Damian Green
Main Page: Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)Department Debates - View all Damian Green's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petitions 234627, 234797 and 235653 relating to the BBC.
It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. All three petitions relate to the BBC. One calls for a public inquiry on what the signatories perceive as bias in the BBC, another calls for the abolition of the licence fee, and the third is about the restoration of free TV licences for the over-75s.
As we have previously debated the licence fee, and with it a number of accusations of bias, I do not propose to spend much time on it this afternoon, because lots of people want to speak. But let me be clear: as Harold Wilson said, public inquiries take minutes and last for years, and they seldom solve anything—certainly nothing as subjective as perceived bias. Although the BBC sometimes gets things wrong, as any organisation does, I do not believe it is inherently biased in its news and coverage of current affairs. Indeed, we ought to remember that the BBC’s news coverage is looked at around the world as a beacon of straightforward, unbiased news reporting. As a country, we ought to be proud of that. If it has a bias, it is probably towards London, as those of us who have sat through items about London stations on the national news will know. It does not reflect the regions and nations of this country well.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
The hon. Lady just said that we ought to be proud of the BBC. Does she acknowledge that, as a country, we are very proud of it? Not only is it one of this country’s most popular institutions, but it is a source of great credit for this country around the world. Whatever mistakes it makes, they should be framed by that overall attitude.
Helen Jones
I agree. The reason for the BBC’s popularity is that we maintain the model of public service broadcasting. People who want to get rid of the licence fee ought to remember that a public service broadcaster is free of commercial and sponsorship influence in its news, and that it provides a far wider range of channels and radio stations than that provided by broadcasters that aim at niche markets. In fact, the BBC’s output has to cater for a whole range of tastes, including minority interests.
There is no doubt that the decision to end free TV licences for the over-75s, and to restrict them to people in receipt of pension credit, has damaged hugely the BBC’s reputation. The decision has been met with almost universal condemnation. In fact, only the Taxpayers Alliance, which seems to get a lot of its funding from people who do not pay British tax, is in favour of it. Nevertheless, the real villain of the piece is not the BBC, but the Government. In 2017 they fought an election on a manifesto that promised to maintain free TV licences for the duration of this Parliament, knowing full well that in 2015 they had entered into an agreement with the BBC that made it impossible.