BBC Charter

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications, which I have the honour to chair, published its report BBC Charter Renewal: Reith not Revolution on 23 February. I am glad to say our report has been well received and I commend it to your Lordships. We reaffirmed the original Reithian principles for the BBC to “inform, educate and entertain”. We saw no convincing case for a significant reduction in the scale or scope of the BBC, nor for it to be restricted to remedying gaps that the market does not provide; and we said the BBC must continue to be a universal broadcaster. I was glad to see the complimentary review of our report by Peter Preston in the Guardian, which concluded:

“Their lordships helpfully chronicle something we don’t hear often enough: how good and important the BBC is to British life”.