BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

I welcome this opportunity to speak up for the BBC and thank my noble friend for moving this debate. Like other noble Lords, I am appalled at how this Government seek to undermine the BBC to get obedience and conformity, as my noble friend Lady Bakewell put it. Yes, there may be a need for change at the BBC. The world is moving on. The BBC must find its place in our digital future but let us not just complain. Above all, let us keep all the good things that every speaker has told us about. Other noble Lords have spoken about how they value the BBC’s independence in producing news, comment, current affairs, entertainment and humour. I too value its independence, and I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, and others, that the licence fee enables this all-important financial independence.

I mention one aspect of the economic and cultural value of the BBC of which I have personal experience: soft power. Before I entered your Lordship’s House, my main work was developing a business in a sector now called “technical textiles”—products made to high standards of safety, hygiene, stability and reliability. The key to selling these products was getting the standards accepted, and we were successful in many countries—in Europe, in Asia, in the People’s Republic of China—and in each of them, without exception, people associated me, coming from Britain, with the truthfulness, honesty and reliability with which they associate the BBC, as explained by my noble friend Lord West. This soft power was of enormous value to me. I am sure that it continues to be of value to many UK endeavours overseas, economic, cultural and political; now, we are going to need it more than ever.

This soft power takes years to establish and can easily be dented or destroyed by ill-thought remarks from members of the Government or by taking unwise action motivated by a perceived wrong. The inevitable consequence is a national loss of influence in business, in defence and in political negotiation. We can ill afford this pointless collateral damage.

Equally childish, thoughtless and irresponsible is the absence of government Ministers from news and opinion programmes such as “Today” and “The Westminster Hour”. It has taken the seriousness of the coronavirus to get a Minister to react to our concerns by participating in these programmes, as my noble friend Lady Jay explained. The inevitable conclusion is that the Government do not care about the damage that they are doing. All they want us to hear from the BBC is what makes the Government look good—and that must not happen.