BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the initiative of my noble friend Lord Young of Norwood Green in bringing this debate to the House. Now is the time for the many friends and admirers of the BBC to get into campaign mode, not just to save it from the attacks it has been experiencing, but to press for its expansion and development in order to put it on the best possible footing to face the future.

The UK does not have many national institutions that command widespread international regard and respect. The BBC does command that respect and also provides some much-needed glue for the relationships of the four nations of the UK. The concept of Britishness has diminished as Great British-labelled companies have shrunk or disappeared. Even BT and BA prefer to downplay their full names. The BBC and the NHS remain proud and strong flagships of the best of Britain, shaping as well as reflecting the nation. The BBC in particular, as others have said, is regarded as the gold standard, setting a very high bar for the rest, including ITV and Sky. But the BBC has powerful enemies, and they are mobilising. The enemies are not the public, of whom 40 million use the BBC every day; they are not the young audience, 76% of whom support the BBC’s mission; they are not the regions, where 50% of the BBC is now based; and they are not the many who regard the BBC as the most trusted source of news and the enemy of fake news.

The enemies, understandably, include rival media organisations, but they now include many in the Conservative Party and Government, who regard the BBC as being full of metropolitan lefties. This has led them to engage in a campaign against the licence fee and to the childish boycott of the “Today” programme. For the sake of fairness, I must say that the critics include some on the left who regard the BBC as a timid creature of the establishment—witness the unpleasant and disgraceful reception that Laura Kuenssberg has had to endure at times. My admiration for the BBC does not blind me to its weaknesses; the muddle on equal pay has been morale-sapping. More strategically, the competition now comes from deep-pocketed rivals, mainly from the United States, and the trend towards social media use—streaming and watching programmes at convenient times. This is a major challenge. However, the BBC can rise to these challenges. It has risen to previous ones and I am confident it can do so again.

Let us not assume that all is well on the other side of the Atlantic. As has been mentioned, Netflix has a long-term debt of $12 billion. So instead of sniping and weakening the BBC, now is the time to strengthen it and public sector broadcasting in general. For me, this means keeping the licence fee, enforcing its collection and finding an alternative source of funding TV licences for the elderly. Public sector broadcasting is a jewel in the UK’s crown—fight off its enemies and get behind a re-energised and strengthened BBC.