Chris Bryant
Main Page: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is a great delight to congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing the debate. I wish I could congratulate him on his speech, but, unfortunately, I disagreed with every word of it. The most exciting moment was when he declared that he was conscious. I am not sure what Hansard will make of that.
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on fundamental principles. First, I believe that, nearly always, broadcasting tends towards monopoly. It is in the nature of the business because it costs an awful lot to make one hour of programming. It costs a lot to broadcast it to five people, but it does not cost that much more to broadcast it to 10, 10,000, 5 million or 20 million more people. That is why the state must intervene in the market, which is why I support the licence fee.
Secondly, risk-taking in the broadcasting industry—it is expensive to make one hour of broadcasting—is very expensive, especially in two notable genres, drama and comedy. Making drama is expensive. If people get it wrong, they might end up making 10 or 13 weeks of a programme that nobody wants to watch. Everybody will chuck mud at them for weeks. Comedy is even worse. For every “Fawlty Towers”, there is a “Miranda”—[Interruption.] I do not like “Miranda”, although some Government Members obviously do. It could be the other way around for people who do not like “Fawlty Towers”—for every “Miranda”, there is a “Fawlty Towers”. My point is simply that, in matters of taste, it is difficult to jiggle all the nation’s funny bones at the same time. State intervention is therefore important, because the market would not otherwise provide.
Australia abolished the licence fee, and what happened? The first thing that disappeared from the market in Australia was the one thing Australians loved watching—mystery drama set in Australia. It does not exist any more. It can be seen nowhere in the world because there is no licence fee in Australia to invest in it.
Thirdly, we need enough diversity in the whole of the market to be able to entertain the whole of the country, and to represent democratically the whole nation. A diversity of voices is therefore important. S4C in Wales is under the BBC and paid for from the licence fee, and I worry that there is not enough diversity of voices within Welsh broadcasting.
When I was first elected, but not because I was elected, the Rhondda Leader was phenomenally popular. Currently, remarkably few people buy it. All hon. Members know that local newspapers are dying in constituencies up and down the land. That is not because of BBC online, but because people are not buying newspapers, and because, in some cases, local newspapers have failed to seize the imagination. However, I worry that local government is virtually unscrutinised. That is why a diversity of voices in the market is important.
I am delighted that ITV in Wales decided, in the end, that it would be a mistake to move away from local news and current affairs. Otherwise, it would have lost its sense of being and its importance to the nation. However, I worry about the future because, all too often, there is only one broadcast voice outside London and the south-east. Let us face it: if the BBC excels in one thing more than anything, it is local radio. Nobody else produces the same quality of local radio—it is produced and resourced locally and brings local stories to light. Can Sky broadcast units be made to go outside the M25? Occasionally they do, such as if there are multiple murders—[Interruption.] They will visit the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) because he is Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and a very important panjandrum, but, all too often, if it were not for the BBC, the television news would be a version of events from London and the south-east.
Chris Bryant
Of course I will give way, but the hon. Gentleman has made an awful lot of interventions already.
Alec Shelbrooke
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being generous with his time. This is a fascinating debate. I am a supporter of public service broadcasting, but is it the role of a public service broadcaster to chase ratings? That is the key question.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman walks straight into my trap. Public service broadcasting is not about making programmes that nobody wants to watch or listen to, which is in effect his argument. I do not believe that Radio 3 prevented Classic FM from coming into existence. If anything, Radio 3 enabled Classic FM to come into existence. There was competition at the start, but Classic FM found a different way of presenting classical music. It relied on an audience that was already out there—an audience created largely by Radio 3—and on players, singers and concert halls that, effectively, were subsidised by the BBC. There is a double benefit from the BBC. The licence fee paid by my constituents in the Rhondda pays for the hon. Gentleman to watch all the highbrow, intellectual stuff he watches, and to listen to the wonderfully intelligent and academic stuff he appears on and contributes to. My constituents are interested in watching “EastEnders” and, on Saturday evening, “Strictly Come Dancing”. They are also interested in watching sports programmes such as Wimbledon, which get very large audiences.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman would not give way to me, so he can wait a moment.
I do not want to rely on the market failure argument that has been advanced by a couple of hon. Members.
Chris Bryant
Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I ought to give way to the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan.
Alun Cairns
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that, when the BBC competes actively for sport, it drives up the prices for other broadcasters? He has mentioned Wimbledon, but no other broadcaster is allowed to broadcast it.
Chris Bryant
That is not true. Other broadcasters are allowed to broadcast it—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman quietens down, he will be able to hear the answer and learn something. The truth of the matter is that, under the television without frontiers directive, to which all countries agreed, the European Commission allowed individual countries to list certain events—they must be agreed by the Commission so they are not too anti-competitive. Wimbledon is on the list of events that must be available on free-to-air television, but others can compete for it, just as they have competed for other sports that must to be available on free-to-air television.
Damian Collins
I agree with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s earlier comments—if everyone pays the licence fee, there should be something in it for everyone, not just for people who want to watch highbrow programmes—but does he agree that there is a legitimate debate to be had on the commissioning of programmes such as “The Voice”, because, in commissioning that, the BBC was breaking into and chasing a market that someone else had established?
Chris Bryant
There is a balancing act. I agree with the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan that the BBC should not pursue every sports rights battle. In the end, that cannot be in anybody’s interest. I worry, however, that when one broadcaster in the land is much bigger than the BBC in terms of financial value and has deeper pockets, namely Sky—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) seems to be disagreeing. The BBC has £3.7 billion a year, with which it produces TV, radio and online content. Sky has nearly double that—£7.2 billion—yet produces far less. In those circumstances, there is a danger if the BBC merely ends up in a competition for further sports rights.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I know my hon. Friend will not go on about sport, which is not my strength, for too long. What he has not mentioned—he is making such a good speech that I am sure he will come to it—is how the BBC invests in talent right across the piece, from technology and technicians to new artists and comedians. Companies such as Sky do not invest in new talent in the same way.
Chris Bryant
It is an utter delight to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. In whatever small way I contributed to your election, or at least did not prevent you from being elected by supporting you, I am delighted that you are there.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In many cases, the only training programmes in the industry are run by the BBC. For example, its contribution to the high arts, by funding orchestras and choirs, is one of the things that manages to keep many of our concert halls and classical concerts going. Broadcasting is one of the things we can rightly say, without any sense of British arrogance that often applies to many other things, we do better than any other country in the world. I am conscious that that is not just about the BBC. I once worked for the BBC in Brussels. I got into a taxi and the driver asked me who I worked for. I told him I worked for the BBC and he said, “I love the BBC. I love ‘Midsomer Murders’, ‘Inspector Morse’ and ‘Brideshead Revisited’.” I did not point out to him that they had been made by ITV. We get a double benefit from the BBC, because it creates a competition for quality. It is not anti-competitive—quite the reverse. It is profoundly competitive, because it creates a competition for quality.
Contrary to the grand sweeping statements by hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan about how the BBC never investigates itself, I have heard every director-general, and most directors of programmes, quizzed on BBC radio and television programmes with an aggression equal to that shown to any politician. I do not recall, not even throughout the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch ever being interviewed by Sky. That is not to say that I do not think Sky is a good broadcaster; I think it is a great news broadcaster—it adopts a different attitude and that is great. I would just point out that, if anything, the BBC racks itself with guilt almost too much on occasion. It did not do a good job with regard to Savile or Lord McAlpine. It did not cover itself with glory in its approach to the National Audit Office, as the hon. Member for Maldon said, and to which I have referred to many times before.
Chris Bryant
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again, because I have already made a long speech and I am sure that Members do not want me to go on for ever. I have at least united the House on that point.
There are other critiques I would make of the BBC. The Chair of the Select Committee said that the chairman of the BBC Trust and the director-general are appearing before his Committee tomorrow. I hope they are not appearing together. [Interruption.] He is saying that they are. I think that is entirely wrong as they have completely different jobs to do. They should never, ever appear on a panel together. They should not do joint press conferences or appear before a Select Committee together—perhaps they could appear one after another. This is where the BBC has gone disastrously wrong in the past few years. The chairman of the BBC Trust seems to think that his job is always to defend the director-general and vice versa. I disagree with that. The two bodies should be far more independent, as was argued in a report brought out in 1948.
Mr Whittingdale
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, one that the Committee has thought about. I agree that sometimes the two roles are not as distinct as they should be and there is a risk that bringing those people in together contributes to that. However, the risk we run by adopting the other strategy is that the chair appears and says, “That is entirely a matter for the director-general, so I’m not willing to answer it,” and half an hour later the director-general says, “I am not going to answer that, because it is a matter for the trust.” By having them together, we do not allow them the opportunity to shift responsibility on to the other.
Chris Bryant
It may be that the hon. Gentleman has a point and that the Committee needs to think about how it can interrogate people with consistency, and perhaps it should be done on the same day so that they cannot pass the buck in that way, but in the past two years we have far too often seen Lord Patten appear beside the director-general in press conferences. That conflates the two roles and confuses the public. It means that the criticism rightly made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan on the transparency of arrangements of the governance of the BBC is lost. We could do far better. I would make other criticisms.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
My hon. Friend alluded to me earlier when he referred to the position of the BBC in relation to other broadcasters. He mentioned the person who thought that “Midsomer Murders” and “Brideshead Revisited” were made by the BBC. Does that not demonstrate that the BBC is rightly or wrongly—in most cases wrongly—held to be the gold standard of British broadcasting? We should defend that, but the BBC has to understand that it is the only organisation in Britain with a legally enforceable income without it producing anything. It has to demonstrate that it is worthy of the licence fee.
Chris Bryant
Of course I agree with that. I was merely trying to make the point that many people think and say that the BBC is a vast leviathan in the British broadcasting market, whereas actually the leviathan is Sky. Sky hoovers up rights, has control of the platform, and is profoundly anti-competitive. If we did not have the BBC, we would have a denuded broadcasting market in the UK.
I would make many other criticisms of the BBC. BBC Wales sometimes seems to believe that its job is to create a Welsh national identity, which is far too close to nationalism for my liking. It often portrays my constituency as a drug den or as the murder capital of Wales, because those are the only times it ever comes to the Rhondda to report a story, and the truth is very different. The BBC is often far too right-wing in the way it presents news. For example, it barely seems to have noticed that the national health service in England is being privatised, and two of its most senior broadcast journalists were formally Conservatives, not members of the Labour party.
My fundamental point, and the Chair of the Select Committee gave away the line, is that we all know there are regressive elements to the licence fee, but it is a bit like what Churchill said about democracy: there is nothing better. What else are we going to do, other than have the licence fee, to invest in broadcast talent and the arts, and to ensure that there is something for everybody that comes out of a licence fee which is paid for by all?
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as well as to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate.
The whole issue of the BBC has come to light over the last couple of years, and we have noticed that there is a tendency among some to join in with what has become known as “BBC bashing”, which seems to have become almost a national pastime. Speaking as the chairman of the all-party BBC group, I certainly do not claim that all is perfect in the BBC—far from it. It does get things wrong, but it also gets a lot of things right.
The BBC has probably had the worst couple of years since its creation. It has never been criticised to such an extent before. Usually, with broadcasting organisations, it is the quality of the output that is criticised. The accusations tend to be that the programming is poor and not current or relevant enough. That, however, is rarely the accusation thrown at the BBC. I have not heard such an accusation during this debate. Indeed, if there is some agreement, it seems to be that the quality of programme production by the BBC is pretty much second to none.
Chris Bryant
One other point is that people rely on the BBC for accuracy in its news reporting. It may sometimes be that the BBC is not the fastest to report a story because it always waits until it has at least two people to confirm one. This afternoon, on the other hand, Wales Online, which belongs to Trinity Mirror, announced that the Prime Minister had resigned. Next to that item the website referred to “other stories” that people might like. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State looks frightened, but the Prime Minister has not resigned; he is still here. That is not the kind of mistake that the BBC would make.
Gareth Johnson
It would be damaging to my career to agree with the hon. Gentleman, but he makes a very pertinent point. With news announcements from other broadcasters, we might think “That could well be true,” but when we see a story from the BBC, we view it as confirmation because the accuracy is there and the report is right and honest. The BBC is not always first when it comes to breaking news, but it is often the most accurate.
Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
As I am the last but one speaker, it is almost inevitable that everything I say will be repetitious, so I will not speak for too long. This debate was expected to focus on three main issues: the budget and the licence fee freeze; the failed digital media initiative; and the Savile and three associated inquiries. I will comment on those briefly before moving on to the specific point that I wish to make.
The BBC is a bit of a curate’s egg: it is remarkably good in parts, so in fairness I shall pay tribute first to its many successes. The quality of BBC drama, its wildlife, sport, history and comedy programmes and so much else is acknowledged internationally, and rightly so. That is something of which the BBC can be proud.
The BBC has a budget of about £3.5 billion and of course, like all public services, it thinks it needs more money but, like all other public services, it has to make decisions to reduce its running costs and protect the licence fee. At £145.50, the licence fee is already difficult for many people to afford, even in instalments. Recent accounts of embarrassingly high senior management salaries, severance packages and relocation to Salford payments would make any increase in the licence fee absolutely unjustifiable in the eyes of the public. There were 91 exceptions to the rules involving relocation payments of more than £600,000, with a very dilatory approach to recording them. The BBC review of that is still awaited.
The digital media initiative involved a catastrophic loss of nearly £100 million. Nobody knew it was going to be unsuccessful, but it was and that underlines the need for the BBC to find savings from within its budget.
The Savile inquiry and the need for the subsequent Pollard, Smith, MacQuarrie and Respect at Work reviews have left the BBC with a damaged reputation. There are still unanswered questions about who knew what, who colluded in the cover-up and who turned a blind eye to Jimmy Savile’s extensive activities. Public confidence will have to be regained gradually over time through the BBC’s future performance.
I want to make a specific point about news broadcasting. There is an aspect of BBC culture that I find worrying and that I believe requires the attention of the BBC Trust and possibly the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the Committee Chairman, mention that there will be an investigation into the future of the BBC in the new year. I hope that my comments might find their way into the Committee’s deliberations.
As a publicly funded broadcasting company, the BBC has a duty to provide balanced information and not political opinion, which it gives routinely. Mass communication through radio and television gives the BBC immense power from the ability to influence its audiences and form public opinion. Television news bulletins, in particular, are a main source of information for a large number of people and the content is assumed to be non-selective and factual. I know that from the contact I have from my constituents who complain to me about what they have heard and seen.
The personal political views of news presenters are often transparent when they conduct interviews. Interviewees with whom they do not agree are talked over and interrupted, and another question is asked before the first has been answered in an aggressive style that contrasts noticeably with the respectful, unchallenging approach shown to favoured interviewees.
Chris Bryant
I have often been interrupted by many a journalist on the BBC, although never more frequently than by Adam Boulton on Sky. The hon. Lady seems to be making an allegation of bias at the BBC. Can she give a specific example of a broadcaster whom she thinks has been biased or an occasion on which that has happened?
Dame Angela Watkinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which was utterly predictable. I am not going to name any individual, but I have seen countless examples of that difference in style between the treatment of one politician and another because of their political party.
Unrepresentative individuals are often invited to demonstrate an adverse effect of a new government policy with glaring omissions in the presentation. That would be perfectly acceptable if another person were also invited who would demonstrate the benefit of that policy, but they are not. Both sides of the argument should be presented and it is not a legitimate role of a publicly funded broadcasting company to show political bias.
The BBC informs, educates and entertains, but what it should not do is misinform by omission. The BBC Trust has 12 trustees, independent from the BBC executive board. The Trust and governing body make decisions in the best interests of licence fee payers and protect the independence of the BBC. The Trust reviews performance of all services, so that must include news, and establishes protocols, policies and guidance that govern performance. Let me quote from the BBC website:
“The Trust must act in the public interest. We seek evidence to inform our discussions and reach our decisions through a mix of factual analysis and judgement. Governing a creative organisation on behalf of the public whose BBC it is allows for no other approach.”
News presentation should be exempt from creativity, and factual analysis and judgment should find their basis in political neutrality. I believe that the BBC long ago gave up any pretence of neutrality. In the run-up to the local and European elections next year and the general election in 2015, the style of the BBC’s news service needs to be reviewed to ensure even-handed and fair treatment of all political parties and to introduce a party politically neutral culture in its future news broadcasting. That is in the public interest.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The BBC is an important national institution and I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate which has, as other hon. Members have said, come at a timely moment. Obviously, the BBC has special funding arrangements. The licence fee is unavoidable for anybody who wants to watch television. As a consequence, or perhaps in recognition of its very high status, 96% of the public use the BBC in an average week.
However, as other hon. Members have said, a series of scandals have rocked the BBC in the past few years. The most serious was clearly the Savile scandal. It looks now as if perhaps 500 people were victims of this man, and the initial horrors have been followed by wrong editorial decisions. Then there were serious financial problems—£100 million squandered on the digital initiative, and massive executive pay-offs. It was not just the sums of money, but the mismanagement of the agreement to these pay-offs that was criticised. Those massive pay-offs were partly caused by the fact that there was excessive pay at the top of the management of the organisation.
We on the Labour Benches believe that the BBC must get a grip. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has said that
“it is odd that though the BBC rightly sees itself as different from commercial broadcasters—in terms of how it is regulated and treated in terms of market share . . . they argue that it’s the market pure and simple which should dictate their pay.”
She went on to say that
“they cannot have it both ways.”
The consensus across the House today is that the BBC cannot have it both ways. Hon. Members also referred to the editorial errors in the case of the “Newsnight” descriptions of Lord McAlpine, and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke about North Korea. I thought she was going to talk about the questionable practices in the documentary about North Korea, which also raised concerns among many people.
All those episodes seem to me to show that the BBC’s management needs to be improved. They also show that its governance has failed, because the Trust did not fulfil its role of defending the licence fee payer. In this situation, we are presented with the question, “What is to be done?” Some hon. Members believe that the model has failed and the licence fee should be abandoned. The Secretary of State has said that she believes that the National Audit Office should have further powers and rights to go through the BBC’s accounts. I hope that she will say a little more about that when she responds to the debate. In particular, I hope that she will explain how she would achieve that while avoiding either the reality or the perception that politicians are interfering with the BBC.
The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), made it clear that he believes that the BBC should be considerably smaller and that there is a question mark over whether it can continue to be financed through the licence fee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) proposed a new model for a mutual BBC, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) all seemed far more supportive of the status quo and the current model—
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but I am not all that supportive of the current model. I think that the role of the chairman of the Trust and that of the director-general have to be very clearly delineated and separated, which I do not think they are at present.
Helen Goodman
I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon, although I must say that is a rather detailed point, compared with the radical proposals coming from the Government side of the House.
When we consider the future of the BBC, it is interesting to look at what the director-general said last week in a major speech. He said that he wanted to see public service at the heart of the BBC and promised leaner management and further cuts of £100 million. It is true that some of the recent mistakes have been phenomenally costly, so a “right first time” culture would be incredibly helpful. He spoke at length about the possibilities for the BBC of technical innovations, including improvements to iPlayer, a BBC store and iPlayer radio.
The director-general also spoke about the significant contribution the BBC not only makes now, but can make in future, to the creative industries generally in this country. I think that is something we would all applaud. The fact that we put a 25% quota on the BBC to commission externally has turned out to be an extremely useful way of promoting and supporting other creative industries, and indeed exports, in this country. His proposals for a partnership with the British Library and a digital space with other institutions were extremely positive, as were his proposals for increasing the number of apprenticeships and the amount of education for young people in new technology. He mentioned something that I think we have all agreed with over the course of today’s debate: the importance of seeing more investigative news reporting. He also wants to strengthen the BBC’s global news presence, which will be facilitated through the incorporation of the World Service.
Although the director-general made a number of important statements about the BBC’s content and the possibilities for technology, he said less about the management. That has been a major concern in this debate and I think that it would be helpful if the BBC paid significantly more attention to it. In addition to the issue of top pay, we will obviously look at governance in the process of royal charter renewal. Rather than leaping to some new model, I think that it would be more helpful to have a proper royal charter process that includes consulting the public. As my right hon. Friend said, the fact that the governance arrangements did not work in the Savile episode, for example, does not prove that the model is broken; it demonstrates that the individuals did not fulfil their roles as well as they could have done. I urge caution before we tear up the current model and move into a whole new world—I am pleased to see the Secretary of State nodding in agreement.
It is also worth considering the future of the BBC in relation to the other large media organisations and the importance of maintaining media plurality in this country. The position of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that we should of course include the BBC in the overall understanding of the shares when measuring media markets, but that does not mean that we should apply the same remedies to the BBC as to other media organisations, and that is because of the different governance arrangements. I am not saying that those arrangements or transparency—the point made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan—cannot be improved, because I am sure that they can, but I think that all Members of the House must acknowledge that the BBC has a very different place from the private commercial operators.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Maria Miller)
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), for Winchester (Steve Brine) and for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) for securing this debate. It is difficult to do justice to the wide range of issues that have been raised.
What I will not do is prematurely sound the starting gun for the next charter renewal, which will deal with many of the strategic issues raised today; people would not expect me to prejudge those issues. However, I will join my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), who struck the right tone in paying tribute to the majority of BBC staff, who produce world-class content. I particularly thank staff at the Salford offices, whom I met recently at our party conference. We should not confuse the poor judgment of some of the management —the failure of the few—with the world-class programming produced by the many. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who referred so movingly to the World Service.
What is clear is that the BBC asks for special treatment, and it gets that—a £3 billion a year levy. It is an extremely important institution nationally and across the globe, as we have heard in today’s extremely good debate. The BBC is synonymous with Britain, which is perhaps why it is so damaging for it to have been plagued by one scandal after another.
Many issues have contributed to making the past 12 months an annus horribilis for the BBC—from Savile to McAlpine and the failed digital media initiative to exorbitant severance payments. To say that as a nation we have been disappointed is an understatement. What we all want and expect from the BBC, now and in future, is relatively uncontroversial: a BBC focused on producing programming of the highest quality, setting the highest standards of behaviour and respect throughout its organisation and having an independence beyond question. However, we also expect it to be accountable to the public, who pay for it, for how it spends licence fee money. It is absolutely to be expected that both the public and this House should react when those standards are not met and that the BBC Trust and management should not only act effectively to address the issues of real public concern that have arisen, but be seen to do so.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) said that it was difficult to please everyone—that is something, coming from a Liberal Democrat. He also said, absolutely rightly, that the BBC should concentrate on what it does best, which is high-quality programming. I totally agree.
I had a little less sympathy for the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).
Maria Miller
The hon. Gentleman is probably right. Perhaps I will get right what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) got wrong, or perhaps neither of us can understand what the hon. Gentleman said, but I think he said that only the BBC could do cutting-edge comedy. I would like to see him argue that while watching episodes of “Peep Show” or “8 Out of 10 Cats” on Channel 4. I do not think he has got that right.
Maria Miller
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I really want to move on.
The Pollard review and the MacQuarrie report both concluded that a lack of clarity and accountability in editorial decision making created an environment of uncertainty in which such errors could be made. Dame Janet Smith’s inquiry has yet to report, but I expect the BBC to act swiftly in response to its findings. As the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee said absolutely rightly, with a sagacity that I always expect from him in debates such as this, the culture that pervades is critical. Importantly, the BBC has already instituted some changes to reform its management culture—for example, through its Respect at Work review and changes to its own whistleblowing policies.
However, it is crystal clear that more has to be done. The events surrounding the Savile report on “Newsnight”, the failed digital media initiative and the remuneration of senior executives all seem to share a common theme: confusion around where the roles and responsibilities of the executive stop and those of the BBC Trust start. That is where I part company from the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), who is not in her place. She seemed to focus on the people rather than the processes. There are issues around the ambiguity over the chain of command within the BBC, whether editorially or financially. That has had serious consequences for the corporation itself, and more importantly for licence fee payers, whom all of us in the Chamber represent.
The issue must be addressed, and it is no good waiting until a new charter in 2017 to act. The right hon. Lady floated the idea of mutualisation. It is right that she should have such ideas; as she reminded us, she was one of the architects of the current situation. Perhaps it is attractive to think in the abstract about changing structures, but I believe that here and now we have to make what we have got work. It is important that we get in place the right management who have the right judgment but also have the right governance structures to ensure that we can be proud of what the BBC is doing and are not concerned about how it is being run.
It was right that following the catalogue of failures that we have all talked about the BBC Trust and the BBC’s executive announced a comprehensive review of the BBC’s internal governance system and structures and the culture surrounding them. They are re-examining the relationship between the Trust and the executive with the aim of simplifying it and providing better, clearer oversight of the way our licence fee is spent. The review will build on the work that has already been done by the BBC’s new executive team to simplify the organisation, reducing not only the head count of senior management but the number of boards and committees to help get to a position of more transparency over the lines of accountability. As every Member of this House would expect, I will continue to keep the BBC’s structures and effectiveness under close review to make sure that it has effectively addressed these very serious and unacceptable problems.
Importantly, the BBC has already agreed in principle to changes to its relationship with the National Audit Office. I want this relationship to be strong and open while clearly protecting the BBC’s editorial independence. I note that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland has concerns about this. She will know from what I have said and what has been agreed in principle that there are no proposed changes to the role of Government and Ministers in what has been put forward. However, this requires the Public Accounts Committee to act responsibly in what it does. I am sure that she will be able to discuss any concerns about this with the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). The hon. Lady is right that the PAC has to act responsibly in how it looks at the BBC, as it does, I believe, in all its business. Concerns have been raised about whether such changes could threaten the independence of the BBC, editorially and managerially, but the existing management agreement is absolutely clear, that while the NAO is entitled to review any BBC decision, it is not entitled to
“question the merits of any editorial or creative judgment which is made by or on behalf of the BBC”.
That is a direct quote from the agreement that is in place. Nothing that I have suggested would change that, and I am clear that this important safeguard will be maintained.