BBC Mid-term Charter Review

Debate between Jeff Smith and William Cash

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

Indeed. The proof was in the pudding and was demonstrated by the outcome of the referendum on 23 June 2016. My hon. Friend is right. Actually, this is about unconscious bias in some cases and very positive groupthink in others. That is where the problem lies—somewhere in between.

On a limited budget, the voluntary organisation News-Watch does the job extremely well. It states: “The BBC's continued stonewalling of complaints, inadequacies of Ofcom in its watchdog role and the lack of effective reforms proposed by the mid-term review to ensure impartiality remains a fundamental problem.” Thus, the national interest is undermined, and the right of the licence-fee payer to have a proper system in place is denied him. News-watch is calling—rightly, in my opinion—for much more radical reforms to ensure impartiality, with a fully independent complaints system, more transparency and accountability, and efforts to improve diversity of opinion among BBC staff through new staff-training initiatives to ensure impartial research and analysis. All those are urgent.

The mid-term review does not, in my opinion, provide a proper system for determining breaches of impartiality, and allows the BBC and Ofcom undue latitude in interpreting what the words “due impartiality” mean, leaving the BBC as its own judge and jury. Indeed, in the past year, the new BBC editorial complaints unit—otherwise known as the ECU—has upheld only one impartiality complaint. People simply will not believe that, but it is a fact. Neither the BBC nor Ofcom routinely publish detailed data on the vast majority of the nearly 2 million complaints received since Ofcom became the regulator in April 2017. The system is, therefore, not fit for purpose.

Ofcom’s own figures indicate that complaints relating to bias make up as much as 39% of the complaints, and complaints about misleading and dishonest content make up a further 26%, amounting to approximately 800,000 complaints about bias since Ofcom took over. Of the 155 complaints upheld or partly upheld by the new ECU system, only 33 were accepted as relating to bias, which is an absurd and minuscule proportion. We do not yet have the latest figures, those relating to 2023-24, but the provisional information indicates that the ECU considered 374 complaints, of which only 2.7% were fully or partially upheld and 89% were not upheld. The situation is shocking and demonstrates an intrinsic failure of the system. It must be made fully independent, and must not be judge and jury.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

I wonder what the hon. Gentleman thinks about the mid-term review’s own conclusion that

“there is clear evidence that adherence to impartiality and editorial standards is now at the heart of the BBC’s priorities”.

[Sir William Cash]

It is at the heart of the BBC’s priorities in theory, but not in practice. Ofcom is insufficiently independent, and it is understood that there are deep concerns about the entrenched ties between its content board and the BBC—which still persist—and, therefore, a lack of accountability. A mere 56% of the public now believe that the corporation is impartial. The BBC refuses to engage with complaints that do not refer to single programme items, and there is a lack of comprehensive research into audience perceptions of bias.

I noticed an important letter in The Daily Telegraph on 23 January this year from Baroness Deech, a distinguished Cross-Bench peer and King’s counsel who was a governor of the BBC from 2002. Regarding the publication of the mid-term review in January, she wrote that

“Complaints are seen by the BBC as very sensitive matters, threatening the independence of the editors: witness the lengths to which it has gone to keep secret the Balen Report on its bias against Israel.”

She argues that

“The best way to handle complaints would be to appoint an independent ombudsman from outside the media industry, supported by experts on the topic at issue.”

I believe she is right. She confirms that

“Ofcom is heavily staffed by former BBC and media professionals who may be as touchy as their current counterparts at the notion of bias at the BBC.”

It is not just a notion: it is clearly apparent, and that is what the public think.

It is also interesting to note the views of distinguished BBC insiders, who know how the system works on a daily basis and have been openly critical of the BBC’s performance while they were employed as top-line and experienced presenters and commentators within the BBC for decades. I recommend that anyone who is interested in this subject reads Roger Mosey’s book “Getting Out Alive”, which gives a very good insight into issues of bias by the BBC on the question of Europe. He recalls a “Today” programme meeting when Rod Liddle was confronted by a producer who said disparagingly,

“‘The Eurosceptics believe Germany is going to dominate Europe!’ This generated laughter from bien pensant colleagues”

about the ridiculousness of that idea.

“‘But what if it’s true?’ was the response from the editor, and he set the team thinking about items that would examine whether Euroscepticism had some well-founded beliefs”

As Members will recall, at that time nobody thought for a minute about the simple question that those of us who were campaigning on the European issue—in my case, having come into the House in May 1984, I have campaigned continuously for 40 years—were trying to get across: “What does the European Union and its related matters mean for the British people?” That is an example of how the system can work—when reason prevails, as demonstrated by the editor of the “Today” programme.

Mosey also refers to the issue of asylum seekers in the summer of 2003, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

Mosey said that the people he describes as the “editorial policy people” asserted in this context that the issue was being led by an

“angry tabloid agenda and extreme Right-wing groups”.

Mosey replied strongly to the editorial policy team, saying among other things that the

“asylum debate is one in which we’ve done rather badly in reflecting the concerns of our audiences or the genuine crisis faced by the government in dealing with the issue”.

That was in Tony Blair’s time, let along now. Later, he mentions:

“Two years ago when it started being raised, we did not realise the level of unease about the issue”.

Now, two decades later, the position remains the same.

I also recommend John Humphrys’s book “A Day Like Today”, particularly, after 33 years of political interviewing, his conclusion:

“Today presenters and their stablemates do have questions to ask themselves. Does an interview always have to be so combative? Does there have to be a winner or loser”—[Interruption.]

John Humphrys, and he knows what he is talking about, unlike the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), says that

“if it does, the loser might very well be the public. If we interviewers succeed, albeit unintentionally, in convincing the listener that all politicians are liars, the real loser is our system of representative democracy that has served the nation so well for so long”,

to which I say, “Hear, hear.”