BBC Royal Charter

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, to help us to get the right answer we appointed the Clementi review, which reported, as the noble Lord will know, on 1 March. It has made a number of recommendations on how appointments should be made in future and we will be coming forward with our plans in May when we plan to publish the White Paper.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that the only people who represent the licence-fee payers are in fact elected to the other House along the corridor? Should they not therefore have the right to decide what is in the royal charter for the BBC and the power to amend it if they think fit to do so?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I am sure these points will again be discussed on Thursday. We believe that a royal charter system, which lasts for a good period of time and allows an independent and impartial BBC to move forward, seems to be the right approach. We will come back to all these issues in our debates.