Jacob Rees-Mogg
Main Page: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)Broadcasting (Public Service Content) Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I am concerned about that suggestion, because it might lead to a whole load of left-wing voters moving to Wellingborough, which could undermine my hon. Friend’s majority.
Mr Bone
Alas, the public interest comes before self-interest, and I would lay down my seat if we could get the BBC to move to Wellingborough. Also, if the Bill were passed into law, the BBC would be a completely different kettle of fish, so I do not think I have too much to worry about in that regard. One of the great advantages of the Bill, if it became law, would be that the newly appointed Lord Patten would not have a job. That would save the BBC a considerable amount of money.
The Bill has had a small change in its text since its previous incarnation, but that change has important implications for non-BBC broadcasters. The Bill is also a sequel to the 2008 private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. The aim of the Broadcasting (Television Licence Fee Abolition) Bill was fairly modest: it just wanted to abolish the licence fee in total. I do not think that that is right. I want to retain the licence fee, but I want it to cost a lot less, and I want its benefits to be available to non-BBC broadcasters. At the moment, it is not so much a licence fee as a BBC fee. All the money goes to the BBC, and none goes to other broadcasters.
I am told that the current licence fee, which is in effect a poll tax, is £145.50 a year. Almost no one can avoid paying that if they are under the age of 75. Anyone who has more than one television set in more than one location has to pay more than one licence fee. It is a very regressive tax. Also, anyone who does not have a television is still hounded as though they do have one. I had a constituent—this is not made up—who told the BBC licensing authorities that he did not have a television set. They did not believe him. They sent inspectors around to inspect every room in his home to see whether there was a hidden television. That is the sort of thing we might get in a totalitarian state, but surely it is not acceptable in the United Kingdom at any time, and certainly not in this century.
Let me provide a much more up-to-date example. First, however, I want to put on the record my thanks to my researchers, Mr James Newhall and Miss Victoria Michell, who provided some of the research for my speech, and to my hon. Friend for his previous work. Victoria Michell is my intern. She experienced the TV licensing authority’s wrath. Previously living alone, working hard for a living and choosing to spend her money on shoes rather than a television, she informed the licensing authority that she did not own a television set and thought that that would be the end of the matter. Oh no! She regularly received letters from the licensing authority, insisting that she must have a television set and demanding to know why she had not paid the fee. She then received a visit from the inspectors. Unfortunately, she was at work—a normal pastime of those in their 20s—so they left her a note informing her that they would be back. She called the authority, grudgingly admitting she felt a little intimidated, to tell them that she worked full time and that if they wanted to visit her, they could do so but out of working hours. She was told by the inspectors that they would visit when it suited them. She waited every night—when she was not working late, at the gym or having dinner with friends—eagerly to clear her name, prove her innocence and show off her shoe collection. However, they never came. My intern would like to inform the House, so it is absolutely on the record, that she has since moved, adopted two televisions and has a TV licence.
Although that is a somewhat light-hearted story, if that person had been elderly or vulnerable, they would have felt considerably intimidated by a state regulator invading their privacy. The Bill would put an end to that. I should say that my intern is a well-qualified, highly articulate, intelligent young lady who is not easily intimidated. By the way, if anyone has a job going, I would recommend her as an exceptional researcher
The next part of my speech is put in to get myself promoted! In these days of economic crisis, which is due to the mismanagement of the economy by the previous Labour Administration, who believed the illusion of there being no more boom and bust and threw away more and more public money, we now have a coalition Government, who were put together for the purpose of cutting the deficit. Everyone understands that these are tough times, and my constituents in Wellingborough find it difficult to pay £145.50 a year for something that they might not want. It is extraordinarily unfair that hard-working families who just get by have to pay nearly £150 whether they like it or not. What is really unfair is that a millionaire in another part of the country has to pay the same amount. In any other taxation situation, Labour Members would jump up and down and say that that is terribly regressive, which, of course, it is.
The Government, led by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, did an exceptionally good job with the Budget, but there were difficult decisions to be taken and they had to cut. It is rather strange that one thing that did not get cut—and a number of things did not get cut—was the cost of the television licence.
Let me now turn my attention to the issue of whether the BBC provides any public service content broadcasting at all and whether it should qualify for any money whatsoever under the Bill. I shall be interested to hear Members’ views about this later. The Bill calls for public service content to be impartial and factual, so we need to see whether the BBC meets that test. My argument is that the BBC is, in fact, institutionally biased. It does not know that it is biased, but it is. I shall provide three brief examples of that.
The Government have ring-fenced spending on the NHS and is increasing it in real terms. The Department for International Development budget is increasing and our contributions to the EU are going from £19.8 billion over the last five years to £41 billion over the next five years. My constituents are being asked to pay nearly £150 to fund the state broadcaster, even though they may never watch the BBC. I am someone who, because of my profession, looks at all the different channels and I occasionally have to watch the BBC, but I do not watch it any more than I watch the channels for which I have to pay to view or the adverts on ITV. My wife has one of those buttons that can be pressed to miss out the adverts. That seems to me to be wholly unfair, so I sit and watch them as that is the only way I can be assured that ITV will continue. My wife does not agree with me on that point, but then Mrs Bone does not always agree with me on everything.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Will there be a special preservation order for “Test Match Special”, which really is part of the fabric of British life?
Mr Bone
That is a hugely important issue. According to my personal prejudice, “Test Match Special” must survive for ever, but the BBC cannot be trusted in that regard. Oh, no.
In my desire to be a new Conservative and a modern man, I bought a Saab biofuel car. There was a radio in it, and I tried to tune it. I understand that the new chairman of the BBC has never listened to Radio 1 or Radio 2 except when he has experienced difficulty in tuning his radio to radio 4. Would you believe it—when I tried to tune my radio to Radio 4 to listen to “Test Match Special”, I found that it was not on the dial! The BBC had removed it from medium wave and stuck it on long wave. The BBC cannot be trusted with “Test Match Special”. That is one of the respects in which the Bill would improve the position, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising the matter.
The Bill does not, however, concern only news programmes and sport. It also concerns other rather important matters. Since the introduction of the earlier Bill in June 2009, commercial broadcasters have cut current affairs and religious programmes and children’s entertainment. I think that if such programmes were made available to other broadcasters, we would be able to welcome their return.
I was going to give a very good example of why the BBC should not be allowed to have any money for its current affairs programmes, but I am conscious that time is moving on and I want to deal with the detail of the Bill, so I shall remove that little example. I will not go into it. [Hon. Members: “Go on!”] No, I will not allow myself to be encouraged, other than to say that it related to an occasion on which Mr Brown, the then Prime Minister, went to the European Parliament—I will summarise it very quickly—and Dan Hannan beat him up briefly in a speech. Whatever one may have thought about that occasion, it clearly qualified as public service broadcasting. Unfortunately, the BBC reporter decided to walk out and not to cover it, although he had been notified earlier that it would happen. Two million people tuned in to watch it on YouTube.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend has gone back to the previous measure. Subsections (3) and (4) are not joined together; they are separate. Going back to subsection (3), I cannot imagine a situation in which there would actually be a referral, but it would not be for the NAO to refer. The Secretary of State would have to decide that a broadcaster had taken money from the licence fee pot for a commercially viable programme. That would be difficult enough for him to do, but if he were of that opinion, and I gave the clear example of “EastEnders” as a commercially viable programme, it would then be up to the NAO to make a commercial decision, not a decision on the content, on whether there might be market failure—whether that programme would not otherwise be commercially produced.
All that might be difficult and there are hurdles. First, there is the self-regulation that would prevent virtually any of these manoeuvres from having to take place. Then the Secretary of State would have to take a political decision, which would be difficult because he would not refer something to the NAO lightly. In the case of “EastEnders” or “Top Gear”, for example, the NAO would come to the conclusion that they were commercially viable and would be put on elsewhere.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Would not “Top Gear” be deemed public service broadcasting? It is highly educational, telling people about the motor car and the workings of the internal combustion engine, and it exposes some of the falsehoods in elements of the green movement.
Mr Bone
It does all those things, particularly the latter, but I am afraid it is still a commercially viable programme, so, if my Bill were passed, there would still be a “Top Gear” on the BBC. There is no doubt about that. Therefore I think that I win and my hon. Friend loses on that point.
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.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend has missed one aspect of the Bill that is undoubtedly affected by the European Union legislation. That is where it suggests that payment should be made only for programmes produced in the United Kingdom. The European Union would come down on that like a ton of bricks.
Mr Bone
Ah! I should not have taken that intervention. My hon. Friend raises an interesting point that I may not have thought of. The Bill is certainly not a ploy to cause any trouble between the House and the European Union. I hope that we would be at one on the matter. In defence, all I can say is that when the Bill comes into effect on 1 January 2012, I do not believe that the United Kingdom will be in the European Union.