BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a good debate and we owe a great deal to the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the Communications Committee for their excellent choice for this topic. Anticipating more opportunities to debate the wider issue in the future, I will restrict myself mainly to comments arising from the Communications Committee’s proposals, specifically how the BBC is held to account, and its priorities, and on the issue of distinctiveness before briefly addressing the process of the licence fee and the timing of the charter renewal.

We on this side of the House do not claim that the BBC is perfect: we are critical friends. But what we will do is fight hard against a politically motivated attack on the BBC. In some senses, the BBC is the quintessential public good whose value is really only quantifiable if it were to disappear or be harmed. However, the question that must be settled before any others is: what is the BBC for? As the committee said, the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain are widely understood and recognised as forming the BBC mission. We agree, and believe that they should remain embedded in the BBC royal charter.

We agree with the committee that it is time to sort out the regulatory and accountability problems that have hampered rather than helped the BBC since 2007. The structures put in place at that time were considered appropriate, but we believe that a leaner and more effective structure should be introduced under the next royal charter. We also think that Ofcom should be the independent regulator of the BBC. It must be given not only the responsibilities appropriate for that role, independent of government, but the staff and other resources that it needs to fulfil it.

The BBC board of governors should be reconstituted, with a majority of independent, external members and an independent chair. It should deliver the Reithian principles across all activities using what the committee describes as,

“a simpler, more transparent framework that both encourages creativity and allows all stakeholders to analyse the BBC’s performance”.

The new unitary board has not only to be fully independent of government, it must be seen to be so. There is significant concern over the suggestion that the DCMS should take the power to appoint all non-executive members of the BBC’s new unitary board. We therefore agree with the committee that, to strengthen the BBC’s independence, the new charter should set out a clear and transparent process for the appointment of members of the board at arm’s length from the Government.

We also need to take account of the different nations in the United Kingdom and that they have appropriate levels of engagement with BBC management and governors. That needs to be carefully considered. On the one hand, a set of national committees may be required, but it is important not only that the BBC management embraces such a structure and devolves real power but that the committees themselves have real expertise and are not captured by local political or operational interests. It will be for the new unitary board, independent of government, to set the objectives for the BBC, and it is difficult to see why the Government would want to become involved in specifying in the charter particular genres or indeed individual programmes which should be included in, or excluded from, output delivered. We hope that the Government will steer clear of this issue.

Ofcom already carries out a periodic review of public service broadcasting. It has drawn attention to the decrease in PSB spend in the commercial sector, hence it may be appropriate for the licences which form part of the charter renewal process to reflect the committee’s concern that important genres which make up our understanding of PSB should be given priority in the next charter period. These might include current affairs, children’s programming and the important role the BBC plays in stimulating creativity and cultural excellence. This it does through its own content and through its impact on the wider industry, particularly in the fields of music and drama, and through training and developing talent. In this context, the committee’s comment that it had heard from a number of witnesses who felt that the BBC did not reflect their lives, particularly the panel of young people, those with a disability and those within the BAME community, is of concern and should be addressed with vigour.

The Secretary of State has on several occasions suggested that the BBC should be restricted to “distinctive” programmes, although he has not spelled out what that means, other than to hint that it means that the BBC should not produce programmes offered by the other broadcasters. Charlotte Moore, the controller of BBC TV channels and iPlayer, addressed this issue on Tuesday this week in a speech she gave to the Voice of the Listener and Viewer. She put up a very robust defence of the distinctiveness of BBC programmes in a much richer and more textured sense than used to date by the Secretary of State. I think it is important that I should summarise the main arguments. She said that distinctiveness carries with it a promise of quality—a promise that all BBC programmes across all genres should aspire to be the best in class. Distinctiveness means ambition, and this in turn derives from the unique way the BBC is funded. It allows the BBC the chance to give the country’s best creative talent the freedom to pursue its creative ideas, back it to take risks, push boundaries and try new things; to innovate, to challenge and to surprise. Distinctive means range. It means accepting and celebrating the fact that the BBC has a duty to serve everyone, whoever they are and wherever they come from. While that means that the BBC has to provide programmes across a broad range of genres, it also means that there is an aim to make the good popular and the popular good. What a weird world we would live in if it were required of the BBC that, as soon as one of its programmes becomes popular, it has to stop making it. Distinctive means home grown. The BBC’s priority is a high level of first-run, UK-originated content across the whole of the BBC, and it is its goal to take those great British programmes to the world. Importantly, this allows the BBC to reinvest the proceeds back into more home-grown hits and the next generation of home-grown talent.

I think that everyone in this debate today agrees that there need to be changes in the way the licence fee is set. The committee made a good start on how a better process might be conducted, and we certainly think that the key to a new process going forward must be transparency. On the timing of the charter review, there is a growing consensus that the review process should be decoupled from the general election cycle resulting from the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, and we agree. We also agree that the impartiality and independence of the BBC could be threatened by a short charter period. Eleven years takes us to 2018, which seems a sensible and pragmatic way of dealing with both points.

The BBC is the cornerstone of the creative industries in this country, which are the powerhouse of our future prosperity. They represent one in 11 jobs, bring in £76 billion a year, enhance our reputation overseas, are intrinsic to our whole added-value economy and have seen growth year on year well ahead of the rest of the economy. But the truth is that the British creative industries cohere as a balanced ecology with the BBC at its heart. Only a madman would take an axe to the tallest tree in the middle of a forest and not expect to do serious harm to the whole of the forest. The BBC does not harm the wider industry; it fosters it and creates a competition for quality. Its £3.7 billion from the licence fee is the largest and most productive investment we make in the arts. We should support it.

The history of broadcasting in this country is rightly praised for what it has achieved, bringing on stream over time both state-funded and commercial services that compete for audiences, but not for funding. Let us hope that the White Paper next month builds on where we are and allows the BBC to make progress in its mission to inform, educate and entertain.

This has been an interesting debate. Twenty-three Peers have spoken to this point. The extent of the consensus on the central theme of the values and shape of the BBC is amazing. It has been a calm and thoughtful debate, but there has been an underlying passion. If the Government plan to damage, restrict or interfere with the BBC, or challenge its unique character, they will release a torrent of opposition, not just from these Benches, but from all round the House. That opposition will spread throughout the country. I have only one request of the Minister: that she communicates the depth and passion of the debate not just to the DCMS, but forcefully to the whole Government. If the Government do not listen they will create a storm that they will sorely regret.