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Debate between Gregory Campbell and Julian Knight(7 years ago)
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Julian Knight
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about internal processes. Has he found that sometimes the BBC’s knee-jerk response is to defend, rather than to be absolutely transparent?
Mr Campbell
I agree totally. If a political party in this House were in receipt of public money from a variety of sources for commissioning opinion polls and so on, and the BBC said, “We would like to question you about your spending of public money, because there seems to be a lack of transparency,” just imagine its response if the party replied that it had robust internal mechanisms to ensure that the money was spent appropriately! Yet that is what the BBC tells me about its internal commissioning process and the complaints engendered by it: “Leave it to us; we know how to spend public money, and we have very efficient internal employees to ensure that it is accounted for.” That is not good enough.