Public Service Broadcasting: BBC Centenary

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where there has been less direct confrontation and “You’re wrong and we’re right” than I was expecting, but, at the same time, there is the fundamental truth that to those of us who feel really embedded in it, public service broadcasting feels slightly under threat. I do not know why this is, other than that it has become fashionable, certainly on the right in politics, to feel that the BBC—let us face it, that is the lead organisation, the unit—is against the Conservative Party.

I feel that this is almost totally down to the fact that the Conservative Party has its behinds on the Treasury Bench. Any news organisation that does not primarily put fire under what the Government are doing is not worth having. Let us face it, if they are the people making the decisions—I point my finger towards the Treasury Bench—they will be the ones getting the criticism and being the most solidly examined. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, gave a little suggestion about what happens if you are not in power: you get ignored. When a party comes third or fourth in a general election, they are begging the BBC to pay them some attention. So if noble Lords want the BBC to be nicer to them, they should lose the next two general elections—it is that simple.

Having got that off my chest, I will now address some of the things that it is very unlikely that anything other than a public service broadcaster will do well. We have already heard a few examples: children’s television and science. Another is sport, particularly sport that is not immediately mainstream at a given point in time. It is a fact that public service broadcasting has proved to us that disability sport is still a contest worth watching. If Channel 4—whatever happens to it—has carved a little place in history, it is because of the huge step it took in making the Paralympics accessible. It was a massive change that went beyond sport itself: it managed to broadcast programmes in which disabled people were people who happened to have a disability, and viewers did not notice it half the time. By the way, Adam Hills playing disability rugby league for Australia and losing to Wales, while still having a smile on his face, gets my round of applause.

We can look to another sector, which is probably bigger still: the growth of women’s team sports as national institutions and events. Who is going to forget the Euros in a hurry? It is not the type of football with which I am most closely associated, but the degree of enjoyment, celebration and success that came out of that game—the team will probably have it coached out of them by next time—was something we could embrace as a nation. The fact that 51% of the population can play sport, enjoy it, be good at it and have a degree of sheer joy in it is wonderful.

At the moment, we have yet another England team—the rugby union team—which is the betting favourites to lift another world cup. We will see what happens with rugby league. There is a lot of enthusiasm here. These sports would not have been brought to the attention of the public if it were not for public service broadcasting. There was no ready market, so nobody was willing to invest money to get them there. It takes a leap of faith to bring them forward—and that must come from public service broadcasting, because who else is going to do it? You can make a huge investment and work for 100 years to build an audience—you might be able to do it—but who is going to make that first investment? The public service broadcasters took something that already existed and said, “Enjoy it. Make sure that people are embracing it more strongly”. No matter what happens in public service broadcasting, this, among other things, is something we must encourage for the future: that minority groups, by taking part in something, are given the credit they deserve, allowing them to become mainstream. I cannot see this being done anywhere else—or in any other way going forward. If anybody has any suggestions, I am all ears.

I will make one final point: when we look at public service broadcasting, we must also remember that it is a public service. Before we get rid of it, I would turn our minds back to the pandemic. Who else other than the BBC would have taken on providing huge support to education? Who else could do it? Who else would even consider doing it on a commercial basis? Whatever the Government do, I hope they will retain that capacity for public service somewhere within our broadcasting system. If we do not, we are potentially damaging ourselves in the long run.