BBC Charter

Lord Cashman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer your Lordships to my interests in the register and declare my interests as a rights-holder and ex-employee of the BBC, and as a recent resident of Albert Square. I, too, welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box and look forward to his reply at the end of the debate.

I am extremely pleased to take part in this debate and, like other noble Lords, I welcome the changes in the proposed new charter and agreement, which I believe build on public concern and the concerns of those who cherish high-quality public service broadcasting. My noble friend Lord Bragg spoke quite rightly and eloquently of the programming on a single day on Radio 4. I want to give special mention to the staff of the BBC, who pursue its values tirelessly.

The lobbying in advance of this debate has been intense, not least from the commercial broadcasting sector, which seems to believe that the BBC is a threat and would like to see its strength, dominance and success reined back even further. These are objectives I do not share, even though they are offered under the guise of greater openness and transparency. On transparency, and particularly on the subject of talent pay, I point out that the BBC is already incredibly transparent on what it pays. Any transparency should be industry-wide and not confined to the BBC, where it may restrict access to and the retention of talent. Indeed, I believe that such an approach would drive talent away. As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, alluded to, it is nothing short of pandering to governance by tabloids. We should be better than that.

I am grateful to the House of Lords Library for its extensive briefings and for the copy of the proposed charter and agreement, which I have read with interest. Although, as I said, I welcome most of the proposals, I remain deeply concerned about the following matters. The involvement of the Secretary of State and Ministers for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in appointments to the board of non-executive members is unacceptable and should be rejected, even at this late stage. The independence of the BBC should be maintained at all times and never undermined by perceived political interference, benign or otherwise. The BBC is a public service broadcaster, not a state broadcaster.

The mission statement refers to public interest, yet there is no definition within the document of such public interest. Equally, article 11 of the draft charter discusses the BBC’s “Market impact” and bizarrely states:

“The BBC must have particular regard to the effects of its activities on competition in the United Kingdom”.

Yes, I smile but perhaps the Minister could tell me why it should have such regard and in what instances this would apply. Furthermore, paragraph (2) of article 11 states that the BBC must,

“seek to avoid adverse impact on competition which are not necessary for the effective fulfilment of the Mission and … the Public Purposes”.

Can the Minister clarify what is meant by an adverse impact on competition? I take note of his earlier references to Ofcom’s responsibility but I would welcome greater clarity.

I welcome that the BBC must promote technological innovation, as in article 15, but wonder why it must share its research and development knowledge and technologies. Surely, this seems to put the BBC at a commercial disadvantage.

Like other noble Lords, I reiterate my concerns expressed in previous debates about distinctiveness. There is little clarity offered within the definitions provided, and there is a real danger that the BBC could become a low market provider delivering that which is unavailable, and largely unwanted. Furthermore, the role of Ofcom in monitoring this obligation to provide distinctive output and services could easily prevent the BBC running popular programmes, as was said earlier, or developing new online services that its competitors would frown upon. With regard to its online content, we have heard complaints in this House that the BBC raises the quality threshold too high. Long may it do so, and not just in its online journalistic content.

It would be remiss of me if I did not express the concerns of the Save Our BBC campaign, which calls for a clear statement in the new charter for the BBC to remain accountable to licence fee payers. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that statement.

I believe that it is lamentable that the BBC has become an arm of social security in its financing of the licence fee for the over-75s, with all the attendant consequences.

As other noble Lords have said, we should all be rightly proud of the BBC for setting standards of excellence worldwide in journalism, reportage, news, drama and wider entertainment, including sport. That it does so for a cost of £2.80 a week should be a matter of national pride and—dare I say?—prudence. We know what the BBC costs but above all else we know its value, and we should defend it.

Therefore, let me give a further example of the BBC’s excellence. Across the 15 major UK festivals in 2016, 875 of the 2,051 performances were by artists who uploaded their music via BBC Introducing. Radio 1 broadcasts just over an hour of news on each of the three days sampled, three times as much as Capital and six times the amount broadcast by Kiss. There was more news during Radio l’s breakfast show than on Kiss across the whole day, with half-hourly Radio 1 bulletins between 6.30 am and 8.30 am. I could go on, but I think the BBC eloquently speaks for itself.