Future of the BBC

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on his success in obtaining this debate, which comes at a time when some serious questions need to be addressed. I do not want to detain the House for too long, because the Culture, Media and Sport Committee will take evidence tomorrow morning from the chairman of the BBC Trust and the director-general, so we will cover a lot of the issues in detail. We have also announced that we intend to hold a full inquiry into the future of the BBC, and that is likely to commence in the new year. That will provide an opportunity to examine these matters and I do not want to prejudge the inquiry. It is, however, worth spending a little time on the subject, because there have been some very difficult issues raised, and some very clear failures by, the BBC over the past year.

It is important not just to focus on criticisms, but to recognise that the BBC remains one of the finest broadcasters in the world and that, at its best, it is unequalled. That is not to say that one should just point at the successes. It is important that we look at the failures and see how they can be prevented from happening again.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

There was once a time when people said that only the BBC could do the arts and that it could not be done commercially. Does my hon. Friend agree that Sky Arts is now doing a tremendous job in providing arts to the masses, and that Classic FM on the radio provides classical music to a group of people who perhaps would never previously have listened to Radio 3? The onus is therefore on the BBC to keep raising the game. It does not have to chase the ratings, but it needs to ensure that it keeps providing high-quality programmes.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am not in the least surprised to find that I agree completely with my hon. Friend, who was an excellent member of the Committee for a time. I will come on to this issue, but he is absolutely right that there has been a change in terms of the amount and diversity of content available. The advent of Classic FM, which is hugely successful, means that Radio 3 should no longer need to occupy the same space, but concentrate, as it does most of the time, on a little more challenging and difficult classical music than the more commercial Classic FM output. That applies equally in other areas.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has described this as having been an annus horribilis for the BBC, and she is certainly correct. Reference has been made to the Jimmy Savile exposure. We have seen the Pollard report and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan is right that, given that a lot of money has been spent and a great deal of evidence taken, it is worrying that questions remain, particularly about the evidence submitted to Pollard by Helen Boaden and its apparent conflict with that supplied by Mark Thompson. Pollard did not really address that and I know that others may wish to pursue it.

Of course, the bigger question was not about the Pollard review, which examined why “Newsnight” came not to be broadcast, but about how Jimmy Savile was able to operate in the way that he did for so long. We await the findings of Dame Janet Smith’s review of the culture of the time. That may prove to be rather more shocking and it may have greater lessons of which we will need to take account.

The next failure, which was certainly as shocking, was the Lord McAlpine programme. It would have been the most catastrophic failure of editorial judgment at any time, but it defied belief that it happened such a short time after the failure to broadcast the Savile programme. Obviously, that led to the resignation of the then director-general, but there was a failure in editorial standards right across the news and current affairs division, and it is still not clear to me that everybody responsible has been identified or that sufficient action has been taken.

Another issue is the so-called respect at work inquiry into the bullying practices that apparently took place over a long period and the failure of management to take any action when presented with worrying findings about the way in which some employees at the BBC were treated. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) said that those were historical episodes. There is evidence that the bullying is not an historical, but a recent practice. The Select Committee will pursue that matter with the management of the BBC.

A lot of attention has been given to the level of the pay-offs and salaries. Those are serious matters. A culture appeared to exist whereby a small group of people at the top of the BBC awarded each other pay-offs when they came to leave. Those severance payments far exceeded any contractual liabilities.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend hits on an important point about the costs that people at the BBC brought forward. Will he comment on the problem that the BBC’s behaviour, for example in the Jimmy Savile case, leaves it open to being sued by the relatives, which would create a multi-million pound compensation deal? The trouble is that that bill would, once again, be paid by the taxpayer. The BBC has a commercial arm. Does my hon. Friend have any thoughts on how the confidence of the public, who pay a tax to the BBC, is affected by these matters? It is not just the salaries that outrage them, but the fact that every time the BBC does something wrong, it is the taxpayer who pays the bill.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not follow him in talking about the legal liabilities that may flow from the various cases. He made the point earlier that the BBC has been fined for breaches of the broadcasting code. If a publicly funded organisation such as the BBC is required to pay a fine, it of course comes out of the licence fee. It may be that we have to consider other measures. A fine is not necessarily the best way or even a sufficient way to punish failures by the corporation.

Although the severance payments are a serious issue, the amounts of money involved were relatively small. By far the worst financial failure of the BBC is the digital media initiative, which has cost the licence fee payer £100 million, to no benefit whatsoever. It angers people in the BBC, as much as people outside, that they have been required to deliver savings in front-line programming, when they see huge amounts going on senior management salaries and pay-offs, and the huge waste of money in the digital media initiative. It worries me that, in making efficiency savings, the BBC has made cuts in some of the areas that it is most important for it to invest in, such as news and current affairs and local radio. It is no wonder that there is serious anger throughout the BBC when its employees have been told that investment in certain types of programming cannot be afforded, but they then find that £100 million has essentially been thrown away on the digital media initiative. That reflects a failure of governance.

I listened carefully to what the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said. She recognised that the existing model is flawed and that there needs to be change. That is clear to me. There is a conflict between the two roles of the trust, even though I hear what she says about the trust being the cheerleader for the licence fee payer. I was interested in her idea about a mutual status. Perhaps she would like to expand on that further when the Select Committee considers the future of the BBC in the new year. It is certainly something that we would consider.

My view has always been that the BBC needs to be properly regulated from outside. It already is in some areas by Ofcom. I have always found the argument that Ofcom is well equipped to carry out the regulatory functions persuasive. Perhaps the BBC should have a more traditional model of corporate governance. Those are issues that we need to consider. What is clear is that the existing model is not working.

I welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State that the National Audit Office will have full access to the BBC. That has been called for by successive Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee over the past 20 years. The BBC has said repeatedly that that would be a dangerous intervention and that it might interfere with editorial independence. That is absolute nonsense. There is no reason why the NAO should not examine the accounts of the BBC—that does not represent editorial interference. In my view, what has come out over the past year, particularly with the DMI, makes it plain that the NAO needs that full access. I therefore very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement.

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the NAO and think that arguments against that view are insubstantial. I take issue with him, however, about his assertion that the present model is flawed. It is not the present model of governance that is flawed, but the failure of individuals within that to make the right decisions and intervene sufficiently early. For example, the trust could have conducted an investigation into levels of pay-off, but it did not do so quickly enough. Many lessons have been learned, but it is a mistake to conclude from that that the model itself is flawed.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I certainly agree that there have been failures by individuals, both in BBC senior management and in the trust. Whether we can draw from that a more fundamental problem with the model of governance is open for debate. I was opposed to that model of governance when the right hon. Lady created it some time ago, so I can at least claim consistency. It is clearly something we will need to consider and debate in the run-up to charter renewal.

I hope that this discussion and the Select Committee inquiry will begin a debate about the role of the BBC today. The BBC is good at displaying all it does. It has a huge range of TV channels and radio stations, and it is expanding online and launching more services on the iPlayer. However, the world has changed—and is changing—so much in the media. There has been an explosion in the past few years in the number of different content outlets, and that is continuing. We now have a successful ITV commissioning really good content.

[Steve Brine]

I know my hon. Friend is a great thinker on this issue, so let me run a point by him. Is the sheer scale and size of the BBC some of its problem? My constituents pay for highly commercial ventures such as “Strictly Come Dancing” and Radio 2, which could survive well in a commercial environment. The BBC also does great investigative journalism, and things such as “BBC introducing”, which Radio 1 does so well. If the BBC got out of some of the ratings chasing and competing with the “X Factor” on Saturday night, it could do so many more good things such as local radio and the other things I have mentioned.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and the point I was coming to is that that issue should be part of the debate about what the BBC should be doing—and, indeed, what it should no longer be doing—in this new environment. I have referred to ITV’s success, and we now have Sky investing a huge amount in original content and British programming—my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) mentioned Sky Arts. Perhaps even more excitingly, BT is entering the content provision market, and possibly in due course Liberty Global, which has just acquired Virgin Media, will go into content. We do not know, but that seems possible.

A rapid change is taking place, and we therefore need to look at how the BBC fits into the new media world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was saying, there are areas where the BBC appears to replicate content that is already available in a number of different commercial places, and it is not clear to me why the licence fee payer should pay for programming that the market already supplies. We need to address that important part of the debate.

The other part of the debate concerns whether the licence fee is still the most appropriate way to finance the BBC. I have always been critical of the licence fee, which is highly regressive, inefficient and evaded by a large number of people. The BBC director-general is now announcing that some programmes will be made available on the iPlayer before they are broadcast. That raises questions because the traditional licence fee model means that someone needs a licence if they own a television set in their corner. More and more people are now accessing content through iPlayer on catch-up, which is outside the original definition of what the licence fee should be for. Whether the licence fee is sustainable is cast into question in that different world. There is no easy answer to the question of what we put in its place—perhaps straight Exchequer subsidy is a better solution than a flat-rate poll tax, which is what the licence fee essentially is—but it should be an important part of the debate we need to have as charter renewal approaches.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, fundamentally, the question is this: what should a public service broadcaster do?

[Mr Whittingdale]

That is the question. The debate on what public service broadcasting is has occupied my Committee and all commentators on media matters for a long period. The answer is that public service broadcasting is changing. A lot of material that could, at one time, be found only on the BBC is now available in a large number of other places and meets the definition of public service broadcasting.

These are exciting times in broadcasting because there is a huge range of programming and choice that did not previously exist, but we need to examine where the BBC fits in with that. I remain a strong supporter of a publicly owned, publicly funded public service broadcaster. I am not sure that it needs to be as big as it currently is or that it needs to be funded in the same way as it is. I am also not sure whether it needs to do all the things it currently does. I hope we address those questions as charter renewal approaches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again, because I have already made a long speech and I am sure that Members do not want me to go on for ever. I have at least united the House on that point.

There are other critiques I would make of the BBC. The Chair of the Select Committee said that the chairman of the BBC Trust and the director-general are appearing before his Committee tomorrow. I hope they are not appearing together. [Interruption.] He is saying that they are. I think that is entirely wrong as they have completely different jobs to do. They should never, ever appear on a panel together. They should not do joint press conferences or appear before a Select Committee together—perhaps they could appear one after another. This is where the BBC has gone disastrously wrong in the past few years. The chairman of the BBC Trust seems to think that his job is always to defend the director-general and vice versa. I disagree with that. The two bodies should be far more independent, as was argued in a report brought out in 1948.

[Mr Whittingdale]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, one that the Committee has thought about. I agree that sometimes the two roles are not as distinct as they should be and there is a risk that bringing those people in together contributes to that. However, the risk we run by adopting the other strategy is that the chair appears and says, “That is entirely a matter for the director-general, so I’m not willing to answer it,” and half an hour later the director-general says, “I am not going to answer that, because it is a matter for the trust.” By having them together, we do not allow them the opportunity to shift responsibility on to the other.

[Chris Bryant]

It may be that the hon. Gentleman has a point and that the Committee needs to think about how it can interrogate people with consistency, and perhaps it should be done on the same day so that they cannot pass the buck in that way, but in the past two years we have far too often seen Lord Patten appear beside the director-general in press conferences. That conflates the two roles and confuses the public. It means that the criticism rightly made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan on the transparency of arrangements of the governance of the BBC is lost. We could do far better. I would make other criticisms.