BBC: Government Support

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his excellent maiden speech, and the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, on securing this debate, his incredibly forensic speech and his long and distinguished broadcasting career. As he said, the BBC is probably the best and most trusted broadcaster in the world, attracting international admiration. In an era of fake news, as we have heard, it is more important than ever that there are trusted, impartial news sources such as the BBC on which we can rely. But it is not just for news alone, as we heard. The BBC has an unparalleled range of services, from its education offering to its pivotal support for the creative industries. It is, of course, one of the greatest sources of British soft power throughout the world.

Even the BBC’s rivals share this view. Senior figures at Netflix, for example, talk of the BBC’s impact

“in building the profile of the UK creatively”

and their support for

“the long-term sustainability of the BBC”.

Despite significant growth in competition, the BBC continues to hold its own. More people use the BBC than any other media brand. Even when funding restrictions limit what the BBC can screen, it is still the broadcaster of choice. Broadcasting just 2% of sport on TV, it delivers around 40% of TV sports viewing.

So, on these Benches, while acknowledging, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, said, that the BBC should regularly be challenged, we support a strong, well-funded and independent BBC and will oppose attempts to undermine this by seeking to reduce its funding or remit. Yet, sadly, decisions by the Conservative Government have meant the BBC having to take on more obligations with less income: a 31% cut over the past 10 years with a frozen licence fee, having to fund free licences for the over-75s—a social policy which should be funded by the Government—and additional obligations in relation to the World Service, BBC Monitoring, S4C and even broadband rollout.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. After all, it was the Prime Minister’s former advisor Dominic Cummings who called for the

“end of the BBC in its current form”,

advising right-wingers to work towards undermining the credibility of the BBC because it is the “mortal enemy” of the Conservative Party. There have been numerous examples more recently of that undermining. Following evidence that the decriminalisation of licence fee non-payment would cost the BBC dearly, rather than scrap their plans, the Government have said they will keep the matter under review, adding to what the NAO has called the “uncertainty” about the BBC’s financial future. A broadcasting Minister has argued that it will soon be possible to introduce subscription services as an element of funding for the BBC—a move that would undermine the crucial universality of the BBC, at a time when Ofcom has said that

“universality will still be necessary to deliver the benefits of public service broadcasting in future.”

I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, that he recalls that the BBC was deliberately set up to disrupt the market because the market cannot and will not deliver this universality. We have had Theresa May’s former communications chief trying to block an appointment to the post of BBC News editor and the current Prime Minister’s attempt to the install former Daily Telegraph editor, Charles Moore, as BBC chairman. More recently we saw the Prime Minister desperately seeking, even trying to bend the rules, to appoint ex-Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, as the next chair of Ofcom, the BBC’s regulator, despite his well-known animosity towards the BBC and having earlier been judged by the interview panel as “not appointable”. He could hardly have been a neutral referee on BBC regulation. To cap it all, we have a new Secretary of State who has been so unclear about the sustainability of the BBC that she is not even sure if it will exist in 10 years’ time. The time has come for the Government to cease its attempts to “thwack” the BBC and, as the Motion proposes, start giving it greater support.