BBC Mid-term Charter Review

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and William Cash

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.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and William Cash

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

When I read the account of proceedings in the House of Lords, I found that the Lords were very strong on assertion, but empty when it came to the question of argument. I found that rather disturbing, because, after all, they have potential power under the Parliament Acts. I also appreciate that, towards the end of the proceedings, in reference to the powers in part 5 of the Bill, and the clauses under discussion regarding “notwithstanding”, Lord Judge said:

“‘We may need these powers at some stage’. Maybe we will; I hope not.”

He then said that it would be

“open to the Government to come back to us, to Parliament, to put before us emergency legislation.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 October 2020; Vol. 806, c. 1431.]

The circumstances that we face could not be more important and relevant, and my view is that what he said effectively conceded the principle.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I was going to make exactly that point. Lord Judge, very respected as he is, basically conceded the principle that we might need “notwithstanding” provisions to overturn the provisions in the withdrawal agreement. We are not talking about the principle anymore; we are just talking about when it would be appropriate to introduce the provisions. They might as well be introduced now with the parliamentary safeguard that the Government have conceded.

[Sir William Cash]

More or less the same took place in my exchanges with my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who said very much the same. There is a threshold beyond which it would be necessary for us to take such action. Without going into the detail, I just wanted to put those two things on the record.

The issue is, and basically always has been, about parliamentary sovereignty. In the UK context, this is an internal law of fundamental importance, as expressed in article 46 of the Vienna Convention. It is by virtue of parliamentary sovereignty that we have taken the line that we have. I certainly have taken that line on many occasions, including in my proposal for section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which I referred to earlier, and which has the whole concept of “notwithstanding” built into it. Section 7A of that Act also deals with direct effect. Given that the Act was passed with a large majority in the House of Commons, and then passed again in the House of Lords without any dissent of any description, I find it quite extraordinary that this has been turned into a matter of such fundamental anxiety, without any supporting argument that I have ever seen.

When I read the debates, I found there was a great deal of posturing going on. I understand the emotional concern of some people who are quite incapable of accepting that we have lawfully left the European Union; that a series of enactments were passed by both Houses; and that, on top of that, we had a general election—not to mention that under the Salisbury-Addison convention, it would be inconceivable, in the context of a general election manifesto, for the Lords to take a stand against these clauses if the House of Commons passed them again tonight, and perhaps again on another occasion.

Why do I say all this about constitutional and international law? I will deal with that very briefly. First, in my judgment, the European Union has breached article 184 of the withdrawal agreement, which is about negotiating in good faith. It has manifestly multiplied that fault over the past few days by refusing to accept the manner in which the negotiations have been conducted so far. There is also the question of its demand to retain power over crucial aspects of our sovereignty—both economic and relating to our national interest—as a precondition to concessions on trade.

The EU has also, in my judgment, breached article 184 on the basis of the recognition, as it puts it, of our internal market. I believe in the basic principle that one party to a treaty cannot obtain from the other the execution of its obligations if it does not respect its own commitments. If the EU continues to act as it has done in the negotiations, particularly over the past few days, the United Kingdom would be entitled to terminate the withdrawal agreement on the basis of the EU’s breach of article 184.

Lastly, as I said in Committee and on Report, there is a long list of occasions when Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems, as part of the coalition, have agreed to override treaties. There are not just one or two quite explicit examples, but hosts of them. In infinite Finance Bills and Independence Acts, and in relation to prisoner voting and various other things, there have been quite clear and deliberate overrides of treaties. The EU, as well as the EU member states, frequently violates international law; the Western Sahara case, the defiance of security council rulings, and breaking the Lisbon treaty are a few examples.

Indeed, in conclusion, the EU grants supremacy to its own constitutional principles when they are in conflict with international law. In the Kadi case, the European Court stated:

“The obligations imposed by an international agreement cannot have the effect of prejudicing the constitutional principles of the…Treaty”.

So there it is. I say again that I strongly support the Government’s position, and reject the amendments by the House of Lords.