Future of the BBC

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Amess]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. One cannot watch TV while driving a car, but one can listen to the radio. I love radio—Essex Radio is fantastic. I absolutely agree. Frankly, these BBC radio stations have been starved of cash, as can be seen by looking at some of their software.

The director-general proposed that the executives could increase their annual pay by tens of thousands of pounds through a policy known as “earn back”. I must say that I have the highest regard for Lord Patten, the current chairman of the BBC. I once had the honour of being his Private Parliamentary Secretary for a week, not because I was useless but because my former colleague, Robert Key, had been appointed as a Minister and I stood in for a week. Lord Patten is going to be a wonderful chairman of the BBC. Under the director-general’s proposals, however, the seven members of the BBC’s executive board, as well as the corporation’s 540 senior managers, would have been able to earn an extra 10% on top of their salaries by beating performance targets. The proposal was accepted by the BBC’s executive remuneration committee, but I am delighted to say that the new chairman stepped in and dealt with the issue. It just shows how out of touch they are.

I now move on to the presenters. I do not know whether we have brilliant presenters. I would just say that I find it slightly annoying that when one or two female presenters—I do not know whether they have had too much Botox or something—are presenting the news on a very serious subject, they smile. But their salaries, which we are paying for, are worth looking at. The highest paid stars’ earnings from the BBC cost 1.55% of the £3.49 billion that the licence fee brings in. That is huge.

The seven high-profile presenters involved in this year’s coverage of the Glastonbury music festival for the BBC were not only paid lots of money for going, but given complimentary tickets. Why did the BBC send 400 journalists to the Glastonbury festival? All this goes unquestioned. We are concentrating now on phone hacking and so on. If Parliament was as it used to be, we could properly scrutinise these things.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned performance targets. Does he agree that if there have to be performance targets, they should be based on the satisfaction of the TV licence holders, and that plenty of them are dissatisfied?

[Mr Amess]

I am going to call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend. I absolutely agree with his point, and I hope that will be a subject for another debate.

To save money, headquarters are moving to Salford. Well, I am sorry: London is the capital city. Other TV channels have found that London is the best place for programmes to be based. Indeed, ITV moved “This Morning” to London because it could not get guests to travel to the studio in Liverpool. There are fears that the corporation’s move to the north could turn out to be an £877 million white elephant. It is understood that the BBC has had to offer incentives for people to move to Salford.

On sport, I am sure that many hon. Members used to love watching cricket on the BBC, and wall-to-wall coverage of Wimbledon and so on. “Test Match Special” was so special. Well, all that has gone and now constituents are contacting me about Formula 1. We even had all the anti stuff against Andy Murray. Okay, he is Scottish; let’s get over it. He is a fantastic tennis player.

I end with a thought about the licence fee. I am delighted that the Government have frozen it at £145.50 until April 2017. That amounts to 40p a day, which for lots of people actually mounts up to quite a lot. The completion of the digital switchover in 2012 would be a good time to think once again about how the BBC is funded. The British Broadcasting Corporation is a jewel in our crown, if it is well run and managed. It is pointless to have Adjournment debates unless hon. Members’ arguments are listened to. I hope that my words have been listened to and that there will be changes in the ridiculous high salaries that are being paid.