Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Crickhowell Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

My Lords, I am extremely sorry that, despite the impassioned pleas by this House on the issue of withdrawing any reference to S4C from the Public Bodies Bill, the Government have ignored any suggestions to this end and are continuing their unrelenting pursuit of weakening this important channel in Wales. Let us remind ourselves that S4C was born after years of bitter struggle. One cannot deny that the channel is being weakened. It certainly had a massive impact on the language community and on life in Wales, not least the dramatic contribution of slowing the decrease in the number of people speaking Welsh to the point where for the first time in history we can see an increase.

We have moved from a position where S4C was established through statute with guaranteed long-term funding to a position where, under Schedule 4, it may see its funding cut so dramatically as to make it nigh on impossible to run the channel or, under Schedule 3, be modified at the drop of a hat without reference to anyone. One of my greatest concerns about the way in which the Government are handling this matter is the obvious ignorance of what they are dealing with.

The Secretary of State has suggested that the skills and expertise of the BBC will help to protect S4C’s independence. He talks as if there is no current relationship with the BBC and suggests that it might be helpful to have the BBC on board as it is able to reach wide audiences and deal with niche programming. Anyone in Wales who has the faintest idea of how the channel works knows that some of the most popular programming on the channel is and has been delivered by the BBC since its inception. We all know this. Why do the Government not know it? We are confident that the skills and experience of the BBC could continue to make a valuable contribution to the channel but there is a massive difference between this and editorial independence, which is essential in order to retain pluralism in the media in Wales and which is already extremely restricted.

At the very least, we need an idea of what the future governance structure will look like. What will the relationship be between the BBC trustees and the S4C board? Who will have the final word? Will there be permanent representatives of the BBC on the S4C board? Will S4C be granted total editorial control? Will the BBC have a veto on the board or will it be a minority voice? Will there be a reference to S4C in the new BBC charter? Are we supposed just to trust the Government that they will do this? What will they say? Where are the assurances? As the accounting body, the BBC would be responsible for funding. It simply would not be able just to hand over the cash and hope for the best. What does independence mean in these circumstances?

This morning, on the school run—I am sure that not many noble Lords are doing that these days—I ran into a cameraman who works on S4C programming now and again. He told me that a camera costs £60,000 and that he would not be investing now because he does not know what the future looks like. This kind of insecurity is already hitting investment and is having a damning effect on the media industry in Wales. The amendment suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Roberts and Lord Crickhowell, would leave S4C in an even more vulnerable situation than under the Government’s initial suggestion, which dealt only with the financial situation. Including a reference to S4C in Schedule 3 would allow any future Government to modify profound constitutional arrangements without any accountability in future and at the stroke of a pen. I urge the Government to think again.

[Lord Crickhowell]

I hope that the House will forgive me for not having been present for the debate. I understand that my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy has explained that I had to take my wife to hospital as she is going to have a hip operation very early tomorrow morning.

Most noble Lords who know me will realise how anxious I have been to take part in this debate. I do not think that anyone can question my credentials as far as S4C is concerned. I was one of its creators. I wrote the Conservative election manifesto for Wales before the 1979 general election in which we committed ourselves to a form of Welsh language broadcasting. I engaged in the battles that followed and persuaded my right honourable friend Willie Whitelaw as he then was, later Lord Whitelaw, to change the way forward and to make sure that we sent out the Welsh language on a single channel. At the same time, I engaged with my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy on a major exercise to safeguard, strengthen and encourage the Welsh language in Wales. My actions were then followed up by my successor Secretaries of State, working with my noble friend, so I think that it is right to say that no political party has done more for the Welsh language than the Conservative Party. Therefore, when assurances about the future of the language are given by Ministers on behalf the Conservative Party they should be treated with respect.

After I had left the Welsh Office, I was for many years a director of HTV, eventually its chairman. During the early days, we helped to sell S4C’s advertising and provided a considerable quantity of its programming; we worked closely with it. We also had something else to do during the later time that I was a director of HTV. We had moved from the years in which people said that television companies had a licence to print money to the years when, week by week and month by month, advertising revenue was collapsing. We had to live in era where we had to adjust our organisation and programming to a rapidly changing world.

The Government have not only given long-term assurances that they are determined to secure the future of S4C but have set out a financial programme and budget for the next four years which I believe give S4C, with its reserves and with the management capability that I hope will be assisted in a number of ways in the future, a sound foundation on which to move forward during the next three or four years.

If we take S4C out of the Bill, we are left with the legislation as it is in a situation where it is quite clear that reductions in expenditure will have to be made. The existing Bill does not give S4C any safeguard. I imagine that there would have to be a new clause in a Finance Bill, but I cannot believe that it is beyond the capability of the Government to ensure that savings are made, as they are being made in every other public body—and, indeed, most private ones.

So I was not so concerned about the inclusion in the Bill of S4C in relation to financial arrangements, but, until very recently, I was concerned about the organisational and structural issues that have been raised with great eloquence by many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy. They have asked very reasonable questions about who will ultimately be responsible, who the accounting officers will be, and so on. Anyone who remembers my involvement in the tragic drama of the Cardiff Bay Opera House will understand why I perhaps more than anyone understand all too clearly the difficulty when you have one body providing finance and the other being responsible for managing a project. What happened then was that the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, which was providing the finance, decided that it could second-guess the judgment of the trustees who had been set up with the job of organising and managing the project, and disaster followed.

I see the potential for that kind of disaster if we get wrong the structural organisation of S4C. That is why I very much welcomed the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, which led to my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy, supported by me, putting down an amendment to include S4C in Schedule 3. That will enable us, over the next three or four years, during the period when finance has been provided, to have the widespread consultation that people have very reasonably demanded both inside and outside Parliament. Under the revised structure of the Bill, the matter would then have to be approved by both Houses of Parliament. We would have the opportunity—towards the end of that four-year period, we would be into the next revision of the BBC charter—to work out a solution without rush and without taking S4C out into a black hole by removing it from the Bill, which would be a disastrous way forward. The proposal would provide a combination of finance and structural change and the ability to consult, which should and can enable us to provide a sound future for S4C.

Sometimes people seem to imply that the structure that we now have is somehow sacred, despite the fact that some of the recent management failures by S4C might suggest that changes in structure would be a very good idea. But there is nothing sacred in the present structure. It is not the structure that was put in place in 1982. At that time, the finance was provided largely from the independent television companies. I think that it was my right honourable friend, as he then was, David Mellor, who introduced the changes that led to the present structure. I do not believe that the structure is what matters; what matters is the future of strong Welsh language television broadcasting. No one is more concerned to see that that continues than me. It is because I believe that we now have a way forward that can guarantee a strong future for Welsh language television broadcasting that I will vote against any amendment that takes S4C out of the Bill and will support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy.