Public Service Broadcasting Online

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have to say that I do not recognise the description the noble Lord gives of either my noble friends behind me or those in the other place. We absolutely recognise the importance of the investment in our creative industries of more than £2.5 billion a year, and we welcome that and the ecosystem it creates.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

In my Neanderthal fashion, I have found that BBC Radio 3 has been the mainstay of my life for nearly 50 years, and it is a fine example of public service broadcasting—but in recent years, it has been infected by a sort of relentless “wokeness”, which is a tendency of public service broadcasting. So, while my noble friend is correctly promoting the prominence of PSB, will she also tell us what she will do to try to ensure that it meets a broader spectrum of cultural views across the country?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think that the new director-general, and the most recent comments from Ofcom, support my noble friend’s final comments about breadth of views and voices—but, as he will know, the BBC is editorially independent, so decisions in relation to Radio 3 rest with it.