BBC

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I completely concur. The BBC has been guilty in the past in the sense that trying to extract information from it has been like pulling teeth without anaesthetic. I do not understand why it has to have this cloak-and-dagger mystery surrounding how it spends taxpayers’ money, because at the end of the day—we must remember this—it is taxpayers’ money. I want to ram that point home over and over again. We are scrutinised here in the House of Commons because we are funded by taxpayers. The BBC is also funded by taxpayers and it has to be as transparent as Parliament is trying to be.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend therefore join me in welcoming the coalition Government’s very early decision to introduce the requirement that the BBC opens up its accounts to the National Audit Office?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Yes, I concur with my right hon. Friend. I am a great supporter of the coalition Government, and what he refers to is one of their early success stories.

I reiterate to the Minister the need for commercial activity and, dare I say it—this will be anathema to the BBC—some form of privatisation. I see people in the Public Gallery shaking their heads, but we have to think the unthinkable and challenge the BBC, because it does not understand the meaning of reform and adapting to the modern era. I would like also to talk about the salaries of senior executives.

[Mr Foster]

I apologise for interrupting again so soon, but on the issue of the commercial sector, is my hon. Friend aware that a day’s viewing on Sky costs roughly £1.50, whereas a day’s viewing on the BBC costs 40p? The private sector is not doing very well by comparison, particularly when we bear in mind the fact that 26% of Sky viewing is of BBC programmes anyway and has already been paid for.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) replies and continues his speech, I remind all hon. Members that, for the purposes of debate, the Public Gallery is invisible—it does not exist. It does not matter how much members of the public are gesticulating, Members should not recognise them.

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[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

Sir Roger, BBC Radio Bristol is excellent.

As chairman of the all-party group on the BBC, I have to say that we are critical friends of the BBC. We believe that it is the best public service broadcaster in the world, and that that is helped by competition from some other excellent broadcasters in the UK. We accept that, as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has rightly pointed out, there are a number of areas where the BBC does not get things right. He gave some examples, and others could include the Jonathan Ross affair or, more recently, the dire coverage of the jubilee celebrations, which my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski)—I, too, congratulate him on securing this debate—mentioned.

Generally, however, the BBC is an excellent organisation. It is now enjoying the highest level of customer satisfaction since records began; it is more trusted than ever before; its news service is the most trusted of all news services within the UK; and as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said, it gives very good value for money to the economy of the UK. Not only does the BBC invest £1 billion directly into the creative economy—helping freelancers and small companies, including independent production companies—overall, it brings more than £8 billion into our economy. That means that for every £1 of licence fee, we are getting £2 into the economy. So the BBC is brilliant for the economy, and it is great for cultural activities and sporting activities. Also, let us just think of what is about to happen: the Olympics are about to start and the BBC, as the main broadcaster, will be providing 2,500 hours of coverage. For the first time ever, it will cover every single sport in the games on a variety of different platforms.

[Greg Mulholland]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight sport. However, does he recognise the very real concerns that still exist about the coverage of sport below the national level—below competitions such as the premier league, the Guinness premiership and rugby league’s super league? Such coverage will suffer under current proposals.

[Mr Foster]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We know that television coverage of any sport can massively increase participation and involvement in it, and far too many of the so-called “minority sports” are not receiving the level of coverage I would like them to receive.

Given that there is very limited time, I want to pick up on a few of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham. First, he says that there should be more transparency in terms of executive pay. Frankly, I do not know what he means by that. If he goes to the BBC website, he will be able to find the precise salaries of all the senior executives. Indeed, he will be able to see not only that information but all the expenses of senior executives, produced on a quarterly basis. I am sure he will be very pleased to see that those expenses are down 35% year on year over the last couple of years.

However, if my hon. Friend is not satisfied with that information and wants more than just senior BBC executives’ salaries to be revealed, he can look further down the BBC website, where he will see the salaries of a further 462 senior and not-so-senior BBC managers; I checked the website myself a few seconds ago and saw that information for myself. Again, he will doubtless be pleased to see that the pay bill of those managers has gone down by 13.6% and their number has gone down by 8.5%. Also, as has been referred to by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, further work is ongoing to reduce costs, with a 25% pay bill cut and a 20% cut in headcount. So, the call for more transparency is unnecessary; there already is transparency.

[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Gentleman says that BBC wages are revealed and accessible every year, but in Northern Ireland some are not. Can he say whether there is one rule in one part of the country and one rule elsewhere?

[Mr Foster]

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman go directly to the National Audit Office, which can now look at that information following the coalition agreement to that effect. I am sure that he will be able to check that information with the NAO and the BBC.

Time is very short, so let me turn to the issue of foreign coverage. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham has had time to pick up a copy of today’s Metro. If he has, he will have seen comments by the man who is, in my view, the greatest writer of TV programmes, Aaron Sorkin, who produced the fabulous “The West Wing”. He said in today’s Metro:

“I was in London during Hurricane Katrina and watched the BBC news coverage. That was the first time I ever…watched news about America at length while away in a foreign country. I could not believe the difference in the coverage compared with US news – it was night and day. The BBC is fantastic”.

Of course, if Mr Sorkin has sleepless nights, as I do, he can always turn on the excellent world news coverage of the brilliant BBC World Service.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham also raised the issue of the cost of licence fee collection. Of course, we would all like to see it reduced, but during the last 20 years it has been significantly reduced as a cost of income, going down from more than 6% to the current figure of 3.4%. Of course, work is being done to reduce it still further.

My hon. Friend suggested that we should collect the licence fee through the tax system. I understand that the Institute of Economic Affairs has said that it costs £20 billion to collect tax at the moment. If we collected the licence fee through the tax system, presumably he would be standing here in Parliament saying, “Why are we spending extra money on collecting tax? Think what you could do with that money.” Of course, that is an interesting question. However, 3.4% of income is not a bad rate for the collection cost of the licence fee.

Finally, I say to my hon. Friend that the problem with privatisation is that it would end up providing far fewer services and far fewer opportunities to meet minority interests, because commercial organisations will not spend their time on those interests, and the minority sports, for example, would totally lose out. The great benefit of having the BBC is that it can cover those things that other broadcasters will not cover. And with that, I will end.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. Given your previous life as a journalist, I am sure that you were itching to participate in the debate, but you have carried out your duties with suitable neutrality and aplomb.

I congratulate my hon. Friend—I mean that—the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), for whom I have spoken in the past and to whom I am utterly devoted for securing this important debate. Regardless of whether or not I agree with parts of his speech, if it does not win The Spectator speech of the year award at the parliamentarian of the year awards, I will want to know the reason why. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster), who spoke with his usual verve, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), my hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), on their important contributions. If I may say so, drawing myself up to my full patronising height, very few political points were scored and all hon. Members made their contributions as, I think, critical friends of the BBC.

May I use this opportunity to offer my congratulations to George Entwistle, the new director-general of the BBC, who was appointed last week? I am sure that he will prove to be a fine director-general. I have met him only once, but he seems to have received, from those who live and work in that world, a uniformly good press on his talent and ability to work with people.

[Mr Foster]

May I join my hon. Friend the Minister on congratulating George Entwistle on his appointment as director-general of the BBC? Does he give the same praise to the person who wrote the caption that spelled his name incorrectly on the BBC news?

[Mr Vaizey]

I gather that that was an inauspicious debut for the new director-general. I join my right hon. Friend in saying that I, too, am a fan of the BBC. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire for highlighting additional work the BBC does under the radar. For example, in Wales, the BBC supports the orchestra—an important reminder of its wide-ranging work. When we focus on aspects that we do not like or that merit criticism, we should remember the many wonderful things the BBC does.

I was unfortunate not to see the BBC’s jubilee coverage—I watched the event live—so I cannot comment on its quality, but perhaps I can use this moment to congratulate Lord Sterling, the chairman of the National Maritime Museum, on commissioning Gloriana, the wonderful barge that sailed down the Thames as a tribute to Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee. I recently visited the BBC headquarters in Scotland. It was a useful reminder of the BBC’s important presence in the regions—not just in Scotland or Wales, but in Salford and other cities in England. Of course, I bow to no one in my praise of the excellent quality of the output of BBC Radio Oxford.