Karen Bradley
Main Page: Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)Broadcasting
Karen Bradley Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Karen Bradley)
I beg to move,
That this House approves the draft Agreement (Cm 9332), between the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was laid before this House on 15 September 2016.
I start with an apology. Although I am delighted to be here for the debate, I will have to leave at some point this afternoon—I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the House will forgive me—because we have, as Members will know, a magnificent celebration of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes. It was an enormous pleasure to be in Manchester with them yesterday, and I look forward to seeing them again today.
I am delighted to welcome the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) to his place. It is a great pleasure to see him sitting opposite me, and I am sure that we will enjoy many happy debates across the Dispatch Box.
The BBC is the best broadcaster in the world, and it is widely recognised as such throughout the world. Despite what some people would have the world believe, the Government know that the BBC is one of our greatest institutions and must be nurtured and cherished. The fact that we received more than 190,000 submissions to our consultation shows how deeply people care about the BBC. It is, therefore, quite right that the changes we are making to the BBC will strengthen it, secure its funding, protect it, decouple the charter from the electoral cycle and ensure that the BBC not only survives but thrives.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has talked about providing appropriate funding for the BBC to make sure that it is funded well. At the same time, the Government have inappropriately imposed on the BBC the costs of free licences for the over-75s and of overseas monitoring for the security services and the Foreign Office. What does she have to say to that?
Karen Bradley
I have also enjoyed sparring with the hon. Gentleman across the Dispatch Box. I will come on to the details of the funding later, but I believe that this funding settlement is a strong one that puts the BBC on a sustainable footing with an inflationary increase in the licence fee.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The former arts Minister, the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), does not think so, as he told us last time we debated the matter. Many of us in this House think that the idea of suddenly forcing the BBC to pay for free television licences is a complete disgrace.
Karen Bradley
The BBC has agreed to this through negotiations and discussions, and I am confident that the funding settlement puts the BBC on a sustainable long-term footing.
Christian Matheson
I must correct my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). This funding mechanism is not to pay for free TV licences; it is, surely, to pay for a Conservative manifesto commitment.
Karen Bradley
The funding settlement is to pay for the very best BBC, which we all want to see. I am absolutely confident that this funding settlement will provide that.
Karen Bradley
No, I will make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I will come back to funding shortly, but I want to put on record the fact that the draft charter contains a few small, technical omissions and errors. We will publish shortly a revised charter that includes all those points, on which I know some hon. and right hon. Members have picked up.
The BBC royal charter and agreement will support a BBC that makes and broadcasts world-class content; that provides impartial, high-quality news; that is independent, transparent, and accountable; and that works with, rather than against, the rest of the United Kingdom creative sector. The BBC director-general, Lord Hall, hailed the draft charter as
“the right outcome for the BBC and its role as a creative power for Britain”.
The new royal charter will make the BBC stronger in a number of ways. It will increase the BBC’s independence, improve its regulation, make it more transparent and accountable to licence fee payers, and make it better reflect the whole United Kingdom. First of all, the BBC will become more independent.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Helen Goodman
The Secretary of State has just said that the new royal charter will maintain the BBC’s independence, but I draw her attention to paragraph 4 of the draft agreement that she laid before the House last month, which states:
“By entering into this Agreement, the BBC has…assumed obligations which restrict, to some extent, its future freedom of action.”
How can that possibly be consistent with what she has just said about its independence?
Karen Bradley
When the hon. Lady looks at the charter as a whole, she will see that the BBC will become more independent. It is very easy to take one line from an agreement and try to demonstrate the opposite. As a whole, the charter will make the BBC more independent.
Karen Bradley
No, I will make some progress.
A majority—nine out of 14—of the members of the new unitary board will be appointed by the BBC. That contrasts with past appointments by Governments of every member of the BBC governing board. The new director-general will be editor-in-chief and have final responsibility for individual decisions on the BBC’s editorial matters and creative output.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State not understand the difference between appointments to a unitary board that has overall editorial control over the BBC and appointments to a system of trustees or governors who do not have such editorial control?
Karen Bradley
I understand that point, but I think this structure will give the BBC more independence. The fact that the majority of directors will be appointed by the BBC makes it clear that the Government want the BBC to be independent, to be strong and to succeed.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
On that point, does my right hon. Friend accept that the director-general remains the editor-in-chief and that the role of the unitary board is only to scrutinise, post-broadcast, decisions the director-general has made?
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend exactly sums up the position.
The longer—11-year—royal charter will separate charter renewal from the electoral cycle, which has been widely welcomed. I reiterate that the mid-term review after six years will be a health check, not another charter review in all but name. It is surely eminently sensible to check how effectively new arrangements are working before 11 years have gone by. Moreover, article 57 of the charter states:
“The review must not consider…the mission of the BBC;…the Public Purposes of the BBC; or…the licence fee funding model of the BBC for the period of this Charter.”
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that there will be a further huge change in viewing habits from traditional television to online and on-demand viewing over the 11-year charter renewal period? Will she consider decriminalising non-payment of the TV licence for viewing the iPlayer and will she in effect implement decriminalising non-payment of the TV licence over the charter renewal period, which would be widely supported and welcomed?
Karen Bradley
I know my hon. Friend has campaigned strongly on this issue, and I understand the point he makes.
I will go through some further points about the new charter. The BBC will be regulated more effectively under it. The charter and agreement set out Ofcom’s new role as the BBC’s independent regulator. Ofcom will monitor and review how well the BBC meets its mission and public purposes, regulate editorial standards, hold the BBC to account on market impacts and public value, and consider relevant complaints from viewers, listeners and other stakeholders where complainants are not satisfied with resolution by the BBC.
Maria Eagle
Given the high number of extra roles and duties that Ofcom is taking on, will the Secretary of State undertake to the House today to ensure it is properly remunerated and given enough resource to do the extra job it will now have to do?
Karen Bradley
Ofcom has been asked about that point, and it has set out that it has the capabilities and the competence to do this work. The charter is the result of extensive negotiations between the BBC, Ofcom and others, and I am confident that Ofcom has the resources to be able to fulfil its obligations.
It is fundamentally important that the BBC should be impartial. Colleagues have been keen to impress that point on me in the run-up to and following the EU referendum. Although it is not for the Government to arbitrate on such matters, I will make sure that Ofcom never forgets what a vital duty it has in this regard. These are big new responsibilities for Ofcom, and it is rightly going to consult with the industry on its new operating framework for the BBC next year.
It will also be Ofcom’s job to set regulatory requirements for the BBC to be distinctive. Schedule 2 to the agreement makes it clear that the BBC’s output and services as a whole need to be distinctive, so concerns that this is a way for the Government to interfere with specific programmes are totally unfounded. The provisions in the charter that place new duties on the BBC to consider its impact on the market are not about reducing the BBC’s role per se.
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I would be very interested to know the right hon. Lady’s personal perspective on what “distinctive” means. Does it mean distinct from other channels or from international broadcasters? Will she clarify what it means in this context?
Karen Bradley
I think “distinctive” means both those things. It means that the BBC is a unique and distinctive broadcaster that offers a range of outputs across television and radio, appeals to a wide variety of the population and offers programming that simply would not be delivered in a commercial context.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
One of the distinctive areas and advantages of the BBC is its ability to take forward policy initiatives such as commitments to minority language broadcasting. Does the Secretary of State understand the concern felt among those in the excellent operation at BBC Alba that the framework agreement as currently drafted is not entirely to their advantage? It needs to be looked again, particularly with regard to the fact that the funding source should continue to come from the BBC UK pot as part of a commitment to minority languages across the whole of the UK.
Karen Bradley
BBC Alba is a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC. The charter and the framework set out very clearly the requirements on BBC Alba. I would be very happy to meet representatives of BBC Alba if they feel that something has not been considered, although, from our previous conversations, I think such points have been addressed.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the most distinctive forms of BBC output and the way in which it probably comes closest to meeting its public service requirements is BBC local radio? It provides the very focused and, I would argue, often unique output that is very valuable to many communities up and down the United Kingdom.
Karen Bradley
I agree with my hon. Friend that BBC local radio is very important for all our local areas. I will give BBC Radio Stoke a plug, because I know it would be disappointed if I did not do so. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) seems to agree with that point. I am sure we all feel the same about our local radio. The point of the charter and the framework is to provide such a regional focus and to ensure it is maintained.
Karen Bradley
I have taken several interventions, and I am afraid I want to make some progress.
We are making the BBC more transparent and accountable, as is only right for an institution that receives so much public money and means so much to the public. The salaries of individuals who earn £150,000 and above will be made public. There will also be a full, fair and open competition for the post of chair of the new BBC Board. The National Audit Office will become the BBC’s financial auditor, and it will be able to conduct value-for-money studies of the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries. The NAO is held in very high regard, and it has extensive experience of scrutinising commercial and specialised organisations such as Network Rail and the security services.
Finally, the Government have listened carefully to those who said that the BBC must better reflect and represent each of the home nations. They are right. The charter provides for a strengthened public purpose, emphasising the fact that the BBC has a central role in the creative economy across the UK’s nations and regions. Appointments to the unitary board of members for the nations will need the agreement of the devolved Minister or, for the England member, the Secretary of State. The charter obliges the BBC to appear before Committees and to lay its annual reports and accounts in the devolved legislatures.
Ian C. Lucas
The Secretary of State commends BBC Radio Stoke, and I know that local radio is hugely important. Is it not unfortunate, therefore, that we do not have BBC local radio in Wales? One station alone represents the whole of Wales—BBC Radio Wales, along with Radio Cymru. Is it not time that we had local radio services in Wales in the way we have them in England?
Karen Bradley
Clearly that is a matter for the BBC. I sometimes pick up BBC Radio Wales in my constituency in Staffordshire—it seems to have a wide and long reach and is clearly reaching areas outside its normal remit.
The BBC must fully reflect the diverse nature of the UK. For the first time, diversity is enshrined in the charter’s public purposes and requirements on minority language provision are strengthened. The charter will be considered by the Privy Council before the Government seek Royal Assent.
We had an excellent debate in the other place last week and I am pleased to have another opportunity to debate the world’s finest broadcaster in this Chamber. Our changes will secure the future of the BBC, strengthen it, give it an unprecedented degree of independence and make it more transparent, accountable and representative. This Government believe in the BBC.
Mr Watson
It is certainly not the most ideal of circumstances to face when negotiating for survival. We do not think that there was a meaningful public consultation and we had hoped that those days were behind us. We feel strongly that that situation cannot be allowed to happen again. This was the second time that the Government had approached their deliberations with the BBC by placing a gun to its head. In 2010, the coalition Government forced the BBC to take on the cost of paying for the World Service. The Government approached the negotiations in 2010 and 2015 with the subtlety of a ram raider approaching a jewellery shop. Their approach was described as a “smash and grab raid”.
We expect the Secretary of State to reassure us that the next licence fee settlement will be agreed in a transparent manner and according to a clear timetable. It must be subject to parliamentary scrutiny and put out to public consultation, so that whoever is in power cannot railroad a settlement through again. Please will the Secretary of State give a guarantee to the House that such a system will be put in place? We will work with her to achieve that.
I am sure that some people believe that asking the BBC to pay £700 million a year for free licences was clever politics, but I think it was political irresponsibility, verging on negligence. The BBC is not an arm of the Government. It should not be asked to meet the cost of Government policies and it should not be asked to implement changes to the Government’s social security policy.
Karen Bradley
It is worth putting on record that the BBC licence fee has been frozen for the last six years. The Government have agreed to increase the licence fee in line with inflation, which will result in additional income for the BBC of £18 billion in the period up to 2021. That is more than enough compensation for the money the hon. Gentleman is talking about. The issue of licences for over-75s was dealt with outside the charter arrangements. This is a fair settlement that gives the BBC good funding and the licence fee payer good value for money.
Mr Watson
It is certainly a settlement. The BBC has accepted it as a settlement, and that is why we will not oppose the motion, but it is not unreasonable for us to press the Secretary of State on why an instrument of social security policy is being passed to the BBC. We are considering carefully whether we can challenge the measure in the Digital Economy Public Bill Committee, because the extra cost imposed on the BBC is the equivalent of a 20% budget cut. I know the deal has been struck and different income streams have been negotiated within it, but the manner in which it has been done is distinctly unfair. The Government are passing responsibility for social security cuts that they should take on to a British institution.
Mr Watson
That is a very insightful point about something that we can work together to monitor.
I was talking about employing people from every social background. The BBC has a duty to reflect the nation it serves. That means informing and entertaining licence fee payers, as is set out in the charter, but the BBC must also do more to encourage and support British talent regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability or social background. It is well placed to do that because, almost uniquely, it has a strong and visible presence across the country. There are BBC studios in Birmingham, Bristol and Belfast. The BBC has offices in Leeds, Nottingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff and many more places too numerous to list. It has a duty to reach out to the communities on its doorstep.
The BBC has significantly expanded its apprenticeship programme. I commend director-general Tony Hall for that but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) points out, there is far more we can do. According to research carried out in 2015 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, over nine in 10 jobs in the creative economy are done by people in more advantaged socio-economic groups, compared with 66% of jobs in the wider economy. That has to change.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I welcome the publication of both the draft charter and now the agreement. This is the culmination of a process that started a year ago with the publication of the consultation paper on the future of the BBC. As both Front-Bench spokespeople have mentioned, that produced a very wide-ranging and voluminous response, ranging from the 192,000 people who responded by email or letter to a number of luminaries of the creative industries who wrote to defend the BBC against the threat that they saw, but that I believe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) pointed out, never really existed.
Karen Bradley
I just want to put on record my thanks for the amazing work that my right hon. Friend did as Secretary of State. It was a joy to come into the job and find such comprehensive and technically excellent work done on the charter, which really puts the BBC on an excellent footing. I want to thank my right hon. Friend for that.
Mr Whittingdale
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. It is gratifying, and it is a positive sign, that the charter and the agreement essentially reflect the contents of the White Paper, which was the result of a great deal of work. At the time, it was very much welcomed by the BBC as putting it on a sound footing for the future. I believe that that is the case and that the charter and the agreement are, if anything, a bit tougher on the BBC than the White Paper was. The changes made to the charter and agreement go further—in ways that I welcome. Indeed, I might have recommended myself the changes to the salaries publication regime, whereby the Government have decided that it is right to publish the salaries of not only those earning over £450,000, but over £150,000.
The issues that attracted perhaps most comment when the White Paper came out—they have featured in the debate we have had thus far—are the independence and the governance structure of the BBC. The governance structure was widely recognised by Members of all parties as having failed. The BBC Trust had virtually no defenders. When I chaired the Select Committee, we produced a robust report, saying that the trust model did not work. The Lords Communications Committee also produced a report making precisely the same point. The idea that the BBC should have a management executive and then this arm’s length body, which was part of the BBC but not in the BBC, was simply a recipe for confusion, leading to a succession of problems, including severance payments, the appointment and then departure of the director-general within a space of 54 days and huge wastes of money such as the digital media initiative, which cost the licence fee payer over £100 million.
We asked David Clementi to come up with a recommendation for a new governance structure, and he came back with the one that most people had always felt was the right solution—a strong unitary board with external governance from Ofcom. Then the debate was about the appointments made to that management board—the unitary board—and whether the Government should have a role in it.
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) reads some sinister meaning into paragraph 4 of the agreement, where it says that the independence of the BBC’s appointments is important, but nevertheless has to take account of external factors. Let me explain that that particular paragraph is word-for-word identical to the paragraph in the agreement published in 2006, when the Labour Government were in office. It simply translates the same provision from 2006 into the new agreement. So if there was a sinister purpose, it was the creation of the hon. Lady’s party, not that of the present Government.
There was then a debate about the fact that, obviously, the unitary board was a more powerful and directly responsible body than the trust. It was recognised, I think, that it was right for the appointment of the chairman to remain a Government appointment, although my own view was that because the board was such a new creation there should be an open competition, and that was the view that the new Secretary of State and the new Prime Minister subsequently reached following the publication of a report by the Select Committee. I think that that was probably the right decision.
The Government appoint the four independent directors, each of whom will represent or speak for one of the nations of the United Kingdom, and, as has been pointed out, the BBC will appoint five non-executive directors. Even the Government’s appointments will, however, be made through the public appointments process. As I have said, they will not be in the majority. Perhaps most crucially of all, the unitary board will not have a role in editorial decision-making, although it will have a role in reaching judgments about complaints post-transmission. That crucial safeguard will ensure that those people cannot be accused of political interference.
I find it extraordinary, I must say, that all the people who suggested that the creation of the board somehow constituted a threat to the independence of the BBC—although, as was pointed out, it would have no involvement in editorial decision-making—have been strangely silent about what strikes me as a more dangerous precedent: the appointment of James Purnell as director of radio and education. When the BBC appointed James Purnell as director of strategy in 2013, just three years after he ceased to be a Labour Member of Parliament and about five years after he ceased to be Secretary of State, I questioned the director-general about the appointment in the Select Committee. I asked him whether he could think of any precedent for the assuming of a management role in the BBC by someone who was not just politically affiliated, but had been a very active party politician. He could not do so, but he did say this to the Select Committee:
“I think the key thing is—James’s job of course is not editorial”.
James Purnell has now become director of radio and education. As director of radio, he has overall responsibility for the output of a large amount of BBC content, and it is impossible to say that he has no involvement in editorial decisions. Indeed, we are told that he has been groomed as a potential candidate for the job of director-general, a position which, of course, is also that of chief editor of the BBC.
I like James Purnell. We get on well, we have robust discussions, and we agree about quite a lot. I have absolutely no doubt that James Purnell is absolutely committed to the impartiality of the BBC, just as I am; I merely suggest that if I, as a former Secretary of State, were to be invited, in a few years’ time, to take on a management role in the BBC—[Hon. Members: “I’d back you!”] I suspect that, despite the support that I might enjoy from some on my own side, it would give rise to howls of outrage, and I do not think it would be appropriate. This is not to criticise James Purnell, but his appointment does establish a very dangerous precedent, which is far more of a direct threat to independence than the appointment of the non-executive, independent directors.
Maria Eagle
No—[Laughter.] I was halfway through a sentence. I might give way to the hon. Gentleman when I have finished it.
The Minister in the other place said that this requirement would not be extended to BBC Studios. BBC Studios will still be using public money—licence fee payers’ money—when it is commissioned to make programmes. Why is it right for parts of the BBC that are in the public bit of the BBC to have to meet this requirement when talent in other places commissioned by the BBC, using licence fee payers’ money, does not? Is this really about transparency, or is it about giving a stick to tabloid editors to have a go at the BBC?
Karen Bradley
The point about BBC Studios is that it is a commercial operation that will compete with other commercial operations. When the BBC commissions an independent company to produce content for it, the people employed by the independent company are not paid directly from the licence fee, so their salary is not declared under these arrangements. We want the same arrangements for Studios as for independent companies to enable competition. However, clearly, we also need to know how much of the licence fee is paid to those independent companies that then go on to make programmes such as “Top Gear” that we enjoy on the BBC.
Maria Eagle
This could lead to unintended consequences. When I was a trade unionist, the idea of comparability and of trying to get a pay rise because somebody else was doing a similar job was grist to the mill. If the proposal simply leads to costs for the BBC’s front-of-camera talent increasing, that might be an unintended consequence. I do not think this has been thought through.