”

As Members will recall, at that time nobody thought for a minute about the simple question that those of us who were campaigning on the European issue—in my case, having come into the House in May 1984, I have campaigned continuously for 40 years—were trying to get across: “What does the European Union and its related matters mean for the British people?” That is an example of how the system can work—when reason prevails, as demonstrated by the editor of the “Today” programme.

Mosey also refers to the issue of asylum seekers in the summer of 2003, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

Mosey said that the people he describes as the “editorial policy people” asserted in this context that the issue was being led by an

“angry tabloid agenda and extreme Right-wing groups”.

Mosey replied strongly to the editorial policy team, saying among other things that the

“asylum debate is one in which we’ve done rather badly in reflecting the concerns of our audiences or the genuine crisis faced by the government in dealing with the issue”.

That was in Tony Blair’s time, let along now. Later, he mentions:

“Two years ago when it started being raised, we did not realise the level of unease about the issue”.

Now, two decades later, the position remains the same.

I also recommend John Humphrys’s book “A Day Like Today”, particularly, after 33 years of political interviewing, his conclusion:

“Today presenters and their stablemates do have questions to ask themselves. Does an interview always have to be so combative? Does there have to be a winner or loser”—[Interruption.]

John Humphrys, and he knows what he is talking about, unlike the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), says that

“if it does, the loser might very well be the public. If we interviewers succeed, albeit unintentionally, in convincing the listener that all politicians are liars, the real loser is our system of representative democracy that has served the nation so well for so long”,

to which I say, “Hear, hear.”

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

My hon. Friend is making a very important speech. I would just draw the House’s attention to when I was new young Back Bencher in the early 1990s, and two or three of us, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), finally got a meeting with the “Today” programme’s editorial team, which I think included Rod Liddle. We started to explain to them why joining a single currency in the European Union might be a rather bad idea and they were very interested, but they were greeted with derision when they went back to the BBC and suggested that our arguments should be taken seriously.

[Sir William Cash]

The short answer is that we got the verdict on 23 June 2016, as we all know.

The problem is that the BBC is incapable of enforcing its own rules on impartiality, largely because the overwhelming majority of the corporation’s journalists as pivotal staff—as one hears, even from Members of this House who have worked for the BBC—are signed up to a left-liberal political worldview in which group-think and woke prevail, and any who diverge from the worldview they hold makes those who differ from them targets for criticism and worse, including ridicule.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). He made a wide-ranging speech more at times perhaps suited to the History channel than to BBC Parliament, but I am sure the viewing public will have listened to what he said with great interest. He made some important points, and the attendance at this debate does not reflect the high regard in which people hold the BBC and its importance for our nation, which is why this review is of importance.

I was not familiar with the term “BBC sympathiser,” but I suspect that many members of the public would recognise themselves as BBC sympathisers because it does hold a special place in many people’s hearts and is respected around the world. That should not make the BBC immune to criticism, however, and because of the unique way it is funded it is often held to a higher standard than many of its competitors.

It is right that the BBC should respond to public concerns and reflect the way society is changing, otherwise it will find itself consigned to the history books alongside silent movies and video cassettes. The sad reality is that the BBC’s traditional rivals on free-to-air terrestrial TV are already on life support because they cannot compete with online subscription services in terms of quality and they cannot match the ways online services can target adverts and reach people, which were inconceivable not long ago. So the BBC could become the last man standing in terms of wholly British broadcasters.

But the warning signs are there for the BBC too. A recent survey found that 43% of people did not know what the TV licence was for and 66% agreed that the TV licence should be scrapped in 2027. I do not agree with that, but that survey should be ringing alarm bells. It may only be one survey, and I do not know the age breakdown, but I suspect we would find from it that younger people are less likely to see the value of the licence fee. After all, they will have grown up in a world where on-demand subscription services are the norm, so paying for something regardless of whether they watch it may well seem outdated and probably unfair.

But when we look at the hard facts, not just at surveys, that also paints a worrying picture. The number of people not paying the licence fee has doubled in 10 years, and that is despite the threat of large fines for non-payment. If that non-payment rate increases at the same rate over the next few decades, we can all see where that will take us. So we need to ask serious questions about why non-payment rates are growing. Clearly that is in part because people are voting with their feet and their wallets, and that is a challenge for the BBC in its overriding mission, which I will address shortly, but it is also a question of enforcement.

When I ask questions of Ministers about enforcement action, it is clear that none has been taken against anyone over 75 for non-payment. I certainly know of a constituent in that age bracket who has decided for their own reasons not to pay the licence fee and so far has received 23 letters with various degrees of threat within them, but no actual enforcement action has been taken. It seems to me that the BBC has taken the decision not to prosecute over-75s for non-payment. I certainly have no issue with that—we should not be criminalising pensioners—but that does jar with the other stories we hear about seriously ill and vulnerable people being prosecuted for non-payment. It seems that we are ducking the hard decisions that need to be made about how we deal with the licence fee.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Is there not another issue here, which is that the BBC is a successful programme maker and broadcaster, yet it is completely unable to compete with the likes of Amazon Prime and Netflix, because it is not allowed to run subscription services in the same way? Is there not a case for replacing a large proportion of the licence fee income with subscription income for those programmes, albeit that it would still be necessary for the BBC to have some public subvention for its public service broadcasting, which plays such a key role in our national life?

[Justin Madders]

That is where the debate takes us, and that is a debate we need to have. We need to decide as a House and a country whether we think that the current model is sustainable. There is evidence mounting that it is not. Equally, I want to protect the BBC, what is good about it and what I value about it. That means that we have to face these issues. Not many businesses that decide not to charge 10% of their customers will survive for long, and people in a free society should not be criminalised for refusing to pay for a service that they do not use, so something will have to change. Either the BBC will have to change tack, or the Government or this place will have to fill that gap. If a council saw such levels of non-payment for council tax, the Government would be sending inspectors in to ask the council to deal with it. We are in a strange situation where we are ignoring a serious issue.

I note with interest that the annual report on the licence fee produced by the BBC claims that it visited more than 72,000 premises without a licence, but the report mysteriously fails to say what action was taken as a result. While it is difficult to find out precisely how many homes should be paying the licence fee, we can state with confidence that 72,000 visits is in itself a small proportion of the properties not currently paying the licence fee. It is time for an honest debate about our expectations over people paying the licence fee.

The flipside of failures in licence fee collection is whether the BBC is run efficiently as an organisation. It is a cliché—I am sure we will hear plenty this afternoon—that it is a bureaucratic monster stuffed with BBC lifers, but we have to ask whether it is run effectively. I have been told that six different stakeholders from four separate BBC departments attend pitches for new TV series. When an organisation has so many internal stakeholders, we have to question who exactly they are serving. Those tasked with governing the BBC have to ask serious questions of it and of themselves as to whether they are delivering true value for money in that respect.

I will reflect on the subject of governance for a moment. I take the point that the hon. Member for Stone made earlier, but I come to a different conclusion. The debate today will clearly have a large element about the BBC’s impartiality, and I do not think it is constructive for us to trade off instances where the BBC has failed in recent times to get that right. We can all say that it can and must do better. I agree that how internal complaints are resolved needs to be looked at with some independent oversight. However, I will focus on how the BBC reflects the diversity of viewpoints in its broadcasting and decision making.

Broadcast is not just about which political party has its voice heard, but who from those political parties speaks. It seems to me and my constituents that political coverage is massively dominated by voices from London. That same London-centric view is presented through all politics coverage, and frankly it plays into the impression of large swathes of the country that politicians are out of touch and obsessed with the comings and goings in Westminster, far removed from the realities of people’s lives. Fair play to the BBC, it does deign to visit the regions with “Question Time” and “Any Questions?”, although I recall a recent occasion when “Any Questions?” came to Cheshire, but the BBC still had to bus in the Labour spokesperson from London. It proves that you can take the BBC out of London, but you cannot take London out of the BBC. The same applies to programmes broadcast out of Salford, when everyone jumps on the first train back to London after the show finishes.

This is not a BBC for the whole country; it is a BBC that is still shaped by the same privately educated Oxbridge, London and home counties viewpoint that has dominated it since its inception. Every member of the board that I have been able to find schooling details for was privately educated. That means there is a real lack of diversity of thought, and that is reflected in the make-up of the senior echelons of management and editorial staff, raising serious questions about the BBC’s commitment to social mobility. It is no wonder that sometimes my constituents look at the BBC and ask, “Who are they speaking to?”

That does matter, because as figures on non-payment of the licence fee continue to rise, the more that people feel the BBC is talking down to them and does not have a voice in their community, the more likely they are to join the millions who have decided not to pay. If we are not careful, we will soon reach a tipping point where the licence fee model becomes unsustainable. As someone who actually wants the BBC to survive—maybe that makes me a BBC sympathiser—I want this place to look seriously at how we square that circle.

I declare an interest as a licence fee payer, not once but twice—I am sure that many other hon. Members who split their time between here and their constituencies are as well. Even if I were only paying it once, I am sure that I would think it represents far worse value for money than any other TV service that I pay for in terms of pounds per hour watched. On one level, that should not come as a surprise—I pay for the subscription services I do because they have things that I want to watch—but could I honestly say that, were I given a free choice, I would pay the licence fee? I probably would, but more and more constituents are asking that question, and will continue to ask it. It needs a serious, sustainable answer.

I do not think that the BBC can compete with on-demand subscription services in terms of quality or frequency of output. It does some great TV, but it cannot compete with the investment that some of the on-demand services provide.