BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating and wide-ranging debate and I declare an interest as a former governor of the BBC. I suppose that it was a unitary board in those days, when I reflect on it. I am also an avid listener and viewer and I go back as far as the crystal set, so that dates me. I do not want to indicate the programmes that I liked then, because I have done that once before, and my noble friend Lord Hart took us through some programmes for which I shared an enormous affection. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the committee on a report which was well crafted in the way that it confined itself. It did not seek to reach too far and wide, which was a strength in the report and the way that it was introduced.

As has been said, the BBC is a great institution and a world beater but that does not mean that it is incapable of reform or does not need it, or does not need constant attention to the way that it behaves and produces programmes. That has been said today in the Chamber, including in the previous contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. The ways that people interact nowadays with the media would have been beyond the comprehension of Lord Reith in his day. He had a different set of challenges in establishing the broadcasting corporation. We know that the BBC will need to continue to change. However, the idea that having examined its role it should somehow restrict itself to being a market-failure organisation seems an approach designed just to undermine the BBC.

There is one bit of the committee’s report which I profoundly disagree with. Fortunately, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford is not here but it was the desire to tinker with the mission statement—but it ain’t broke, so don’t try to fix it because you will ruin it. Come on: “To inform, educate, entertain and reflect” would mean that the statement ends with a whimper. Of course we want the BBC to reflect today’s diverse multicultural and multiracial society, but we do not need to put that in the mission statement. In my view, that is the responsibility of the board and the regulator. The responsibility to produce programme content is what shows what the BBC is really doing, so that is my plea about the mission statement.

Looking at and listening to today’s programmes, as I do, their track record is brilliant. The BBC does not always get it right but then no organisation is always going to do so. Some really interesting programmes have been cited. Look at the programmes which seek just to entertain—the way in which they not only entertain but inform and educate is when the BBC has really cracked it. I like the programmes that attract large viewing numbers, because what they are doing is important. One episode of “Call the Midwife” dealt with thalidomide, which, for many people, is an issue that has drifted away, a part of history that they had probably forgotten about. It dealt with it sensitively, in a way that informed and educated us. In my view, that is the BBC doing it right.

“The Great British Bake Off” has been referred to several times. I want to refer to it in a slightly different way. Last year’s winner was Nadiya Hussain. What a fascinating result that was. There was an obvious example of the multiracial, multicultural country that we are today. There was a young woman of Muslim faith winning such an essentially British competition. That, I hope, did much to make us a society that understands how different we are but how people can make their contributions regardless of their background.

The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, said that this debate had both informed and educated him, and I would say the same thing. I was fascinated by the contribution of my noble friend Lady Healy, for example. She gave so many interesting statistics about programme content, training, et cetera that she will drive me to Hansard to read them again.

Although it is clear that the BBC has further to go on diversity, there are programmes such as “The A Word”—I do not know whether noble Lords have watched that recently—which deals with autism in such an imaginative way, and “Employable Me”, which is another great example of the BBC combining that mission to inform, educate and entertain. We should not forget about things that we take for granted. What other broadcaster in the world would have a season like the Proms every year? We take it for granted.

So where to with the BBC? I agree with the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, of the weakness and deficiencies of the charter, and I wish him well in his attempt to reform it. That would be better, given the way that we have seen the Government behaving to the BBC by hiving off to it their responsibility for free licences, and by top-slicing.

I repeat my question to the Minister from the previous debate. I hope that the White Paper will make it clear that the licence fee is to ensure that the BBC can function and do all the things that we expect it to, which have been mentioned in this debate, such as producing those quality programmes appealing to a wide section of the population, and that the BBC will not be attacked yet again by taking a slice of the licence fee to perform another necessary function. Everyone knows that we want good broadband services, but it should not be part of the BBC’s job to provide them out of the licence fee.

Similarly, there are those who say that 10 years is too long in a world that is changing fundamentally in its technology. I do not endorse every aspect of the Clementi review, but it may have got it right that the BBC should return to a unitary board. I agree with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, about the importance of independent board members—and not just their independence but their skill, competence and ability to challenge the powers that be at the BBC. I often reflect on my time, when we were invited to endorse yet another large increase in the director-general’s pay on the basis that they could get far more if they were working outside the corporation. We desperately tried to point out, “Yes, but the job of director-general of the BBC is something special, given only to a few”. That has been proved now, as although the pay has been halved it has continued to attract a really good-quality person in the noble Lord, Lord Hall. If that is the way we are going, the importance of the independence of the board cannot be stressed too much.

I am conscious of the time and of the fact that most of the points have already been made—although, as some wag said, not by everyone. At this time in the day, I will conclude my thoughts on the future of the BBC by expressing the hope that the Government will produce a White Paper that genuinely ensures that what is definitely one of the greatest things that this country has produced—and which gives a service not only to this country but, as many noble Lords said, all round the world—will continue to be able to do so in a way that we can have confidence in.