BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I must at once declare a dual interest, having been a presenter for the BBC for some 40-odd years—like other noble Lords—and also a recipient of several commissions, including one for this year’s Proms. Indeed, I look forward to seeing noble Lords of a brave musical bent at the Royal Albert Hall in July.

I contend that my declaration of interest amounts to something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I have clearly gained, like countless other composers, writers, designers and actors, from my association with the BBC. So you could say, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”. On the other hand, I could be said to have a degree of experience and knowledge, like other noble Lords, of how the BBC works, and in particular of the cultural dimension, to which I will largely confine myself.

In many ways, the BBC is not unlike your Lordships’ House: it does very good work, but there are many areas that have required overhaul. There have been ludicrous pay-offs at the corporation, and a huge and disproportionate ratio of middle management to people actually working in studios on programmes. However, the BBC is manifestly getting its house in order on these points. I have witnessed the cuts on the shop floor, as it were, in the studio and on location, because programme budgets have been cut to the bone.

Just as I believe, despite anomalies such as the political appointment process for Peers that we heard about this morning, that this Chamber does a hugely valuable job in scrutinising and improving legislation, so I believe that the BBC fulfils well the Reithian principles of informing, educating and entertaining in a way that really is the envy of the world. Like other noble Lords, whenever I go abroad, I am told, “Gosh, you’re so lucky. You have the NHS and the BBC”. When I was artistic director of the Cheltenham festival, it was my partnership with Radio 3 that helped secure the festival’s truly national and international reputation. Radio 3 embraced and encouraged my initiative of saying that every artist had to include a contemporary piece in their programme.

The sheer number of people whose lives have been transformed by access to experiences that, were it not for the BBC, would have been denied them is staggering. That is why I wholeheartedly endorse paragraph 23 of the committee’s summary and conclusions, in which it welcomes the additional funding that the Government have found for the World Service. I congratulate the Government on this initiative because the link to the free world has been—I witnessed it in the bad old days in Czechoslovakia and the former USSR—and still is a lifeline for those living under oppression. It is also a marvellous vehicle for the subtle dissemination of the soft power of thoughts and ideas that are often restricted or forbidden elsewhere.

Closer to home, I have had countless artists, such as the playwright Alan Plater, tell me of the huge debt they owed to the BBC for shining a light, in a distinctly underprivileged area of the north, on to music and art in the days of the Third Programme—whose 70th birthday, incidentally, the BBC is about to celebrate. As we sit here in Westminster, in central London, able to pop over the bridge to enjoy the best theatre, film, visual art and music that the world has to offer, we should think about these priceless riches and how they are paid for by taxpayers in communities in areas where there is a dearth of cultural provision. That the BBC can disseminate these riches must always be a social imperative. I am often told by the disabled or infirm that, for example, choral evensong and the morning service provide much-appreciated spiritual nourishment.

Today’s BBC is a listening organisation—hence the move to Salford, the emphasis on regional diversity and the celebration of a tapestry of cultural accents, if I might put it like that. I agree with the committee in paragraph 35, where it says that,

“lack of a clear process for setting the level of the licence fee”,

or whatever replaces it, is unacceptable. Anyone engaged in business or festival planning knows that a primary prerequisite is a budget to allow forward planning. I also believe that it was not right for the Government to propose free television licences for the over-75s to be provided by the BBC. I can understand the dilemma that the director-general was in when he accepted it and, doubtless, the bridge that he hoped it would build—but this should not, in future, be a dilemma in which he or any other director-general is ever placed again.

The committee rightly says that it is persuaded by the argument that a charter period of at least 10 years is necessary. When I was on the, now defunct, general advisory committee of the BBC, I recall that a huge amount of time would be spent—we have heard this from other noble Lords—preparing for charter and licence fee renewal, with scarcely a break before having to embark on the next one.

The cultural position that the BBC holds is extraordinary, providing orchestras, not just in London but throughout the land, and singing this country’s gifts still further afield. At this very moment, the BBC is exporting the Proms, with performances in Melbourne, in Australia, featuring young generation artists. Really the question that one needs to ask is this: if the BBC were curtailed still further in its current work and potential, is there another broadcaster that could take on the Proms, “Young Musician of the Year”, “Shakespeare’s Celebrations”, or the Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead? Would another broadcaster commission to the same extent new work from writers and composers or relay from all over the kingdom, and often the world, artistic experiences that are the right of the many and not just the privileged few?

Would any other organisation be able to take risks to uncover originality and innovation, which are so central to a prosperous cultural landscape—furthermore, one that feeds directly into and nurtures the hugely successful creative industries for which the Government have often been fulsome in their praise? These industries, which are so often allied to the BBC, bring vast income into the Treasury. Tamper with one leg of that industry—the cultural side of the BBC—and you begin to risk toppling the entire edifice, for they are inextricably linked.

Surely we and the Government should seek not to constrain but to celebrate the BBC and what it brings all of us and a global audience. What better advertisement could there be for the United Kingdom? Any Government who seriously damage the BBC would simply not be forgiven by the electorate. Even if Ministers may feel justified in discounting a certain percentage of opinion polls—although I am not sure that they are right so to do—that have shown huge support for the BBC, they surely cannot be unaware of the overriding message and warning that they are confronting and will, make no mistake, continue to confront.

To continue the point about political interference from the noble Lord Fowler, I would argue that, if politicians never feel irritated by journalistic inquiry, those journalists are simply not doing their job properly. An external board, constructed by government appointment, would not be truly external or independent, in the broadest sense of the words, but parti pris.

Finally, in thanking my noble friend Lord Best for his considerable contribution today, I endorse his request to the Minister that your Lordships’ House has real time to debate the forthcoming White Paper.