Culture, Media and Sport committee

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s sadness that he was unable to support us. It was interesting that three of my colleagues felt unable to support the final conclusions in our report, but I think it fair to say that each of them did so for entirely different reasons—it was not necessarily a meeting of minds. On the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, there is going to be a lot of argument about the different models, and we saw considerable attraction in the original proposals made by Lord Burns. Most—I suspect all—of us thought it a pity that the previous Government did not adopt the Burns model, rather than create the rather unsatisfactory BBC Trust. The BBC Trust has failed and we do not want to create a body that is basically another BBC Trust. His idea of the ex ante regulator is in danger of falling into that trap; personally I think there needs to be a very clear responsibility for the oversight and running of the BBC, and a single unitary board is the best way of achieving that.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend as an outstanding Chairman of a Select Committee and a perfect illustration of why the two-term rule for Select Committee Chairmen should be scrapped immediately. He will be aware that I was in a minority of one in calling for the licence fee to be replaced by subscription. Given the number of channels that are now available, those of us who believe in freedom of choice must surely believe that people who want to watch the BBC should be able to do so and pay for it, and those who do not want to watch the BBC should not have to pay for it and should be able to exercise that choice too. Has not the time come for that? If the licence fee represents such wonderful value for money, as the BBC tells us, surely it has nothing to fear from moving to a subscription model, because presumably everyone will be queuing round the corner to buy their subscription.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has always acted as my Thatcherite conscience on the Committee, and I have a lot of sympathy with what he has just said. However, I will make two observations. First, we are not yet able to move to a subscription model because that would require big changes, such as the installation of conditional access in every household. Secondly, I think that there will always be some content that should be provided and publicly financed, because there are certain things that might not be viable on a subscription basis but are nevertheless important for the public good. I therefore think that there will always be an element of public finance, but I can certainly see the attraction of moving in the direction of having a growing proportion of content paid for by subscription.