BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a truly remarkable debate. It would do us all well to read it in Hansard when it appears. I suppose that I should express some kind of a conflict of interest since, like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury, I have had a working relationship with the BBC for more than 30 years and have been paid much less than he ever was. I still do my little bits now and again. I have read all the briefing material that has come my way. As often happens, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has stolen a bit of my thunder, but it is the rolling kind of thunder and so there is a bit of it left.

Some of the original research I did was in the Radio Times. I thought that it was not a bad idea to look in it to see what is on today. All I have done is choose half a dozen things. There is women’s football, for example; women’s sport has been mentioned. There is “Villages by the Sea” on Clovelly; this programme was done regionally at first but it is showing across the network now. There is “MasterChef”; on my honeymoon, I took a book with a perfectly produced picture of the meal I was going to cook for my beloved, but it did not look like that when it got on the plate, and “MasterChef” does that for me too. Across the PSBs, we have “EastEnders”, “Emmerdale” and “Hollyoaks”. Informing, educating and entertaining is exactly what is being done. By the recommendation of the Minister herself, this evening we have “Noughts + Crosses”. We all ought to watch that to show the capacity of the BBC to look imaginatively at British society from a curiously upended point of view, following the novels of Malorie Blackman. I shall be watching because of the Minister. I want to say a nice word about her because where have all the Tories gone? Where are they? They are shy violets, every one. How will they ever learn?

In this debate, we have heard authoritative voices. We have the experience of my noble friends Lord Puttnam, Lord Bragg and Lady Bakewell, the hands-on experience of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the vast experience of an entirely different kind of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who I shall now think of as a ruminant and who has an insightful take on all these things, and the hands-on experience of the noble Lord, Lord Birt. That is just picking some names. Of course, I cannot do that for everybody, but this is an authoritative body of people sharing their views about a matter of great concern to all of us, and we hope that we are articulating a voice out there in the country, which would be glad to think that people such as the noble Lords I have mentioned are bringing their voices to a debate of this kind. It matters to us but it matters much more to them, and that is what we are here for.

I would also mention a Conservative who spoke in a previous debate on this subject and who is not in his place: the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, a leading journalist who wrote a much-quoted article after the general election in which much criticism was offered of the BBC’s coverage. Of course there are things that go wrong and could be better. Who can think of an organisation the size of the BBC that does not sometimes put its foot in it in a big way? To answer the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, there must be change. If we do not embrace change and anticipate and study where developments have to be made, the BBC will increasingly become part of our archive rather than an ongoing, vibrant part of the national culture.

Much has been said about the licence fee and continuing funding. The licence has been called the least worst solution, and many people have advocated it. It is worth picking up a comment from across the Chamber that it is worth looking at a progressive household tax as a possible alternative. We will certainly need to raise money; the noble Lord, Lord Foster, quoted the Voice of the Listener & Viewer statistics that there has already been a 30% erosion of the funding base in the past 10 years. We will have to look for a model of funding if we believe in the BBC and believe that it should be publicly funded. Everybody seems to think that and I suspect that if we took the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, out to a good lunch, he might think that too—well, I hope so.

We need to look more critically at alternative ways of achieving better funding, but the BBC gets everywhere. I have sat in studios all over the United Kingdom; nobody can tell me that the BBC is dominated by this elite in London. There are fast-moving BBC radio and television stations across the country. Where Welsh coverage would be without public service broadcasting, I do not know. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, is not in his place. I did not know that he speaks Gaelic. It is said that there are probably only about two people who do, but there is something for them. In Wales, the resurgence of the Welsh language can be attributed almost directly to the reach of the BBC and public service broadcasting. As the right reverend Prelate said, the BBC is not just descriptive; it is shaping the public with proactive involvement in a culture that is always on the move.

I have found this debate extremely insightful and I have enjoyed it very much. I will certainly read Hansard, particularly to get my noble friend’s comments about the lean and hungry man in No. 10 who thinks too much; the power behind the throne; the éminence grise. I will not call him Rasputin because I believe that he likes that, but for all that, there is something curious and weird about policy being made about an institution so integral to the British identity as the BBC by someone who has never been elected and who never has to stand and face an audience such as this.

Incidentally, I have a word for the Minister. The Prime Minister did not have the bottle to face Andrew Neil in the course of the election campaign; this kind of displacement on the part of the Conservative Party has put the noble Baroness almost on her own to face a collective body that might be rather like Andrew Neil. How she is going to deal with it, I simply do not know, but we look forward to her remarks. The debate will convey to the Government of our day the importance of this institution and the necessity of us contributing to it our support and confidence as we look forward to its ongoing influence in the years ahead.