Public Service Broadcasting (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate and I declare my interest as the BBC’s former head of public affairs from 1996 to 2003, notably from one year after the famous broadcast in question. I noted that this report—vital as ever—underlined the two key themes that democracy and culture are fundamental to the existence of the BBC, let alone that of public broadcasting.

Although the committee’s report is 18 months old and the debate has been held back, perhaps for obvious reasons, the issues are similar to those on which I contended, fought and debated—even with your Lordships before I became a Member—on behalf of the BBC between 1996 and 2003. In many ways, little has changed. I contended on: three successful licence fee campaigns and two successful charter renewals; critical legislation on public service broadcasting’s “must-carry” cable provisions from Baroness O’Cathain, who is no longer with us; and, of course, listed sports events, to which the noble Lord, Lord Smith, referred, along with the special engagement back in 1996 of the noble Lord, Lord Archer.

Those who were excoriated and shamed in the past week by the Dyson report—senior executives and correspondents—exposed something that was clearly a major difficulty at the time and which has some shavings of it currently. The BBC back then sought to trivialise and tantalise to get younger and more populous audiences. It is exactly the kind of attitude in the news dimension of the BBC that caused the extremely expensive and invasive attack on Sir Cliff Richard, which was endorsed by the previous director-general as legitimate journalism but then thrashed in the courts as an abuse of judgment and an unacceptable waste of public money. It gave us the appalling realities that the Dyson report considered.

However, let us look at the other side. In the past year, all of us have depended extensively—yes, my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hannan—on local radio and local news. We have depended extensively on coverage to inform us of what is going on in the coronavirus pandemic in the UK and internationally, and now, of course, on vaccination detail. I am grateful to the wonderful Julia Harris, public affairs manager at the BBC’s World Service division. Her exceptional brief on domestic BBC interests and those of the World Service is compelling reading.

However, I want to add three things into that brief which I feel your Lordships will benefit from noting. During the course of last year, when so much could not be done, the BBC still did Comic Relief: live public broadcasting to raise resources for those on the edges of life in the poorest parts of the world. The BBC still hosted Children in Need, for those domestic realities and pressure points—and, especially, there was the supplemented £10 million commitment to Black Lives Matter realities, rather than organisations. As a vice-president of UNICEF, I wish to thank ITV for hosting Soccer Aid, raising nearly £11 million on behalf of UNICEF. These are unique events in the BBC’s case, facilitating financial assistance in excess of £100 million from the British people because of the trusted status of the broadcaster.

The Government’s response says that the organisations called public service broadcasters, including the BBC, must adapt, but what does it mean to adapt in this new, comprehensively platformed age in which everything is available in an instant? Certainly, to adapt does not mean to be populist and trashy. It has been my long-held conviction, from my times of responsibility at the BBC to now, that the BBC is an outstanding national and international asset, and its value is like that of our own homes, if we have one, fine wines, if we invest in them, or jewellery, museums, libraries, galleries and universities. Assets grow in value not by lowering their value to attract greater interest, but by protecting their value through the relentless pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism.

I firmly believe it is time to call out what has to be one of the most essential changes for the BBC for the future: to keep faith with its long-established public purposes. Over the last year we have all suffered the endless amount of news called “fears”: “scientists fear”, “officials fear”, “the public fears”. Fears are not facts. News should be about facts, data and information, hence the need to put right the agenda of the BBC’s news organisation by letting it be led by the World Service. We need to see the quality of World Service news in our domestic news following; that way, we will be truly informed and educated. I will give just two examples. Today, the Times newspaper refers to Russian nuclear bombers being placed in Assad’s Syria to hold up the regime. There is no mention of that on the BBC. Alternatively, with an interest in the Black Lives Matter realities of the US, there has been no mention on the BBC over the last week of America’s black middle-class. These perspectives come from having a wider, deeper knowledge, and I encourage the BBC in future to abandon the trashy attitudes of fear-thinking and appealing to popular audiences, and to go back to detail.