BBC Governance and Regulation: Communications Committee Report

Lord Gordon of Strathblane Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane]

My Lords, I too was a member of the Select Committee which produced this report. I join my colleagues who have already spoken in congratulating and thanking the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, on and for the skill and courtesy with which he chaired the committee and enabled us to reach our conclusions.

I am conscious that I am speaking immediately after a very distinguished former director-general of the BBC, and that the speaker immediately after me is the current chairman of the BBC, and the one after him is another former director-general of the BBC. Therefore, it is with a little trepidation that I say that I was part of the majority report which favoured ultimate regulatory authority for impartiality resting with Ofcom. I do so despite the fact that I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Hall, said. It seems to me that it is not a question of this function being taken away from the trust: the two functions are different. The trust is there to ensure good governance of the BBC, and good governance includes—indeed, this is paramount among its objectives—ensuring the impartiality of the BBC. However, that does not mean that we should make an exception of the BBC in terms of Ofcom having overall regard to impartiality among all public service broadcasters. After all, the reason we set up Ofcom all those years ago was—apart from the need to deal with the advent of convergence, which has come about a lot more quickly than we thought—a desire to get consistency. Instead of having five regulatory bodies which might reach different conclusions about taste and decency, we would have one.

At the moment, Ofcom is the final arbiter of taste and decency, not the BBC Trust, yet, frankly, taste and decency is a much more difficult issue on which to arbitrate than impartiality. I did political programmes for 10 years. Impartiality, frankly, is easy as regards current affairs but is difficult as regards drama, comedy, the time of day you screen something and what is made available to children, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said. Therefore, I do not think that this situation takes anything away from the trust. Indeed, it rather strengthens the trust because instead of putting more and more Chinese walls between itself and the BBC in an effort to show that it is not judge and jury in this area, the trust can get closer to the BBC and be its champion, as it should be. It is in the BBC’s own interests: this problem does not go away as it has become totemic. The only reason it is totemic is because we made an exception of impartiality. I think the then Secretary of State more or less admitted to the committee that the Government felt it might be a step too far to put the BBC under Ofcom during the passage of the Communications Act 2003.

In talking about the licence fee, I simply echo what the noble Lord, Lord Birt, has said. I think we all recognise that the circumstances in which the previous settlement was arrived at were exceptional given that that occurred in the midst of a comprehensive spending review. However, that is certainly not the way that the licence fee should be determined. There is inconsistency in this area. Many people in this House—indeed, I have been one at times—say that the BBC is trying to do too much. Sometimes there has been an element of truth in that. The BBC should concentrate on broadcasting, which it does superbly well. Its subsidiary should not be taking over Lonely Planet and things like that. However, the corollary of that is that the Government should regard the licence fee as providing public funding for BBC programmes, not for doing other things with which should be met out of general taxation. Although it might have been a clever move by the Secretary of State at least to ensure that the money clawed back by the Treasury stayed within the broadcasting system and did some useful things, dangerous precedents could be created if the Government of the day—and all Governments will do it—find that this is an easy pocket to pick, whereby the BBC licence fee could be raided for one project after another. We have to be very careful about that. Arguably, you could say that the rollout of broadband is analogous to the provision of a transmitter system and that you could therefore justify such moves. I would find it difficult to justify the BBC subsidising an experiment in local television that, if successful, will simply take viewers away from the BBC. What proper use of the licence fee is that?

My other point about the licence fee is worrying. I worry about the future rate of collection. At the moment, if someone buys a new television they must show that they have a licence. That is a good tracker of who might be viewing. However, now you can watch television without having a television set. You can watch it on a mobile phone or a computer. It will be tricky to ensure that we have total compliance, and I am slightly nervous that the licence fee might not prove to be future-proof in that regard.

My final, and in a way most important, point—far more important than Ofcom regulating impartiality—is to echo some of the things that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, was saying. My concern is not so much the taste and decency aspects of the compliance culture but its effect on areas such as comedy. Comedy is in many ways the touchstone of whether there is good public service broadcasting, because you have to rely on people to deliver the goods. You can ask someone to make a current affairs documentary and budget as to how long it will take and roughly how much it might cost; a reasonable guess can be made. However, you cannot guess how long it will take to come up with an idea such as “Fawlty Towers” or “Yes Minister”. You must have producers who are indulgent enough to give rein to people who have not come up with an idea for six weeks or even six months, but then come up with the goods. You must know the difference between those and the slackers who, frankly, should be got rid of after one month because they will never come up with an idea. You cannot do that by ticking boxes.

I am well aware that the BBC is now receiving £3.5 billion of public money; and for that you need proper accountability, systems and everything else. However, there is a grave danger that we end up with systems that require compliance, compliance by committees, and people who get promoted to making decisions about programmes who are not creative, or do not even have an eye or ear for creativity, but are good managers and balance books properly. That is an important skill, but in the order of things it is far less a skill than creativity. It is not a major problem at the moment, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Birt, that the BBC’s output is of absolutely first-class quality. However, we must be constantly on guard that we do not have box-ticking and programme ideas being judged by a remote computer somewhere.

Apart from all that, it is the 80th birthday of the BBC World Service and an occasion for congratulation. I echo what others have said: I cannot think of a moment in history when it would be more stupid to tinker with our Communications Committee than now.