Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fowler]

I think that I can bring the Committee into calmer waters by proposing something that the government Front Bench will have no difficulty whatever in accepting. The Marshalled List is littered with amendments to preserve bodies that the Government propose to abolish. I am not doing that in any way; I am adding a body that should be abolished and which would have beneficial financial consequences for the Government. I hope to have a very helpful reply from the government Front Bench but I fear an unhelpful intervention from my old pal on the Select Committee.

[Lord Maxton]

I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment but if I were a Clerk in the other place I do not think that this amendment would be in order. The trustees of the BBC and the BBC itself are not established or controlled by an Act of Parliament. Therefore, I do not see how we can have an amendment that would abolish something in an Act of Parliament that in itself was not established by an Act of Parliament. That may be a little legalistic but I wonder whether the noble Lord would like to comment on that.

[Lord Fowler]

I knew that the noble Lord would say something entirely unhelpful from past experience. I will come precisely and exactly to that point, but let me make the case in principle, with which the noble Lord is honest and experienced enough in these matters to sympathise.

Let me make it clear that this is in no way an attack on the BBC. I am a committed supporter of the BBC, as I think is the noble Lord. It provides the best news coverage both domestically and internationally of any media organisation, probably in the world. I totally support its freedom to report, including the recent “Panorama” on corruption inside FIFA. I note, when abroad, how high the corporation’s reputation is. In short, I believe that we would be mad to turn our back on the BBC or see it weakened. But one of the things we should recognise is that the BBC is currently, and has been for some time, under attack from powerful forces who would like to see it changed and weakened. There is no question about that. It is therefore crucial that the BBC has a structure which, apart from anything else, enables it to fight its corner, to put its case and to reply swiftly and with confidence to attacks when they come. My view is that this is simply not achieved by the present divided leadership of the BBC and much of that fault lies with the formation of the BBC Trust.

The BBC Trust is a recent invention. For the vast majority of the time and history of the BBC we did not have a trust and there was no need for such a body. It was set up by the last Government in the aftermath of the dispute with the BBC about its reporting of Iraq. The result has been that there have been not one board but two boards. We have had an executive board that has been headed by the director-general but with non-executive members—something pretty unusual in corporate history—and we have had the BBC Trust, which was kept deliberately separate from the BBC executive, housed in a different body and with the chairman being able to call himself the BBC chairman but only as a courtesy title. That is exactly how it is set out.

The Select Committee which examined the royal charter of the BBC, which I chaired and of which the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, was a member, opposed this change. Basically, in précis, we said that it would be much better to have one organisation—a BBC board, a chairman, non-executive directors, a chief executive and other executives—in other words, a structure just like the structure of any other major corporation in this country, with regulation carried out if necessary by Ofcom. We were not alone remotely in our opposition to the change that was being proposed at the top of the BBC. Past chairmen of the BBC such as Christopher Bland made it clear that they were opposed to it. Most significantly of all, by the end of the last Government, Ben Bradshaw, then Secretary of State for Culture, also said that he was opposed to it. So I think we can say that there is a pretty strong consensus, and an even stronger consensus in the broadcasting industry, that this is an unnecessary body and that reform and change need to take place. Perhaps I should say in parentheses that this is in no way a personal criticism of the present chairman of the trust, Sir Michael Lyons, who I know and like and have worked with entirely happily. It is not a criticism of him; it is a criticism of the divided structure. But Sir Michael is now standing down and there therefore exists the opportunity to change the structure into something more sensible. That is the point. This Bill seems to me potentially to give that opportunity.

The purpose of the Bill is to eliminate or pare down unnecessary bodies in the public sector. The BBC Trust qualifies on all counts. It adds to cost, causes delay and sometimes confusion in decision-making, and could all be done so much better than it is. Again, I think there is no real conflict on that. But so far that opportunity has not been taken. I do not detect that that is because this Government are any more enthusiastic than the last Government about the trust—any more enthusiastic than Mr Bradshaw. The concern seems to be that action would mean interfering with the royal charter. I come now precisely to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, was putting. Our view as a Select Committee was that the whole governance of the BBC should be put on a statutory basis, but this was resisted by previous Ministers on the grounds that the royal charter cemented everything in for 10 years. That, in précis, was the case that was put to us. In the past few months we have seen the licence fee frozen and the cost of the World Service added to the licence fee, and we very nearly saw the cost of licences for the over-75s added to the licence fee as well. I do not debate the merit of those proposals—I would love to do so, but I do not—but I observe that it has not proved very durable cement as far as the 10-year period is concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications and pay tribute to the stewardship of the former chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who has just spoken. It was interesting to listen to the initial spat between the noble Lord and another former member of the committee about whether this amendment could be permitted. In truth, the whole of his speech appeared to be about moving the BBC into Schedule 7, not Schedule 1. The attack, as it was, on the current governance arrangements of the BBC was well made and echoed what was in the Select Committee’s report a few years ago, but it is really about change, not abolition. However, I will pass on because we are in tickling and teasing mode rather than worrying too much about exactly how these things are coming out at the moment.

Today’s debate has been, for those of us who are somewhat new to the arrangements for discussing Bills, a wonderful tour d’horizon of the far reaches of our constitutional arrangements in this country. I did not know enough about agriculture, justice, the Audit Commission or various things to do with shipbuilding. I may even have heard about aircraft—or was it the other way around? I was not quite sure at the end of that discussion whether we had in fact had an answer to the amendment earlier today, but, again, I will pass on. We were only tickling there. Underneath all this, however, does the discussion not raise one or two principles? It seems to me that, although a lot of the heat and energy in this debate has been about whether we are doing it right, the elephant in the room—that terrible hackneyed phrase—is really what this says about our constitutional measures.

Every Government and every governing operation has to work out how to deliver the services that legislatures create for them. In that, we have to think about subsidiarity—the lowest level to which we can devolve the operations which are to be carried out, and make sure they are done properly. We have to give protection from undue interference from those who have set up the arrangements and freedom to those who are charged with getting on with the duties to undertake reasonable stewardship. I do not hear those principles coming through very much in the debate we have been having, but they are surely underlined in what we are saying.

The amendment to which I am speaking is really, as I said, a teasing amendment—a hypothetical situation perhaps. But the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, brought out very well, and I am sure other speakers who will join us in this debate will also say, that nobody argues against the very special place that the BBC holds in this country. It makes entertainment programmes among so many other things, so it obviously affects every aspect of our culture, and it informs and therefore changes the terms of the political debate. It is absolutely at the heart of what we believe our country is about. It is important that we find some form of super-protection, and I think the noble Lord was saying the same thing, both within the environment in which the BBC operates, but also against Ministers and even against Parliament. One could not imagine, if the BBC were to be abolished, the DCMS accepting responsibility for all the various aspects of our life that the BBC influences. That must not be right.

We could not abolish the BBC, but how do we manage it? That is the question that we have to think about. Clearly, the state has to balance the interest it has in economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and apply that to all its public bodies. I worked in a similar body, the British Film Institute, some time ago; just before I arrived, it had negotiated very hard indeed against the then Government to achieve a royal charter, which was given to the BBC about 50 years after its incorporation in 1933. We celebrated that, because it felt as if we had received the gold standard in terms of freedom from interference from Ministers and those in authority. It was illusory, obviously, because Ministers are very persuasive and good at getting around anything that could possibly smack of concern about these sorts of issues; but it was something that we ritually touched every month or two, just to reassure ourselves that we did exist, that we had that protection and that we should have had it. The BBC is in a similar position. Its charter is renewable, as it was not in the BFI’s case, but there was sufficient public interest and discussion in the renewal process to ensure that the BBC would not be affected too badly.

My concern in this amendment—and I am not entirely sure whether I am speaking in favour of it or against it, but I suppose I am tickling it—is that this is really about how one would find in a constitutional settlement, perhaps a codified constitution towards which we are surely moving, a way of expressing some of the issues that appear in our day-to-day existence, which we take for granted, such as academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the ability to switch on our television and see unmediated news and entertainment. These things have to be written in somewhere, not be dealt with simply by a framework Bill, a subsequent affirmative order or in speeches made in this House or another place. That is more important than some of the points made around other bodies here. There are one or two organisations and bodies that we would recognise as being hard-wired in our operation of this country, but I have yet to find an appropriate place within the various organisations that we currently see.

In another debate at another time, I encouraged the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, to talk a little more about his ideas for a council of state, which might in some way take on the responsibilities of this Chamber. It may be that at some point we should think again about how we account for those senior bodies, such as the BBC, that we must have in our arrangements. I leave that thought with this House.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, given that I waited 40 minutes for a bus last night in the cold, I do not intend to detain the House for long tonight. I do not think that this amendment could be part of this Bill. The BBC is part of the royal charter. To get rid of the trustees, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, you would need to put the BBC on a statutory basis in an Act of Parliament. I accept the tenor of his amendment, and I supported the report when it was published in terms of not wishing to have trustees but having a different type of governance. However, my worry is that, if we get to the point where the BBC is to be established by an Act of Parliament, it would mean passing an Act of Parliament to abolish the present situation—essentially abolishing the present BBC—and then re-establishing it. In those circumstances, given what the noble Lord said about the threat that is coming to the BBC from external forces, we would put the BBC under even greater threat. That would be the whole existence of the BBC in those circumstances.

Having said that, I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord has said, not just because the governance of the BBC is wrong in terms of the trustees. This is no criticism of the trustees personally, but they have failed in one of their primary responsibilities—to hold the BBC, somehow independently of the BBC, to account. They have failed to do that job properly in one particular regard. The BBC, after all, is funded entirely out of public funds, and the trustees should say to the BBC that it should be accountable to the public in the same way as is every public body funded by the taxpayer. In particular, as the noble Lord will know, I believe that the whole BBC—every person, both employee and contractor—should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act in the same way as are all other public employees. Therefore, we should know exactly what some of the people in the BBC earn, and I do not mean the big entertainment stars. I am much more interested in knowing what some journalists earn, as they attack those of us who are public servants in other ways, including attacks on MPs about their expenses. In that sense, the BBC Trust has failed in its duty to hold the BBC to account. For that reason, I would support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, but I feel that if his amendment is carried it would put the BBC as a whole at some risk.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I have listened to the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, with some interest. I certainly acknowledge his experience and his interest in the future of the BBC over the years. He described himself as a committed supporter of the BBC and I certainly endorse that. However, by raising this issue in this way, I fear that he will undermine the very cause that he at the same time is seeking to champion. I say that for a number of reasons.

There may well be the need to have a debate over the future of the BBC Trust. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, the previous Secretary of State, Ben Bradshaw, has already described the BBC Trust as not a sustainable model in the long term, a fact which we acknowledge. But this is not the time for such a review. The truth is that over the last few months the BBC has been battered by the challenges to its role. There have been, as has been acknowledged, powerful forces seeking to undermine its role. It was forced in an unseemly timescale to agree a financial package that might have been more robust, more defensible and more justifiable if a longer time had been taken over those negotiations. In its wake, questions have been left over the future funding of organisations like the World Service and S4C which might not have been intended at the outset of those negotiations.