BBC: Finance and Independence

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register and I am grateful, as I so often am, to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for this debate. The BBC: how do we pay for it? How much do we pay for it? Should we be paying for it at all in a broadcasting world where all the rules seem to be changing?

Some of what the BBC has done in recent years has been inept and, in some cases, appalling. Jimmy Savile. The grotesque attack on our late colleague, Lord McAlpine. Financial mismanagement. Scandal. The BBC, that great custodian of all that was supposed to be best in British broadcasting, has at times lost its way. It has shown unremitting arrogance and has been in danger of being cut to pieces by a hundred headlines, a thousand expenses claims, and millions that have been spent on redundancies and failures—and do not get me going on some of its political coverage. And yet we in Westminster know what a bumpy playing field public service can prove to be. As we have come to learn to our cost, sex and financial scandals are not the exclusive preserve of the BBC.

While we concentrate on its governance and financing, we must not lose sight of what the BBC is fundamentally about, which is output. And the BBC’s output, in the round and over the balance of time, is often superb. Almost daily in this House we discuss Britain’s influence around the world—its soft power—and a good chunk of that soft power is delivered through the BBC. Not just through its news services, but through its fine dramas, its compelling sport, its inspiring music, its celebrations of our culture, its coverage of the London Olympics—who could forget that?—the royal wedding and the Queen’s golden jubilee. And we should never forget, of course, the huge role of the BBC’s World Service.

The BBC is at the heart of British culture and creativity, and raises the bar for all other broadcasters. We as a nation are stunningly creative. We have a special talent for it. Television alone earns more than £12 billion a year for Britain and employs more than 130,000 people. And television primes other creative industries, too, which together contribute almost £80 billion a year to our economy, wins us Emmys and Oscars and accolades and exports. And in our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, I believe that the BBC has a leader who understands the very special responsibilities of a public service broadcaster. He really gets it.

This brings us back once more to the perpetual dance around the flame that is the licence fee. Public service broadcasting can never be the cheapest television. It should be cost-effective, of course, but never cheap. Always high value. And sometimes high risk. In the creative world, the world of new ideas, it is crucial to have the ability to take risks, and sometimes that means the freedom to fail.

So, as an unapologetic Tory, let me say: we still need the BBC. Independent. Error-strewn. Sometimes inexcusably arrogant—an organisation that would not recognise an apology if it tripped over it. And still one of our great national institutions.