BBC: Finance and Independence

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for introducing this important debate. What is independence? It is independence from commercial and political bias, including the influence of government, to achieve a broadcasting output accessible here and abroad that has a unique value unattainable in any other way. My argument is that the BBC’s independence, and the output that allows, is not only a combination that the public appreciate but one essential to our democratic culture.

On the influence of government, on the face of it the current Government are passive-aggressive towards the BBC. On the one hand, they say that there is no conspiracy. On the other, they want to interfere with the BBC’s coherence. They give what is surely inappropriate editorial advice and there are huge cuts—this is where you can take the passive bit out.

It might be argued that Ofcom or an “OfBeeb” may do a good job, but would that be the start of making the BBC less integral and less able to maintain its independence? In criticising coverage of the EU referendum, the Culture Secretary is doing in a sense no more than we do as individual private citizens, but we do so through the prism of our own views. It is said that the BBC is too left-wing or too right-wing. The point is that because the BBC is both ours and independent, it is a privilege for us to criticise it in a way that we do not feel we can with any other media organisation—certainly not the national newspapers, which we know to be biased and which therefore offer something quite different from the BBC, including online. The reality is that polls comparing public perceptions of impartiality put the BBC significantly higher than anyone else. The Evening Standard’s editor, Sarah Sands, suggested this week in an article hugely supportive of the BBC that it had approval ratings much higher than those of any political party.

The noble Lord, Lord Hall, cites as a fourth objective, on top of the three original Reithian ones, that of enabling. He is right to do so, even as a modern reaffirmation of something that the BBC has already done for a long time, particularly in the arts. New writers, musicians and composers, popular and classical, are all presented within a context of expertise without parallel. Where else would you find the greatest classical music festival in the world—the Proms—but on the BBC? That is because of its breadth and depth, inconceivable under a subscription service. It is a partnership, to use the current term, of live and broadcast music. All this is a platform for external and in-house artists and creatives which is the envy of the world. This is what the BBC already does so brilliantly because it is publicly funded and belongs to us.

The complexity of ways in which broadcasting by the BBC is now accessed should not be underestimated in terms of its appeal to the public. This has a bearing on financing. People who do not listen to Radio 4 when they are 20 may do so when they are 30. Linear programming is still popular. Some who wish to pay the licence fee might access programming only through iPlayer. The recent study mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which the BBC carried out of households deprived of access to radio, television and online services is telling. Thirty-three out of 48 households so deprived which initially did not want to pay the licence fee changed their minds.

If the BBC is ours and an essential aspect of our culture then why not properly formalise this relationship by having a universal broadcast contribution, as has been successfully introduced in Germany and which the Government are now considering? As a country we should be proud not only of the BBC as an organisation but of all those who make the BBC what it is: not just researchers, producers and editors but engineers and technologists, as well as the public themselves. This is an organisation which is the most respected broadcaster in the world. To run it down would be madness.