Lord Berkeley of Knighton
Main Page: Lord Berkeley of Knighton (Crossbench - Life peer)BBC: Government Role in Impartiality
Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Decisions about salaries are for the BBC, but the Government have urged transparency over those payments, so that licence fee payers are aware of how their money is being spent.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a freelance composer and broadcaster for the BBC, although at a somewhat less august salary level than Mr Gary Lineker. The Minister would probably accept, as we all do, that there is a difference between not making political observations in programmes that you are aligned to and being free to express your conscience when you are talking about something which has nothing to do with sport or, in my case, music. Does he understand that musicians feel rather beleaguered, given the Arts Council England cuts, coupled with this own goal of scrapping the BBC Singers, the only professional group of its sort in this country?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Questions about how people who work for the BBC use social media and how their activity adheres to the BBC’s social media guidelines are for the corporation to determine. The noble Lord, who does not tweet, I think, and certainly not in a way that causes any controversy, is right to draw attention to the decisions about the BBC Singers and BBC orchestras, although again those decisions are for the BBC to set out and justify to licence fee payers, in the context of how it spends their money. The noble Lord referred to Arts Council England cuts. I remind him that the amount of money being dispensed by Arts Council England in the new portfolio is larger than in the previous one, and classical music accounts for a great deal of its musical output. However, he is right to draw your Lordships’ attention to this important issue.