Kevin Brennan
Main Page: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)Department Debates - View all Kevin Brennan's debates with the Leader of the House
(14 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
6. If he will bring forward proposals to reduce the television licence fee by 25% over the next four years.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
8. What his plans are for the future level of the television licence fee; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
We have had absolutely no discussions with the BBC about the level of the licence fee under the next settlement.
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend will know that we are committed to a strong BBC that focuses on producing great TV and high-quality news. He is absolutely right. There has been a trickle of stories about BBC pay and expenses, particularly BBC management pay; lots of people at the BBC do not have high salaries. The BBC must look at what happened to Parliament when we lost the trust of the public because we did not handle our own expenses correctly, and it must be careful not to make the same mistakes.
Kevin Brennan
Licence fee payers will have found last night’s broadcast of “Sherlock”, produced by BBC Wales and written by the excellent Steven Moffat, first class and great value for money. Earlier, the Secretary of State took pains to name the chairman of the BBC Trust and his former political affiliations, along with the chairman of Ofcom. By doing that, was he trying to call into question their impartiality in the work that they do, and if not, why did he bother to say it?
Mr Hunt
I, too, watched “Sherlock” last night and thought that Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch did a brilliant job. It was a very good example of the BBC at its best, investing in new programming.
I am not in any way calling into question the impartiality of the two gentlemen I mentioned earlier, but the Opposition should not preach lessons on impartiality when they were so careful to put people of their own political affiliation in charge of so many Government quangos.