John Nicolson
Main Page: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I welcome this opportunity to speak about the BBC in the aftermath of the publication of the Government’s White Paper on charter renewal and the Secretary of State’s appearance yesterday before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, of which I am a member.
We on the SNP Benches are passionate defenders of public service broadcasting and independent journalism, so throughout the charter renewal process the SNP has engaged constructively in the debate about how the BBC can be protected and improved.
At its best the BBC is unsurpassed. Since its foundation in 1922, the BBC’s mission has been, as we all know, to inform, educate and entertain. It forms one of the cornerstones of all our national lives. In our homes daily it can be an intimate friend or sometimes an infuriating relative, but we are proud of it at its best, not least for its world-renowned reputation.
Any organisation that is successful over such a period of time must adapt. It must be able to embrace changes in technology, as well as changes in the society in which it operates. Charter renewal allows the BBC and Parliament to take stock and assess what the BBC is doing well and where it needs to improve. For some on the Government Benches and in the press who dislike the BBC, the process holds out the opportunity to attack the corporation’s core functions, and indeed during the charter renewal process we saw some wild notions floated. Some, of course, were newspaper fabrications. Other were clearly the result of Government kite flying. All of us know how that works. Ministers are able to float fanciful notions for radical reform and assess the reaction before the Secretary of State fans himself with faux horror and tells us that, of course, he had absolutely nothing whatever to do with the ludicrous and impractical proposals splashed across the pages of the madder right-wing tabloids.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a bit of a cheerleader for the BBC, but does he have any constructive criticisms of it? It may be unsurpassed in many ways at its best, but its best is not 90% of the time.
John Nicolson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for teeing up the rest of my speech. This part is what is known as the opening paragraphs, where I say something nice before heading further south for a good kick where it is well deserved.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman refers to the Government creating some of the headlines in the right-wing press, as he put it. What logic would there be in doing so and then not delivering? It strikes me as completely illogical and therefore very unlikely that the Government would have put those points in the press.
John Nicolson
I am touched by the hon. Gentleman’s naiveté. Let me explain how the process works. Politicians sometimes talk to journalists. They say things that they do not want to be quoted as saying. The journalists then report that. If it floats, the politician then goes on the record; if it does not float, the politician backs away from it. That is generally the way it works. I would be happy to introduce the hon. Gentleman to journalists whom he might find useful in this regard over the coming months.
In the end—this is where I disagree to some extent with the Labour shadow Secretary of State—the White Paper is a relatively unambitious document. I suspect that that may well disappoint the Secretary of State, whom many think may have wanted a more radical legislative legacy.
There are a number of welcome proposals in the White Paper. I am far from a cheerleader for the BBC. The BBC does many things which are good, but it also—as we discovered in Scotland during the referendum, which I will touch on later—does many things which are much less good. We welcome the abolition of the BBC Trust and its replacement by a unitary board. However, like many members of the House, I am worried about the composition of the new board and its independence. How will non-executive members be chosen? Can we be certain that they will not be subject to party political pressure? We have had worrying indicators already.
The National Portrait Gallery in London was recently looking for a new trustee. The selection panel, in a blind sift, rejected all five of the Government’s preferred candidates. The Secretary of State then blithely dismissed the selection panel in its entirety and appointed a new one that pleased him rather more. I pressed him on that during his appearance at the Select Committee yesterday. He told me that the panel had been dismissed because of a technicality. Although he had not necessarily wanted to influence the selection board, he did want them to know who his preferred candidates were.
That is policy masquerading as process. I asked the Secretary of State what would happen at the BBC; specifically, would this happen at the BBC? It seemed obvious, from his reaction, that it would. I do not want independent selection panels for the BBC board to know who the Secretary of State’s preferred candidates are. I want the BBC board to be entirely independent of government. I am worried by the evidence the Secretary of State gave at our Committee yesterday, as anyone, across all parties in this House, who cares about the independence of the BBC should be.
Sammy Wilson
Does the hon. Gentleman not see the other side of the coin? Given the bias that exists within the BBC and the fact that it will be able to choose half the members, with the other half being chosen by the public appointments committee, the real danger is that the BBC will simply continue on its merry way choosing half the board from the cadre of people that it believes most reflect the BBC values that many people currently reject. There would be a diversity of people chosen by the public appointments board.
John Nicolson
I am afraid that that is simply called editorial independence. There should be board members chosen by the BBC who are independent and not subject to politicians’ pressure. However, non-executive members should be entirely independent as well. What worried me yesterday about the Secretary of State’s evidence was that he showed a willingness to apply political pressure to non-executive board members. That is something that all Members across the House should be disturbed to hear.
Mr Whittingdale
I am puzzled. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the Scottish Government should give up their right to have a say over the appointment of a non-executive director on the BBC board?
John Nicolson
I am absolutely delighted for the Scottish Government to have a say. My objection, however, is about something different. My objection is to political pressure being put on appointments, in particular to the main board. As we all know, the main board, with the number of members it has, will be enormously powerful. In fact, the Secretary of State yesterday argued how different this board would be from the previous trust—he said it would have real teeth. It is therefore vital that we should have fully independent board members, specifically the non-executive members the Government want to appoint.
Julian Knight
Does the hon. Gentleman think the new BBC board will be more or less accountable and democratic than the outgoing BBC Trust?
John Nicolson
The answer to that is we do not know yet. That is precisely why I am addressing these concerns in Parliament today. If the non-executive board members are truly independent, of course that is a great thing. However, the evidence the Secretary of State gave yesterday was worrying for the reasons I have given.
Trust in the BBC is crucial. It is no secret, as my hon. Friends have mentioned, that many in Scotland have been suspicious of BBC objectivity in recent years. The Secretary of State said a short while ago that a majority in Scotland—although he acknowledged a lesser number—were pleased with the BBC, but let me give the House the figure from the BBC Trust itself. The BBC enjoys only a 48% satisfaction rating in Scotland—less than half, for those who are numerically challenged. Sometimes criticisms of the BBC in Scotland have been fair and sometimes not, but the BBC itself—the Secretary of State acknowledged this—has a problem in Scotland.
We welcome other proposals in the White Paper. Licensed services issued by the new regulator Ofcom will include specific regulatory provision for all the nations. Out-of-London quotas will be maintained, which should enable a healthy, independent production sector in the nations and regions. The BBC’s network television supply target will be 17% for content spending in the nations, with spending proportionate to the population of each nation. That suggests some progress in adapting the BBC to the changing needs of these islands in 2016 and beyond.
Of course, many of the changes required must come from within the BBC itself. There are proposals for the creation of a BBC Scotland board to oversee dedicated, nation-specific services. This would help to devolve decision-making, increasing the likelihood of relevant and reflective content suited for distinct audiences. We welcome the idea of a separate Scottish board, as proposed. We want to see a BBC that is editorially independent and well-resourced; a BBC that is bold and creative, and one that is crucially representative of, and delivers for, both Scottish and UK audiences as a whole. With a more responsive governance structure, we believe the BBC would be more nimble and better able to address the concerns of audiences.
Deidre Brock
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Chancellor very recently, without warning, cut £1 million from the budget of BBC Alba, the excellent Scottish Gaelic media service. That rather flies in the face of the stated support for BBC Alba in the White Paper. Does he agree that this throws the Government’s motives towards the BBC into question more generally?
John Nicolson
I agree that that was most disappointing. BBC Alba is a fine product universally admired across all parties in Scotland. Gaelic is a struggling language that is part of our national culture. Every opportunity we can take to enhance, embrace and support the Gaelic language, especially on television, should be taken.
Ian Paisley
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it is in all our interests that we have a board that reflects the entirety of the society we are in? To have a board packed with lefty luvvies does his cause and my cause no good. It would be right for the Minister to, at times, ensure that there is someone who is centrist or even maybe slightly to the right on that board.
John Nicolson
The hon. Gentleman does himself down. Perhaps in Northern Ireland he is seen as a radical, but here I have always seen him as a centrist luvvie. The BBC should of course reflect the society in which we all live. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman mentions deselection. I did not mean to be quite so wounding. As we all saw in the recent debate on BME and lesbian and gay representation—something I know the hon. Gentleman cares passionately about—I think we are all keen to see more equal representation at all levels in the BBC, from presenters to management and, of course, on the new board.
Combined with greater financial commissioning and editorial control, we believe the BBC in Scotland can provide relevant reflective programming and support our nation’s creative industries. We believe that bringing the BBC closer to viewers and listeners in Scotland is the best way of ensuring trust in, and satisfaction with, the BBC, and making sure it is rebuilt and retained.
Let me turn to news provision in Scotland, because I think it lies at the heart of the problem of trust for the BBC in Scotland. Some Members of the House may know that I spent much of my previous career in television news and current affairs. I reported for “On the Record”, “Panorama”, “Assignment” and “Newsnight”, and I presented “BBC Breakfast” and “ITV News”. I am passionate about editorially independent news. I therefore speak as a friend, albeit a critical one, when I say I do not think the BBC covered itself in glory during our referendum on independence. The model for coverage was wrong. The BBC treated a binary choice as though it were a traditional election. Proponents of the status quo were subjected to much less scrutiny than those who wanted constitutional change.
Julian Knight
Is it not really simply the fact that the BBC had the gross audacity to point out that an economic plan based on $100 a barrel was nonsense?
John Nicolson
That is a soundbite, not an answer to my arguments.
The problem was that the BBC treated the referendum coverage not as a binary choice but as a traditional election. The BBC recognises that it made a mistake in that, but let me tell the House how it does so. It says, on the one hand, “We made no mistakes whatsoever in our coverage of the referendum”, but then simultaneously says, “We must learn the lessons from the Scottish referendum in the way that we cover the European referendum”—and it now tells me that it has done that in its current coverage. It cannot say that it made no mistakes in covering the Scottish referendum and simultaneously say that it will learn lessons from it—that is intellectually incoherent.
Ian Paisley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this point, which goes to the heart of where the BBC is critically wrong, because that coverage could have determined the outcome of the electoral process. That happened in our country in 1998, when Alastair Campbell flew to Belfast and said that he could rely on his friends in the BBC and in the press to do the Government’s job for him. At that point, the BBC lost all credibility, and today it stands in a shambles in Northern Ireland.
John Nicolson
There is widespread agreement that the BBC did not do well in Scotland during the referendum. The corporation looked stretched and dated, and there were fresh calls for what became known as the “Scottish Six”. At the moment in Scotland, the evening news on TV cannot cover any news item outwith Scotland. Armageddon in Carlisle? The BBC Scotland coverage will lead on an airshow in Carluke. I sometimes get emails from people who are upset when I say this, so let me make it clear that it is not the fault of the journalists, but the fault of the remit, and it leads to couthie, entrenched provincialism. The BBC has been piloting a new, grown-up programme that would cover news based on merit and have a normal remit. If the main story is a UK one, that will lead the news; if American, that will lead the news; if Scottish, that will lead the news. BBC Radio Scotland has done this for decades, and BBC Alba has done it for a number of years.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s argument, because most people do not think the BBC is biased. Could he give just one example of where he has a grievance about a particular story that he thinks was biased, and then we can perhaps look into it and judge it on its merits?
John Nicolson
It is not a question of one example but of the ongoing nature of the coverage during the referendum. As I have tried to explain, the problem was ongoing. People do not have to take my word for this. The fact that the BBC’s approval ratings are so low in Scotland obviously shows that there is a problem. There is no point in looking at figures that show that 52% of people believe that the BBC does not cover the country well and then saying, “Well, it’s just the SNP who are making a big fuss about it.” It is a deeply entrenched problem in Scotland. As somebody who loves independent journalism, as I hope I made clear in my earlier comments about the independence of the BBC, I hope that people will take me at face value when I say that I want to see an editorially independent BBC Scotland and, indeed, BBC network.
John Nicolson
Does the hon. Gentleman mind if I proceed for a moment or two?
There have recently been rumours of political interference, on the subject of the “Scottish Six”, emanating from worried BBC staffers. Let me remind the Secretary of State about our chats on the subject over the past few months. Charmingly, if candidly, he said yesterday at the Select Committee that he was
“not qualified to judge the BBC’s output in Scotland or the reasons for its unpopularity.”
On that we are agreed—he is not qualified. In March, however, he told me in this Chamber that he agreed that increased investment and employment at BBC Scotland would be beneficial. He said:
“I obviously welcome any investment at the BBC that will create additional jobs, particularly in Scotland”.—[Official Report, 3 March 2016; Vol. 606, c. 1083.]
On that occasion, when I asked about the separate “Scottish Six”, the Secretary of State assured me that it was a matter for the BBC and that neither he nor his colleagues at No. 10 Downing Street would want to interfere. I hope he recalls his comments.
John Nicolson
He nods to say that he does. However, yesterday, when I pressed him three times in the Select Committee on whether he had been talking to BBC bosses about the “Scottish Six”, or trying to influence them, his body language looked a trifle uncomfortable, and eventually he conceded something very different. He told me that he
“might have concerns if he felt that the central place of the BBC in providing a nationwide news bulletin was being changed”
and added that the BBC
“has a responsibility to bring the nation together and news is part of that.”
Let us reflect on that line: that the job of BBC news is to bring the nation together. I could not disagree more. The job of the BBC is not to be a cheerleader for one constitutional settlement or another—that is what has caused all the distrust in Scotland. The job of the BBC is to be editorially and journalistically independent.
The Secretary of State should be playing no role whatsoever in trying to influence or block a separate “Scottish Six”. He himself stated several times that it should be a matter for the BBC and that he was not qualified to judge as he was not familiar with the BBC’s news output in Scotland. Such interference would undermine the statements made in the White Paper regarding improving the BBC’s services in the nations and restoring confidence there. It would show a blatant disregard and lack of respect for the constituent nations of the UK, including the devolved Administrations who have participated fully in the charter renewal process, and in good faith. Furthermore, it would undermine the plans that the BBC is intent on implementing.
So there we have it: a White Paper with which we broadly agree, but worrying signs that the Government want to tamper with the editorial independence of the BBC in Scotland and tamper with the political independence of the proposed new BBC board in London. SNP Members will resist both, just as we will fight any upcoming moves to privatise Channel 4. With Mr Speaker’s permission, I am now heading to the DCMS Committee to hear about Channel 4’s annual report and to offer it some moral support. Interference in the decision making of the BBC by the Government would put the independence of the BBC—a key feature of the organisation—in jeopardy, tarnishing its reliability and reputation.
Several hon. Members rose—