BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Bragg Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, on securing this debate at a particularly timely moment and for his Communications Committee’s first-class charter review. There is so much that I agree with that, if I were to talk about it, I would just say “Tick, tick, tick”—I am sure that your Lordships do not want that.

In this debate, I hope that there is room to proceed by indirections and to see the BBC not so much through the prism of the review—although that has been marvellously addressed by previous speakers in detail, who in the way they did so have educated, informed and entertained us and given us plenty of time for reflection—but from the general point of view of someone who works for it, as I do. I am one who began his career there in 1961 as a trainee, listened to the radio in the 1940s and was, if I may use the word, suckled by it, and who believes that at its best it is a unique force for excellence and cohesion in this country.

Currently, the BBC is on tremendous form. Its recent television dramas including “The Night Manager”, “War and Peace” and “Undercover” are pulling off the envied double act of high ratings and high praise. This is rare in any broadcasting organisation anywhere in the world, or at any time, but it has three out of three so far and it is only April. In the end, the BBC is the sum of its programmes. The “Panorama” programme on the Panama set-up boldly set the context for what should become an essential and continuing debate. “Newsnight” had the nerve to bite the hand that feeds or could starve it and has wounded it already with its piece on Mr Whittingdale. The news struggles with impartiality and the delicate task of balancing what are often rather overheated and undercooked arguments but it is still walking the tightrope admirably. A magnetic murder in “The Archers” has caught the imagination of so many people in this country. Above the noise there is the even beat of the five national and many regional radio channels, which perhaps more than any of the BBC’s productions best represent the muscle, pulse and mind of this nation.

As has been mentioned, wherever there are debates on the BBC—I have taken part in half a dozen over the last six months, as many of us here have—if a vote is asked for there is always a wholly convincing majority for supporting the BBC. I see no demonstrations about the BBC in our streets, yet in our country where there would be demonstrations about the removal of a bus stop. There is global admiration of the BBC, which is Britain’s most admired brand. It encourages a multitude of writers, actors, producers, directors and researcher talents in radio and television, which is the cornerstone of the cultural power that this country undoubtedly has at the moment. No other country has this and it is, per head, comparatively inexpensive. I do not need to go on. It works magnificently, delivers for this country and is still recognisably within the discipline of Lord Reith.

However, we seem to exist in an atmosphere of permanent crisis about the future of the BBC, from the Government and from parts of the media, as if it were a patient etherized across the sky, in constant need of attention and operations from higher forces that are dive-bombing it again and again. Most of us do not see what the fuss is about. It is not too difficult to pick out sources of discontent, some of which have grievances that need to be addressed, of course. Principally, for instance, the imperial growth of the BBC disturbs the unsubsidised parts of our information economy. The BBC is right to be much more aware of that now than ever before. Even imperialism that is thought to be by the good guys is still imperialism and ultimately unacceptable. The BBC is so vast in its output that it is not too difficult to pick up or embellish an anti-Auntie story quite regularly, in sure and certain knowledge that the compelling letters “BBC” will draw readers’ attention to the contents of that story. The BBC is at once a national treasure and a national dartboard; that seems to be its dual role.

Digging into this, it is argued by some that the BBC’s fundamental singularity—or to use a royal term today, peculiarity—is an affront to the prevailing free-trade and ever-rolling capitalism of the day. Indeed, in some respects it interferes with it unacceptably. Or you could see it another way: as a stimulating alternative, it adds to the variety and richness of this country and gives an oppositional argument. It appears to me that the BBC’s many roles are seamlessly interwoven into the tapestry of broadcasting that we have in this country and, further, that the roles of others are tempered—they are often encouraged and even enriched —by the competition and interchanges with the BBC.

This country is and always has been a place of tribes, since it began to emerge as a place of its own about 1,300 years ago. They are ethnically different, always, and culturally diverse, mostly. These are islands containing differences but, for all that, islands bounded by and often bonded together by the seas. Many have tried and often failed, but tried again, to reach out to all the jostling or sometimes rival groups over those centuries. Through democracy, we have finally arrived at a plausible though often fragile method of inclusion. The BBC’s democratic inclusiveness, which began as a demand of genius by Lord Reith, is not only its strength and its burden; more than that, it is its purpose. We want the best in our society and despite catcalls from the galleries several of our institutions, including this one, try to and can succeed in the attempt to bring together the still-existing and the new tribes.

There is something beyond even that. The BBC does what it does with style, consistency and force. It brings together majorities and minorities in watching the same programme or live event. Most of all, though, the BBC is a statement of public service. That phrase has seen its meaning and strength weakened over the years. In area after area of our public life, too often those at the top who were once content to be public servants have found themselves outflanked and diminished by those who believe that public service is just another ladder to personal riches. Pro bono publico has not gone away, though. Millions of people in the United Kingdom are still alive to it, still working by it, still believing that work is one thing and serving the public is another, and they need not be separate.

We can say that especially today. We see the monarchy, under Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as a symbol of public service. The admiration, even reverence, that is felt for her is entirely to do with her palpable sense of service to the public.

The BBC remains still, despite its gaffes, despite muddles, despite being treated by this Government as a cash cow for social policies, a symbol of something that this country craves for deeply. People who are divided want to return to what they think of as living properly—what Orwell called the decency of these people, which of course includes us.

Of course we have to create wealth, make a living and construct a complex society, but we need an element of something else, and perhaps the word “higher” might serve, or the word “better”—that there are great bodies which speak in our name, unfettered by the demands of making and getting, independent and, in the name of all of us, standing for an ideal without which we would be so very much poorer, so much less of a place.

If it is chipped away, as the BBC is chipped away—as some of them out there want it to be—we will be much less than we could be. We will have lost what has been so strenuously built up, cherished and loved over many decades. That is, in brief, something unique, something of which, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said at the beginning of this debate, we can be, and are, proud.