David Nuttall
Main Page: David Nuttall (Conservative - Bury North)Broadcasting (Public Service Content) Bill
David Nuttall Excerpts
Mr Bone
Indeed. I have to say that I have not had the privilege of seeing it because I do not know how YouTube works, but on the very day that it was broadcast, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who was taking his children to school, was hauled aside by someone who said “You must come and watch this on YouTube.” It should have been on national television rather than on YouTube. He followed it up with a letter to the director-general, who passed it on to someone else in the organisation to answer, who eventually replied saying, “We’ve looked into this matter and”—this is the crucial point—“the BBC news content is subjective.” How right that is! It is utterly subjective. Therefore, by the BBC’s own admission, it would fall foul of this part of my Bill and so would not necessarily qualify for licence fee funding for its news output. It would then have to start being objective, factual and impartial, and once it achieved that, it would qualify for the funding.
Because of what we Members do for a living, we watch all the news broadcasters to see the different ways they cover the news so we get a broad understanding of what is happening. Quite often Sky, Channel 4 and ITV will have a story at the top of the bulletin that the BBC has chosen to place further down because it is biased against that story. I do not say that with any glee; rather, I say it with some sadness and concern. When a state broadcaster is institutionally biased against the views of Conservative-leaning people—even though it does not understand that—I wonder why the majority in this country, who are Conservative leaning, have to pay a forced poll tax. I remember the poll tax demonstrations.
All that this little, uncontroversial Bill would do is remove all of the funding from the licence fee going to the BBC, thereby reducing the cost of the fee to, let us say, about £50, and allowing the BBC to put on other programmes if it wants—and which it should do—but funding them through product placement, resale or a small subscription. The great benefit of that is that it would bring competition into the industry. I think all Members would agree that the BBC is overmanned and that some of the other stations produce the same quality of news broadcasting for far less. The key benefit for viewers is that after the Bill becomes the fifth private Member’s Bill to be enacted this Session, if they want to watch the BBC, they will find that the cost of the licence fee they are required to pay—which will be the fee for public service content for all broadcasters plus the subscription fee to the BBC—is less than the £150 that they are forced to pay now.
In concluding my opening remarks, I shall address the detail of the Bill. It is a fairly short Bill—there are only three clauses—but it is very important.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend mentioned at the beginning of his speech that this Bill makes one minor change to the Bill introduced in the previous Session by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). What is that change, what will its effect be, and why has it been made?
Mr Bone
It was remiss of me not to address that earlier, but I omitted to do so because I wanted to make swift progress. The problem I identified with the previous Bill—and I think this is why the Minister, who was the shadow Minister at the time, did not welcome it entirely in the last debate we had on the issue—was the fact that the licence fee was stuck with the BBC. The former Bill reduced the licence fee, but that was still only paid to the BBC. Therefore, although there would be all the advantages of the licence fee being payable only for public service content—which is, in essence, what this Bill is about—it would still be restricted to the BBC alone. The new Bill changes the wording so that the measures apply to all broadcasters rather than just the BBC. The logic of that change is clear. If the licence fee is payable for public service content, it should be open to all broadcasters. Therefore, an independent local radio station—Connect FM in Northampton, for instance—would have the same right to that funding as BBC Radio Northampton. It is a very small, but a very important, change, as I hope will become clear when I address some of my more detailed points.
The Bill is essentially about public service content. That is addressed in clause 1(1), which states:
“For the purposes of the Communications Act 2003 ‘public service television broadcasting’ shall be construed as broadcasting material with public service content, as defined in subsection (2).”
This measure gives the phrase “public service television broadcasting” in the 2003 Act a proper definition, and thereby improves that piece of legislation.
The BBC used to try to say, “Everything we do is public service broadcasting.” [Interruption.] No, I am not going down that route as there are too many examples of programmes about which people would say, “That was smutty, and had no public service content.” “EastEnders” is a very good programme, and I have certainly watched it more times than the new chairman of the BBC, because I think the last time he watched it was the last time he bought a McDonald’s meal—I believe that is what he said to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. “EastEnders” is entertainment, however; it is not a programme that has public service content.
Clause 1(2) addresses the core of the definition of public service content, and it states:
“‘Public service content’ is content which is primarily produced in the United Kingdom and which satisfies one or more of the following criteria”.
I have stressed that the content should be primarily produced in the UK because if we are forcing UK taxpayers to pay a fee, the least we can do is ensure that the programmes are made in this country. That is especially the case at a time of economic crisis, but even if we were not in an economic crisis, I still think it is right that UK licence fee money should go to UK-produced programmes.
The definition of public service content is divided into four categories. The first is that
“it comprises local, national, international news or current affairs which is impartial, factual and objective.”
I have spent some time outlining why some of the BBC news programmes would fall foul of that, and would therefore not get any licence fee money. However, other programmes such as “Question Time” and “Newsnight” clearly would qualify for that funding.
Something else I notice about the BBC, which, again, shows its institutional bias against anyone from the right, is that the people its news channel invites to review the newspapers are invariably lefties with some bizarre left-wing view. When is a normal citizen there? I have never been invited on one of these programmes; I am willing to turn up and do that at some unearthly hour, but I am never asked. That institutional bias is one of the reasons I think the BBC would have a problem getting all its news output paid for by the licence fee.
The second definition of public service content is that
“its primary purpose is to inform, educate or entertain children”.
I think most of us would agree that that is a reasonable definition. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, are far too young to remember this, but I can remember television going off air and the test card coming on the screen at 5 o’clock so children could do their homework. I am not suggesting we go back to that, but would it not be nice if we had some better children’s programmes? I understand broadcasters do not want to go down that route at present because they are not commercially viable.
Mr Nuttall
The go-ahead BBC still regards black and white television as being sufficiently important and relevant as to issue a separate licence to those who have black and white sets. So there clearly must be some demand for this and it would be interesting to know how many such licences are issued. One has to pay only £49 to watch in black and white, rather than £145.50.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which may well be teased out in Committee. This very good coalition Government have a one-in, one-out policy on regulation, and my Bill removes regulation. One licence fee would disappear because the £49 licence fee would, in effect, be the only licence fee, so no matter whether someone had a black and white TV set or a colour one, they would not be discriminated against; people would certainly be paying no more than they are now, but they might be paying a great deal less. My Bill would end the bureaucracy of having two fees. That deals with clause 1(2)(b).
Clause 1(2)(c) also deals with the public service content and says that if a programme is produced primarily for “charitable or religious” reasons, licence fee money would be provided. The cost of one of the national charity appeals, for example, red nose day, would fall on the licence fee. That is perfectly fair. This approach would also open things up for other organisations, such as Sky, to put on those sorts of programmes, and so more charitable money would be raised. I do not think that many people could be against that.
I am old enough to remember when we had a lot more religious programmes. I do not confess to it, but I am a practising Christian and this is a largely Christian country, as I hope the census will confirm—I remind everyone to fill it in. Bizarrely, the census question on religion is optional—I believe it is the only one that is. That confirmation would help to demonstrate to broadcasters the need to spend public service money on religious programmes, because the census will have proved that a lot of people want to see them.
Mr Nuttall
That is an important point, because the Bill does not try to restrict the religious content to the religion that my hon. Friend and I follow. Followers of any religion—Muslims, Hindus and those from the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-day Saints—could qualify for protection under this Bill.
Mr Bone
Indeed. My hon. Friend makes the point much better than I could. Some people will ask what the census has to do with this issue, but it has a lot to do with it because it is from that census that broadcasters will be able to determine what percentage of the population are interested in religious programmes. That is why I find it strange that the question on religion is optional on the census form.
Clause 1(2)(d) is the catch-all provision and we have to explain it in a little more detail later. It states that
“the content would not otherwise be likely to be provided by the market responding to consumer demand.”
It deals with programmes for which there is a very limited interest, despite the fact that they should be put on. The BBC does put such programmes on, as do some other broadcasters, although fewer and fewer are doing so. I am talking about programmes that cater for people who are interested in steam engines—I have probably picked the wrong example, because I know that they interest a lot of people. Things that would not normally attract big audiences would still be funded by the taxpayer if they were in the interests of public service.
Many questions arise from that catch-all phrase, which is why we have to deal with it a little further on in the Bill. People were saying to me that programmes that were not popular would no longer be put on, but that is not the case. People have said to me, “I understand that news, children’s programmes with educational purposes and charitable and religious programmes will get the licence fee, but what if it is a programme that I really care about? How is that going to be funded? They will not put it on because it is not commercially viable.” That is where clause 1(2)(d) comes in.
Such a programme might be about fishing or it might be a minority programme that eventually becomes commercially viable and has to move out of this arrangement. A very good example of that is coverage of American football. When American football first came on to British screens on Channel 4 it was very much a minority interest, although I am interested in it and I have often wondered why we do not have a NFL all-party group. Interest in the sport grew, as did the audience, and eventually Sky took on the coverage, with some of it also appearing on Channel 4 and Channel Five. Under my Bill, it would have initially been funded by the licence fee and no longer have needed any licence fee support on becoming commercially viable. Just because licence fee money would be given at the beginning to develop an interest in a particular field, it would not have to continue to be paid once the programme became commercially viable.
The problem with that provision is, of course, one of definition. I have tried to deal with that in clause 1(3), which states:
“Where the only criterion of public service content is that contained in subsection (2)(d), the judgement relating to the likelihood of market failure shall be made by the National Audit Office, which must publish an opinion on any matter referred to it by the Secretary of State pursuant to this section.”
By the time my Bill comes in, and after the reshuffle on 6 May, I expect the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) who is with us in the Chamber today to be the very Minister who makes these decisions, so I hope he will be paying particular attention to this provision, as he will have to deal with it.
The provision has been misunderstood. People have said that it means that the Secretary of State—or the NAO—will decide on whether to have a fishing programme or another synchronised swimming programme, but that is not its purpose. The broadcaster will able to apply for the money from the licence fee for those programmes and that money will be given. The audit is retrospective and would deal with cases where it is felt a broadcaster was putting on something that is commercially viable, but that it had claimed under 1(2)(d) would be a market failure. The NAO is an admirable body that would be able to tell clearly whether a programme was likely to be commercially viable or whether there would be a market failure, which would account for its taking money from the licence fee pot.
To be fair to the newly promoted Secretary of State, as I shall call him, I do not think he would actually have to decide very often on this matter, because self-regulation would do the trick. To use a ridiculous example, it would be very embarrassing if the BBC applied for funding for “EastEnders”, because although it would get the money, shortly afterwards the Secretary of State would make a referral to the NAO to say, “This is completely ridiculous.” Self-regulation would stop such applications, because broadcasters would be hugely embarrassed if they took money from the licence fee for public service content only for the Secretary of State to refer the matter to the NAO and for it to say, “No, this is a commercially viable programme. Repay that money.” The damage it would do to that broadcaster would be immense, so I think there would be self-regulation in that field.
Mr Nuttall
It has been reported this morning that a Libyan Government envoy, Mohammed Ismail, has been in the country for the past few days and I can well understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) made that point of order.
On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) was previously making, about “EastEnders”, does not the fact that such programmes are covered by the BBC and paid for out of the licence fee prove the problem with the current definition of public service broadcasting? They are paid for by the licence fee, as a poll tax on everyone, whereas a programme such as “Coronation Street”, which is watched by just as many people, does not receive a penny.
Mr Bone
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. That is exactly the case. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that the reporting of the Libyan situation by the BBC is anything other than impartial and accurate and it has clearly been able to get licence fee money for that.
I move to the part of the Bill on which I expect to get shouted down the most and get a lot of criticism—clause 1(4), which states:
“No content shall be public service content if it fails to satisfy prevailing standards of good taste”.
Hon. Members might think this measure means that the National Audit Office is going to look at programmes and decide whether they are smutty, but that absolutely is not what my Bill does. My Bill says that public service content money cannot be given for programmes that do not comply with the prevailing view of what constitutes good taste and decency. It will be the prevailing view that is important. The measure would apply only if a broadcaster applied for public service content money from the licence fee for a programme. It could broadcast any other programmes it liked, within the general law of the land, but it would not get any licence fee money for producing programmes that did not meet prevailing standards of good taste and decency. It would be the British public who decided whether a programme met those standards. If only 10 people wrote in to complain about a programme, obviously the Secretary of State would not refer that case to the NAO.
Mr Bone
Under clause 2(3), it is for the National Audit Office to determine not a programme’s content, but whether the programme is made in a cost-effective way. For instance, if a programme on fishing is put on by the BBC at a cost of £200,000 an episode, and a similar programme is put on by Sky at a cost of £20,000, it would be for the National Audit Office to point out that figure. It would not be for it to take action, but it would refer to the fact in its audit.
That happily leads me to clause 2(4), which says:
“The results of all audits conducted under this section shall be published in reports which must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.”
When my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) was effectively in charge of the overall scrutiny of the National Audit Office, the most splendid reports in the House came out. The Public Accounts Committee is most powerful and informative, and I would not want to do anything in the Bill that in any way reflected badly on the National Audit Office.
Under subsection (5),
“The Secretary of State must by regulations provide for any costs incurred by the National Audit Office in the exercise of its duties under this Act to be reclaimed from licence fee revenue.”
To respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), the subsection is another addition to the previous Bill; I draw that point to the attention of the Opposition spokesmen and the Minister. We are reducing the licence fee here, but I do not want any other cost to be put on the general taxpayer. Any cost that the National Audit Office incurs will be recovered from the licence fee, so there will be no additional cost to the general taxpayer, and that is a change from the previous Bill.
Clause 2(6) says:
“Regulations under subsection (5) shall be made by statutory instrument and are subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
I hope that when the Bill is in Committee, we will have those draft regulations, so that the Committee can consider them before the Bill makes further progress. That, in a nutshell, is clauses 1 and 2. I am sorry to be so brief, but there are other important Bills that we must get on to.
Clause 3 is just on the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill. The short title is in clause 3(1), which says:
“This Act may be cited as the Broadcasting (Public Service Content) Act 2011.”
Even if I were sitting on the Opposition Benches, I would have difficulty criticising that part of the clause, though I might have a go. Clause 3(2) says:
“This Act shall come into force on a day to be appointed by the Secretary of State by order made by statutory instrument provided that such date shall be no later than 1 January 2012.”
I have allowed plenty of time for the Bill to be passed. If the Government are so enthusiastic that they want to bring it in before 1 January 2012, they can, but we have put in place a back-stop.
Mr Nuttall
That may well be so, and I sincerely hope that the Bill does make such rapid progress, but of course it may not. It may well be held up in Committee, or in the other place. What would happen if 1 January 2012 had already passed by the time of Royal Assent? That, of course, would also affect clause 3(1), because the title of the Act would have to be changed so that it ended with “2012”.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I made a judgment call. The issue was discussed in some detail with the Clerks when I was considering the drafting. If that were to happen, the Bill would have to be amended, either in Committee or on Report. The reason that we chose 1 January 2012—this relates slightly to a debate that we had earlier this week—is that the number of days for private Members’ Bills is very limited this Session. Instead of getting the 26 that we should have, we have only 17, which means that if the Bill is not further considered on one of those dates, it will be lost.
My hon. Friend makes a fair point about the situation in the other place. He also raises another good and important point; the last private Members’ Bills day is 20 January 2012, so perhaps there would be an argument for pushing the date in the Bill back to after 20 January 2012. I thank him for that, and I hope that his bid to be on the Bill Committee will be noted by the business managers. I hope that every Member who has spoken gets on the Committee.
The final provision is clause 3(3), which says:
“This Act extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
I do not think that there is much doubt that the Bill, which affects the British Broadcasting Corporation, should cover the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In fact, I probably should have put “United Kingdom” in the subsection.
There is one clause that was not printed. We considered whether we had to print “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”, but I was told that, unbelievably, the Bill is in no way affected by the European Union.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on speaking so eloquently on the Bill. He has done a public service. Although we all know that the life of private Members’ Bills is nasty, brutish and short, and we must be realistic about the prospect of such a Bill ever becoming law, it is important that the BBC becomes aware of the strong opinion in Parliament about the way it is funded.
The licence fee paid by the taxpayer is, in effect, a poll tax on the entire population. There is no way of avoiding it, except by not having a television set. Such a tax should provide for public service broadcasting. The definitions in the Bill are not perfect, but they do at least open up a debate on what constitutes public service broadcasting. If we are going to fund television and radio from the taxpayer, it is justifiable to ask whether game shows or programmes such as “EastEnders” are public service broadcasting or whether they are perfectly acceptable programmes, made according to consumer demand, that could be funded in many other ways. One of the purposes of the Bill will be to put pressure on the BBC to justify the nature of its public service broadcasting.
The list in clause 1 is not exhaustive, but it is sensible. There is no doubt that public service broadcasting comprises news and current affairs, programmes that
“inform, educate or entertain children”,
and charitable and religious programmes, but there are other programmes that could be considered to be public service broadcasting. For instance, if the BBC produces a major costume drama based on a Dickens novel, is that public service broadcasting? I would argue that it is. Or if the BBC produces opera, symphonic music or anything like that, I would argue that that is all public service broadcasting because many such programmes would not be commercially viable unless they were supported by some subsidy.
I accept that that argument could be dealt with in Committee. I hope my hon. Friend and the House will recognise that all these are value judgments. That is where a Bill such as this might get into some difficulty. Is it for the House to impose on a broadcaster its own value judgments of what is in the public interest?
That leads me to the points that I have been making in interventions about the National Audit Office. I do not intend to delay the House very long. I want to make the point as strongly as I can. In that respect, my hon. Friend is in severe difficulties. The BBC has said all along that its entire ethos is that it is independent of the Executive. That is absolutely right. Nobody here wants the Executive or Parliament in any way to interfere to the slightest extent with the editorial content of the BBC. We all know that in other countries public service broadcasting has been manipulated by regimes to support the regime. We must make it clear in the debate that nobody—I hope—on our Front Bench, on the Opposition Front Bench or even on the Back Benches is trying to tell the BBC what sort of programmes it should put on and what should be in those programmes. It is not for us as politicians to do that.
Parliament is surely entitled, however, to say that as that organisation is funded by tax—a licence fee, a poll tax—we want to make sure that we get value for money, and that the organisation is run, in the words of the National Audit Office Act 1983, in a way that is economic and efficient. That is why, for years, my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), whom I see in the Chamber, and I, sitting on the Public Accounts Committee, have been running a campaign, which at last is meeting with some success, arguing that it is wrong that the BBC, virtually alone among Government-funded organisations, does not have any parliamentary controls over its expenditure.
That has been a long-running campaign and the BBC constantly resisted us, saying that that was the thin end of the wedge. It argued that we would start by asking questions about whether a studio was run properly in terms of its lighting or whatever, whether it was efficiently run, whether a private finance initiative project was run efficiently or whether a building was procured efficiently. “You will start with that, o Parliament,” the BBC says, “but—thin end of the wedge—you will eventually want to get involved in the editorial content. You’ll be summoning the director-general and saying that some programme was too left-wing or too right-wing.”
We finally won that argument, and we said yes, the National Audit Office should be allowed to audit the BBC. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, who is a friend as well as a colleague, is in some difficulties here. I was not persuaded by the replies that he gave me. Clause 1(2) states:
“‘Public service content’ is content which is primarily produced in the United Kingdom and which satisfies one or more of the following criteria—”
It could be religious, educational and so on. Then we come to subsection (2)(d), which says
“The content would not otherwise be likely to provided by the market responding to consumer demand”
and subsection (3), which states:
“Where the only criterion of public service content is that contained in subsection (2)(d), the judgement relating to the likelihood of market failure shall be made by the National Audit Office”.
The National Audit Office is composed of some 800 highly skilled people. Their job is concerned with the public sector. They are not qualified to deal with the concept of market failure in a broadcasting organisation.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I appreciate his long experience of dealing with the National Audit Office. Does he think there would be scope for the NAO to establish as a separate unit, perhaps, with new employees who have the necessary experience to perform that role, based in the general office? Is that a possibility?
Mr Leigh
That is a helpful intervention because it takes me on to my next point. A couple of weeks ago the House did me the great honour of electing me as the Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission—not the Committee, but the commission. Members may not be aware of this, but it is very important that the National Audit Office budget is not controlled by the Treasury, because of course the NAO audits Government Departments. We do not want the situation that arises in other countries, where the Treasury gets its fingers on the budget of the National Audit Office. We, as a commission and a Committee of the House, keep a close eye on the overall budget of the National Audit Office.
My hon. Friend lightly throws into the pot the suggestion that we set up a new unit in the NAO, employ more people and increase its budget. There is a price to pay for all this. How many people will the National Audit Office have to employ to carry out its duties under the Bill? Those duties could be quite onerous.
I think that we are in very dangerous territory, because bit by bit we are dragging the National Audit Office into editorial policy. It is difficult to determine the possibility of market failure without judging whether a programme is likely to be a success in the marketplace, and how is such a judgment to be made without judging the editorial content? I am very sympathetic to what my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough is trying to do in the Bill, and I think that the whole House would like to apply more pressure on the BBC to use taxpayers’ money to produce more serious programmes, but I hope that he will not put at risk the campaign that is now nearing fruition. The current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has been part of that campaign, and he made a commitment in the Conservative party manifesto—it was repeated in the Labour party manifesto—that for the first time the BBC’s finances, but not editorial policy, would be subject to the National Audit Office and, therefore, to Parliament.
My hon. Friend gets into even more trouble in clause 2(3), which states:
“In pursuance of its duty under subsections (2) the National Audit Office must conduct, in each calendar year after the year in which this Act is passed, a value for money audit of the expenditure incurred on the broadcasting of public service content”.
I would like to know exactly what he means, because value for money is really a term of art in these matters. It means looking at how efficiently a contract was procured, how many staff were employed and what were the finances for it, but is he suggesting—perhaps he is not—that the value for money in some sense will relate to whether the programmes are of interest to the public and have public service content?
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
The Opposition do not accept the narrow definition proposed by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) of public service broadcasting. If his proposals were to succeed, many valuable, worthwhile and popular BBC programmes would be lost.
The BBC must continue to offer a broad mix of programming that appeals to everyone who pays the licence fee. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that licence fee payers are happy only to pay for “Newsnight”, “Blue Peter” and Radio 3. I want the BBC to do more than that because, as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) highlighted, where do we draw the line between what is informative and what is entertaining—programmes such as “Dragons’ Den” “The Apprentice”, “Human Planet” and Brian Cox’s “Wonders of the Universe”?
Mr Nuttall
I hear what the hon. Lady is saying, but can she give the House any examples of programmes made by the BBC that would not be provided for and would not be paid for under her definition?
Gloria De Piero
It would be dangerous for politicians, including hon. Members, to begin to tell the BBC what programmes they should or should not broadcast. The BBC’s editorial independence has long been cherished, and that must continue. Programmes such as “Dragons’ Den” “The Apprentice”, “Human Planet” and Brian Cox’s “Wonders of the Universe” have shown that it is possible to make business, anthropology and astrophysics appeal to a mass audience.
We continue to believe that a broad-based BBC fulfilling all of Lord Reith’s original mission to “inform, educate and entertain” remains the best way to preserve the public service broadcasting that is a hallmark of our society. Many people say that if they were to leave the country, alongside a decent cup of tea and Marmite, it is our TV and radio, particularly the BBC, that they would miss most.
I do not believe, unlike the hon. Member for Wellingborough, in a cod liver oil BBC—it is good for you, but it might not always taste nice and it is a bit of a chore to take it. That is not the way forward, and it would be a serious mistake. While I celebrate the BBC, I am not uncritical of it. This debate plays an important role in expressing to the corporation views on how it can redefine and develop its role. While the Opposition rigorously defend and promote the BBC, we will continue to be at the forefront of pressing it to be more transparent and accountable, and to work even harder to ensure that every pound of the licence fee spent delivers maximum value on the airwaves for licence fee payers.
I can agree with the hon. Gentleman about the value of the BBC’s current affairs programming. My own story can perhaps provide a little insight into my views on the issue. I grew up in a working-class family in Bradford, far from the corridors of power and with no first-hand experience of how the world of politics worked. It was through the BBC, particularly its quality current affairs programmes, that I learned how the country was run. As a Yorkshire teenager, I might not have been as politically obsessed as the Foreign Secretary, but as a 17-year-old who wanted to make a difference I sat and watched programmes such as “On The Record”. Those programmes took me into worlds which I would never otherwise have known about.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher). I wanted to comment further on what the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), who has just left the Chamber, said. Like her, I grew up in Yorkshire, albeit not in Bradford, but in Rotherham in south Yorkshire. Also like her, I gathered a lot of political news from the BBC in my earlier years. I remember watching the great Brian Walden on a Sunday lunchtime. I hope it is not too embarrassing to say that in some ways, I rather looked forward to his interviews and his tremendous style. It was a great pleasure to me that as I progressed in politics, I had the opportunity to meet him in person and to listen to him at greater length. I am glad that he is now far more supportive of Conservative views than perhaps he was when a Labour Member of Parliament. Nevertheless, he was a great interviewer.
I have that in common with the shadow Minister, but at the outset, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who so ably moved the Second Reading motion, mentioned Dan Hannan’s successful viral video, which had 2 million or 3 million hits from around the world. As my hon. Friend said, on Second Reading of a similar Bill in 2009, it was mentioned that that story was covered by the BBC not at the time, but two days later, when Mr Hannan, a Member of the European Parliament, was interviewed on the BBC not because of the speech itself, but because of the coverage that it received on YouTube. With typical modesty, Mr Hannan said that he was completely perplexed and slightly stunned by the global reaction to his speech, but many licence fee payers would have been completely perplexed and slightly stunned by the fact that Mr Mardell, the reporter who covered the story, had not felt it necessary or appropriate to cover the speech in his report from Strasbourg on the day when it was made.
I shall not stand here this morning and launch a diatribe against the BBC—far from it. I have no axe to grind against the BBC, which does the job that it was set up to do. In many ways, the problem is historical and lies with the legislation. Many good people work in the BBC, and day in, day out, carry out their duties to the best of their ability. I do not see it as my job to attack the BBC.
Debates on such matters often turn into a debate on whether one is pro or anti-BBC, but I want to approach it from the point of the view of the public. What is best for the public? What is best for an average family sitting at home? What do they want from their television set and radio?
We are moving to a completely new set-up for the whole of broadcasting, which is why I think this debate is so timely and important. The licence fee dates back to an era when broadcasting was new and cutting-edge technology, and I can well understand why it was necessary for it to receive public help. It was sensible for Parliament at the time to say, “Look, if this new technology is to get off the ground, it needs help and something to push it along”, and so the licence fee was born. It started life modestly. I think that the first licence fee, back in the early ‘20s, was just a few shillings. It then developed over the years to what it is today. The first licence fee was for a radio—of course, there was no television when it was introduced—and was just 10 shillings in November 1922. The first television licence fee was £2, the first colour licence fee, which was introduced in 1968, was £10, and today it is £145.50.
I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for ensuring that the licence fee will be frozen for the next six years. When it comes down to the household budget, that will be of great benefit, certainly to all of my constituents.
Mr Nuttall
There is that point. One might ask why it was not asked to reduce the licence fee, but it did take on additional responsibilities, as I understand it. That was covered in the letter from the Secretary of State to Sir Michael Lyons in which he reaffirmed the Government’s respect for the BBC’s editorial and operational independence, but made it clear that, as part of the new settlement, the BBC would have to provide funding for new broadcasting activities. That includes local media, to which I will return later. However, the thing that has received most publicity is that it will take over funding for the World Service, BBC Monitoring and S4C. So the Government have asked the BBC to take on new responsibilities, so, in effect, there will be a reduction.
There is, however, plenty of scope for cuts to the BBC’s budget. The amounts involved are eye-watering. I realise that £145.50 does not sound like very much. People would think, “That’s pretty good value, isn’t it?” It might well be good value, but the point is that it is multiplied across the whole nation. Let us consider houses split into separate flats and households. Each needs a separate television licence. In large cities, such as Sheffield, Manchester and London, there are houses that have been divided into flats, and there could be six, eight, 10 or even more individual units, each paying a £145.50. It is therefore quite feasible for the BBC to receive more than £1,000 from just one small block.
It is also notable that the licence fee has never gone down. Most technologies are expensive to start with, but as more and more people are drawn into the market, the costs come down.
Christopher Pincher
Does my hon. Friend accept that although the price of the licence fee has not gone down, its cost as a proportion of individuals’ incomes has?
Mr Nuttall
I do not know what the relative cost of a 10 shilling licence was as a proportion of weekly income in—
Christopher Pincher
The average weekly income in 1922 was between £2 and £3.
Mr Nuttall
So yes, on that basis, the licence fee is probably more affordable now. However, that is not to say that my underlying point about the wealth, assets and financial power of the BBC is not entirely valid.
Indeed, it might benefit the House to look at how, in very broad terms, the licence fee was spent in 2009-10 and how that equates to a monthly cost for each household. For example, the cost of the television service—which covers the main BBC channels, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News, BBC Parliament, the HD service and the red button service—was £2.351 billion. That means that two thirds of the licence fee went on television. The radio service—Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7—took up 17% of the licence fee, at a cost of £604 million. Online services—BBC online, iPlayer and BBC Mobile—cost £199 million, at 6% of the fee. One might think, “Well, what’s left?”, but under the final heading, “Other”, £406 million was spent on, for instance, “digital”, investing in new technology—one might ask what that has to do with public service broadcasting—running costs and collecting the licence fee. To break that down into monthly costs for each household, the television service costs £7.85, radio costs £2.01, online services cost 67p, and “Other”, including collection, costs £1.35. Those are important figures to bear in mind for what I will say later about what I see as the future of broadcasting in this country.
Since its early days, the BBC has developed because it has benefited from a constant, annual, fixed flow of income. It has not had to worry about marketing its services—although it has, of course, through BBC Worldwide and its commercial arms. Indeed, in many ways, part of the problem is that the BBC has been encouraged to become more than just a public service broadcaster, and is now a quasi-commercial animal. It sells its programmes around the world and takes on new roles all the time. Incidentally, I have never been convinced that it was necessary—and no one has been able to explain to me why it was necessary—for the BBC, a broadcaster, to purchase the Lonely Planet travel guides. But we do not want to turn this into a debate about what is right and wrong with the BBC. It performs an excellent role, but the future is surely going to be more about the local TV network, which this Government are doing so much to develop. That is why I support the Bill. Under the terms of the settlement, only a small amount of money will go from the licence fee into local television. I think that it is about £200 million, which is small beer when we consider that the BBC’s total income is £3.5 billion. I honestly think that it could afford to do much more than that.
It has been pointed out that the licence fee is the equivalent of a poll tax, in that anyone who has a television has no choice about paying it. In return for paying it, they are guaranteed a certain level of programming from the BBC, based on the Communications Act 2003, which contains the crucial requirement that the broadcast programmes of the BBC must comply with section 264 of the Act. This is central to our debate today, because the definition of public service broadcasting lies at the root of the problem, as I said in an earlier intervention.
The problem is that section 264 is drafted so widely that it covers virtually everything. I cannot think of anything that would not be covered by it. Subsection (4) of the provision states:
“(4) The purposes of public service television broadcasting in the United Kingdom are—
(a) the provision of relevant television services which secure that programmes dealing with a wide range of subject-matters are made available for viewing;
(b) the provision of relevant television services in a manner which (having regard to the days on which they are shown and the times of day at which they are shown) is likely to meet the needs and satisfy the interests of as many different audiences as practicable;
(c) the provision of relevant television services which (taken together and having regard to the same matters) are properly balanced, so far as their nature and subject-matters are concerned, for meeting the needs and satisfying the interests of the available audiences; and
(d) the provision of relevant television services which (taken together) maintain high general standards with respect to the programmes included in them, and, in particular with respect to—
(i) the contents of the programmes;
(ii) the quality of the programme making; and
(iii) the professional skill and editorial integrity applied in the making of the programmes.”
Subsection (6) states:
“(6) A manner of fulfilling the purposes of public service television broadcasting in the United Kingdom is compatible with this subsection if it ensures—
(a) that the relevant television services (taken together) comprise a public service for the dissemination of information and for the provision of education and entertainment;
(b) that cultural activity in the United Kingdom, and its diversity, are reflected, supported and stimulated by the representation in those services (taken together) of drama, comedy and music”.
Given that statutory definition, it is not surprising that the BBC is able to broadcast anything it can think of.
It was said earlier that it is not for politicians to define public service broadcasting, but with great respect to those who said that, I contend that that is exactly what politicians have tried to do. If someone has to do the defining, who else could it be other than politicians who are elected to this place to make those sorts of judgments? What matters is that, having provided the definition, we then give broadcasters the independence and freedom to make programmes that comply with the terms that we have set down.
The definition in clause 1(2) is much narrower. It mentions the importance of “impartial, factual and objective” as well as
“local, national, international news and current affairs”
programmes. It also refers to the purpose of informing, educating and entertaining of children and programmes whose
“primary content is charitable or religious”.
That is perfectly adequate to cover those areas that might not properly be provided for in the competitive marketplace.
We are where we are with broadcasting. Although the BBC strides the stage like a colossus in broadcasting in this country, fortunately it has not completely shut out other broadcasters. These other broadcasters are, however, shut out from having any share of the licence fee. That is why I support the Bill. It cannot be right that a small, independent broadcaster that wanted to put on, for example, a religious programme on a Sunday afternoon which might attract only a few thousand people should be excluded from access to the vast funds that the BBC has simply because of how our broadcasting system is established.
I support the Government’s actions in trying to introduce more diversity into our television network. I suspect that, in years to come, this whole debate will become completely out of date and irrelevant. We are already seeing the morphing of television and the internet into one seamless product. Already, high-end, top-level specification televisions are being introduced with the ability to take in content down the line from the internet. I have a television that can be plugged into the internet to download extra things, but I am not proficient enough to be quite there yet. We all will be, however, in years to come. Perhaps if I did not spend as much time on my feet in this place and went home to fiddle with my telly for a few hours, I would be able to do that. I see the Minister nodding.
All that brings enormous challenges to the BBC. If I were looking at it from the BBC’s point of view, I would say, “Look, in future, how are we going to be able to raise our revenue when nobody will really want to bother with a licence fee?” It will be considered more and more anachronistic as time goes on. It will become out of date and out of place in modern, 21st-century Britain.
Television will eventually have a series of online channels that will be accessed through broadband and provided by a range of organisations. People may well access them by means of a code or a special encrypted key for which they will pay a small subscription fee, and which may be connected with an individual provider or even an individual programme. Someone might, for example, be interested in “Test Match Special”, as I am. There would be nothing to prevent “Test Match Special” from being made available, perhaps not by the BBC but by A. N. Other organisation, which would charge a small subscription fee to those who wanted to access it through their digital radios—which are becoming far more common, and are installed in most modern vehicles almost as a matter of course—through their televisions, though long wave, or online through their computers.
That strikes me as an entirely feasible funding model. If people were not paying £145 a year for a licence, they would be able to choose which programmes to watch and to subscribe to on a much more interest and subject-specific basis. At present there is a “one size fits all” arrangement whereby people must pay for everything, whether they are interested in it or not and whether they watch it or not.
Let us be honest about this. The figures that I read out earlier show that a vast proportion of the billions that go into the BBC each year is spent on programmes that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, what most people outside the House would regard as public service broadcasting. I have already mentioned soap operas such as “EastEnders” and “Coronation Street”, and I will not pursue that line again, but I will say that, by definition, the very fact that soap operas are so popular and attract millions of viewers means that they are capable of standing on their own two feet.
Mr Bone
I will not press you on the fact that we are now going into repeats, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Does not the definition of a soap opera make it clear that it cannot constitute public service content? Soap operas were introduced in the first place to advertise a washing powder on television.
Mr Nuttall
I know that I look old, but I must admit that I do not remember that. Indeed, I was not aware of it. It is interesting to learn why they are called soap operas. I always wondered why it was. That is well worth knowing.
There is a huge amount of content on the BBC that most people outside the House would not consider to be part of the public service remit. It is worth examining the definition of public service broadcasting in more detail, and it is worth looking at how other countries deal with the issue, because the problems that we are discussing are not unique to this country.
An independent media is part and parcel of any free democracy. People always think about newspapers in this respect, of course, and talk about “the free press”, but it is not just about the free press nowadays; rather, it is about free broadcasters. It is often considered to be one of the defining qualities of a banana republic or a dictatorship that the Government have seized control of the state broadcaster. I well understand the points made earlier that we, as politicians, do not want to go down that route; of course we do not. The way to stop that happening, however, is to allow a diversity of broadcasters, each of whom if necessary would—as the Bill allows—be able to receive small sums in funding. I am talking here not about billions of pounds, but about perhaps £20 million or £30 million.
Let us consider how many separate public service broadcasters we could therefore have in this country. That is a tremendous vision; it is a vision for the 21st and the 22nd centuries. There could be dozens of broadcasters, and they would, perhaps, be broadcasting in a different way from in the past: not over the television, but via the internet—and, increasingly, the mobile internet. People will therefore be watching these different providers as they go about their daily lives.
That points to an issue that I might address after I have finished my opening remarks. In the past, if someone watched a show on television on a Saturday night, they could be pretty sure on the Monday morning when they went into school or work that almost everybody else had also watched it. However, we have now already reached a situation where there are so many TV channels that the odds are that no one else has watched that show, because what takes one person’s fancy to watch of an evening will most probably be different from what takes someone else’s fancy to watch.
Some people, including me, have not even subscribed to Sky television. Therefore, if someone talks to me about a Sky programme that they have watched, I will not have been able to see it because I do not have a Sky box. That is my choice, however; I have chosen not to subscribe.
However, I might choose to subscribe under certain circumstances. The programmes the BBC no longer broadcasts that I miss most are the cricket test matches. A process was gone through, and they were bought up by a different broadcaster. I accept that, but one of the problems with the power and might of the BBC is that it can very often bid up the prices far more than a small broadcaster could afford. Nevertheless, live television coverage of the test matches has been lost from terrestrial TV. Although there is still the highlights package, which is available in the evening, ball-by-ball coverage has now gone to Sky, and I have no problem with that. However, if the cricket was available as a package on its own, so we could pay just for the Sky cricket content rather than the whole sports package, I might be interested in subscribing.
We have seen that development in horse racing. There are now channels specifically for horse racing. This is relevant because our debate is about the future of broadcasting. At present, horse racing is also on the BBC, however. The BBC uses some of the taxpayers’ licence fee to pay for the cost of broadcasting horse racing, and it is directly competing with other broadcasters such as the At The Races channel. That channel might like to broadcast the Cheltenham gold cup, the grand national and other major races.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We are now getting into too much programme detail. We have touched on cricket, horse racing and “EastEnders”, and I recognise they may all be important, but we now need to turn to the content of the Bill.
Mr Nuttall
Hon. Members have raised the question of public service, and it may well be that sport does not fall into that category, although as a matter of fact these things are being dealt with at the moment.
I wish briefly to examine the arrangements in some other countries, which have struggled to tackle this problem of how to deal with paying for an independent broadcaster. In Pakistan, the public broadcaster is a state-owned corporation—the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation—which was funded publicly through money obtained from television, radio and video cassette recorder licensing. Its Radio Pakistan has stations covering all the major cities and 80% of the country, serving 95.5 million listeners, which is more than we have in the UK. It also has its own world service, broadcasting in seven languages daily.
Sadly, events in Japan have meant that the Japanese station that many of us have been able to see recently, as it has shown the coverage following the earthquake and tsunami, is its main public broadcaster, NHK—the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. Many English speakers often refer to it informally as “Radio Tokyo”. It was set up in 1926 and was modelled on the BBC. It is funded by a receiving fee paid by every Japanese household, it has no commercial advertising and it maintains a position of strict political impartiality.
Malaysia has a public service broadcaster that is entirely state-owned. It was previously funded publicly through money obtained from television licensing, but it is now state subsidised, as Malaysia has abolished TV licences. Malaysia operates 16 state and seven district radio stations, as well as two national terrestrial television channels. Croatia, interestingly, has a mixed approach. The last figures I could find were from 2002 and they showed that 70% of the funding for HRT—I will not attempt to pronounce the name of Croatia’s national broadcaster—comes from broadcast user fees for each house, with the remainder being made up by advertising.
The best and most well-known other example of public service broadcasting can be found in the United States, whose arrangements are entirely different. Its public service broadcasting is decentralised and is not Government operated, yet nobody in this House could possibly say that the media—the broadcast and electronic media—in the US is anything other than free, impartial and independent.
Mr Nuttall
I just make the point that it is possible to do things by other means, as other countries have proved, although some say it cannot be done.
I am conscious that many others want to speak and perhaps these are matters that we can touch on in Committee and on Report. I would happily take up the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough to serve on the Committee should the Bill proceed, as I sincerely hope it does. There are a number of other matters that I could touch on, but I will leave it there and listen—hopefully—to what the Minister has to say.