BBC Accountability and Transparency

Debate between Gregory Campbell and Gary Streeter

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Gregory Campbell will move the motion and then the Minister will respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up the debate, as is the convention for 30-minute debates, so the Minister will have the final word.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered BBC accountability and transparency to Government and licence fee payers.

The BBC traditionally was a world-leading news and current affairs broadcaster—paid for, of course, by the licence fee. When I have raised issues such as the one that I will raise today, the Government have said that it is for the BBC to deal with how it allocates and spends our licence fee moneys. I understand and accept that. The problem is that when I and others raise very important issues such as the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability and I and others go to places such as our regional BBC, we do not get answers. Then we come to BBC London and we do not get answers. Then we go to the National Audit Office and we do not get answers. Then we go to Ofcom and we do not get answers. The buck has to stop somewhere, and eventually the buck stops with the Government, Parliament and all of us who, on the public’s behalf, have to try to hold the BBC to account.

A few years ago, as the Minister and others will remember, we had the term “on-screen talent”, which sometimes is a misnomer. There was an issue about the on-screen talent having huge salaries about which no one knew anything. I and others campaigned long and hard to get those salaries brought into the public domain. We all remember programmes in which publicly paid broadcasters were asking us as MPs how we allocated our overheads and how we spent our salaries, how we divvied up our salaries. On rare occasions, Ministers would say, “Just hang on a minute, Mr Dimbleby. How do you spend your money, given that you get it from the licence fee?” Unfortunately, very few people did that, although some of us did. The BBC is very good at asking questions, but it is not very good at answering them. That eventually worked its way through and the BBC now has a banding process whereby it announces the salaries of on-screen talent in certain bands, which is some progress but not sufficient.

Then, on the topic of accountability, we moved on to the issue of outside interests. That resulted in the BBC putting an external events register on their website 18 months ago. I quote:

“As announced in October 2020, the BBC will publish a quarterly summary of the paid-for external events undertaken by on-air staff in journalism and senior leaders, in order to promote the highest standards of impartiality.”

That sounds very good.