Broadcasting

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Damian Collins

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

It is a new post and it was literally made for him. It was not advertised widely for other people to apply for it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon said in his speech—I said this in an intervention as well—that, regardless of people’s views of the capabilities of James Purnell, or concerns that people may have about his past political involvement, the key thing is the process that was run to appoint one of the most senior directors at the BBC. Why was there no competition within—or, indeed, outside—the BBC involving people who may have had the requisite skills to apply for the job? If we are going to be critical of the way in which Rona Fairhead was appointed as interim chair of the BBC—as I have said, that should have been a clear and transparent process—that should also apply to other senior executives, including those on the BBC board. That certainly applies in the case of James Purnell; I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen).

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the transparency applied to those on top salaries should also be applied to those who are on contracts that enable them to avoid tax either by paying only corporation tax on money that is paid directly to them, or by participating in tax avoidance schemes, which the BBC now uses for hundreds of its well-paid employees?

[Damian Collins]

I completely understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. People must certainly pay the taxes that are due on the income that they receive, wherever it comes from. That applies to BBC executives as much as to anyone else. I note what the Secretary of State said in her intervention a few moments ago, and I believe that this is something that we must keep under close review. If BBC Talent is trying to use a loophole by channelling more of its income through independent production companies to avoid having to declare it—our concern, through the work of the National Audit Office, is that there has been an acceleration in that process and that people are trying to get around the rule in the new charter that those who earn more than £150,000 should declare what they earn—we should look again at the matter in the mid-point review.

I want to touch on the comments about the Scottish Six made by my friend on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson). As I was the acting Chair of the Committee and a member of the Committee when we discussed the matter, I was able to give my view on the significance of the Scottish Six. We felt—I certainly felt this, and I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees—that we were calling for the BBC in Scotland to be given editorial independence over the six o’clock news, so that it could reflect the fact that devolution made certain news items less relevant to the Scottish audience than to the rest of the UK audience. We envisaged that the BBC in Scotland would have the editorial independence to make those decisions and the freedom to change the running order of the programme if it chose to do so. The Scottish Six would still be a national news programme, but it would be broadcast from Scotland, it would be produced and edited in Scotland and it would have a Scottish perspective on the national news. We considered the fact that the BBC was comfortable to make that decision with radio, so why should it not consider doing so for television?

That is, of course, an editorial decision for the BBC to make, but one of the things that the Committee hoped to do with this recommendation in the report was to give the BBC a shove and say, “You have been looking at this for quite a long time, you have tried various different formats and you have tried to make a decision. Here is our view, but it remains something for you to do.” I agree with the comments made a few weeks ago by the Secretary of State. I think I am right in interpreting her as saying that, as others have discussed, the Government should not dictate to the BBC what it should do about this; it is a decision for the BBC to make.

Finally, I want to touch on the BBC iPlayer, which has been mentioned. It is important that we remove the loophole whereby people can get out of paying the licence fee by watching programmes—both catch-up and live—on the BBC iPlayer. This also takes us into important new territory that the BBC should explore. By far the most practical way to police such an arrangement would be to give each licence fee payer a PIN that they could put into a portable device to access the iPlayer, to prove that they had paid the licence fee. That is common in other digital services that people use all the time, and it would be the simplest and most logical way to proceed. It would certainly be a lot easier than having digital enforcement cameras—a modern-day version of the TV detector van—going around, trying to work out whether people were viewing the BBC online.

One of the reactions of people in the BBC to such a suggestion is that they do not like the idea of licence fee payers becoming subscribers, or of the BBC becoming a subscription service. I do not think that that would be the case at all. That suggestion is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that new technology allows people to access BBC services in a different way. Those services are still free to access and use for people who pay the licence fee. We would simply be using new technology to make them more readily available.

I believe that a sensible step forward would be to have complementary subscription services that gave people deeper access to the back catalogue and enabled them to stream other programmes that might not be available for broadcast. That would allow the BBC to grow its revenues from its back catalogue and to be innovative in its programme making. It would in no way represent a shift away from the licence fee-funded BBC; it would simply be a recognition of the fact that new technology, platforms and tools will allow the BBC to innovate in ways that simply were not possible in the past. Over this charter renewal process, I would like to see the BBC taking further steps in that direction.