Broadcasting
Debate between Sammy Wilson and Maria Eagle
Maria Eagle
The hon. Gentleman employs an extended metaphor. I do not quite understand how that would apply in respect of the mid-term review. I do not know why the mid-term review was not simply dropped. It seems to me that Ministers have been casting about to try to find some purpose for it because they did not want to accept that the mid-term review or the break clause had started out as something different from how it ended up. I am not sure what the role of the review is, so when the Minister winds up the debate, I hope that he will be able to give us a little more reassurance.
It was said in the other place that governance would form part of that mid-term review, so what kind of change to governance, if any, is it likely to make? To what extent might there be some change in the air? If the Government do not like how the arrangements that they set out in the charter are proceeding, will we see a wholesale change at mid-term to the governance of the BBC? What steps will the Government take to ensure that any such changes are as fully scrutinised as the arrangements for the new charter have been? There is not necessarily a parliamentary aspect of the mid-term review or health check.
We had an exchange about governance earlier. I welcome the fact there is to be a competition for the new chair of the BBC Board. I was critical that the chair of the BBC Trust had simply been appointed to what is a rather different role without any competition at all and at the behest, it seems, of the previous Prime Minister—though not, I suspect, at the behest of the former Secretary of State. I emphasise that I am not and was not commenting on the ability or otherwise of Rona Fairhead to do the job, but simply on the principle of the matter. In any event, she has decided not to put herself forward, so the BBC will have a new chair. Opposition Members are mindful of what the outgoing Commissioner for Public Appointments, Sir David Normington, said about the Government’s increasing propensity to appoint Tory supporters to important public roles, so we will be watching this particularly sensitive appointment with extremely close interest.
I welcome the fact that the Government have abandoned the previous Secretary of State’s attempt to enable the Government to appoint a majority of the unitary board, which I do not believe was a sensible proposal. The retreat that the Government have agreed to, following discussions with the BBC, is a good one, because they could have led themselves into criticisms that they would rather not have. I think that the development is entirely positive.
I want to say a little about the thorny topic of distinctiveness. What on earth does “distinctiveness” now mean in the context of the charter? We know what the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) thought it meant. Indeed, today he reiterated in part his view of what it means—we got the distinct impression that anything popular, commercial or with good ratings would not be distinctive enough. He thought that the BBC should be prevented from engaging in any kind of competition with its commercial rivals in this respect, but what does that mean in the context of the new charter?
I think that the definition in the White Paper is fiendish, because “substantially different” can mean whatever anybody wants it to mean. We are assured by Ministers that it will not be applied to individual programming. To be fair to the right hon. Gentleman, I never heard him say that he meant it to apply to individual programming, except in some lurid newspaper stories that seemed to be coming from his Department at the time. The Government have simply left it to Ofcom, which is not used to doing this kind of thing, to work this all out later. In my view, there is still a significant prospect of this being used mendaciously, either by politicians—perish the thought—or by the BBC’s commercial rivals, who might simply want to stop the BBC competing with them by making complaints about distinctiveness.
Sammy Wilson
The hon. Lady makes an important point about the meaning of “distinctiveness”, but does she not agree that there is also an important point about the BBC, with the vast amount of money it acquires from the licence fee payer, having an unfair advantage over other commercial operators? There has to be a way of ensuring that that advantage is not abused to prevent commercial operators competing for good programmes.
Maria Eagle
The BBC ought to be held to account for how it spends its money, whether or not it meets its objectives and its requirements under the charter. I think that that is absolutely fair. We should not get into arguments about whether particular programmes are sufficiently distinctive or different. The definition is a lawyer’s dream, and there are concerns about what it will end up meaning in practice.
We have heard tell of the £60 million contestable pot of licence fee payers’ money. The survival of that pot is a retrograde step, no matter what use it is to be put to. I note that there is supposed to be some kind of pilot and that commissioning children’s programmes is to be involved in whatever is done with the money from the underspend. The fact is that the Government are establishing the principle that licence fee payers’ money should be handed over to the BBC’s commercial rivals to make programmes. That is different from the BBC itself deciding that it might want to commission programming from independent producers, which it of course does a lot of as part of the way it does its business. The problem is that if the contestable pot simply takes money away from the BBC and gives it to its rivals to make their own programmes without any of the guarantees that the BBC would have for maintaining ethos and quality, it is no more than a raid on the BBC’s resources. That could be the thin end of what might end up being a very large wedge.
We saw newspaper reports before the White Paper was published about a contestable pot involving a lot more than £60 million. Although the pot is currently small and has been identified as a way of using underspends, the possibility that it will expand over time and that a principle will be established that licence fee payers’ money is not to be used by the BBC to fulfil its mission could be significant. I therefore would like some assurances from the Government that the contestable pot will not be vastly expanded during the period of this charter review. I do not think that it should be proceeded with at all.
I want to say a little about salary transparency. We have heard the argument that publishing the salaries of the so-called talent in the BBC is an issue of transparency. I understand that argument, but I want to put an alternative viewpoint. Far from being about transparency, this is actually a tabloid editor’s dream and a destructive bit of punishment for anybody who wants to work for the BBC rather than a commercial broadcaster. Why is it right to invade the privacy of those who work for the BBC but not those who work for any of its commercial rivals? The Minister in the other place said that this requirement—
BBC White Paper
Debate between Sammy Wilson and Maria Eagle
Maria Eagle
I understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, but I think that when the BBC’s future for the next 11 years is to be decided by the Government of the day, it should not be surprising that it may well agree in public with almost anything that the Government of the day say. Whether or not that is a true reflection of what is going on behind the scenes is another matter.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Lady not accept that the BBC welcomed the proposals because it had got off lightly? It will continue to be funded publicly for the next 11 years, and will be able to persist in its wasteful practice of spending money in a cavalier manner with very little input and curtailment from the Government.
Maria Eagle
I do not agree with that analysis.
The proposed new unitary board will run the BBC. In his statement on the White Paper in the House on 12 May, the Secretary of State suggested, in effect, that the new board would be like the BBC Trust but without its current regulatory functions, which would go to Ofcom, but in my view that stretches credulity. Page 51 of the White Paper states:
“The board as a whole will have responsibility for setting the overall editorial direction and the framework for editorial standards.”
There is to be only one board instead of two, and that unitary board will run the BBC in all meaningful senses. The Secretary of State plans to enable Ministers to appoint up to half the new board members, including the chair and deputy chair. That creates an unprecedented power for the Government directly to influence those who are responsible for editorial matters at the BBC.
Maria Eagle
That is going back a bit, but I am indeed a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, and that is one of the reasons that I have very high regard for the abilities of the National Audit Office. I have no problem with the NAO being the auditor of the BBC, but there is an issue with its being the auditor of the BBC’s purely commercial operations. Is it really appropriate for the NAO to pursue entirely private money that has nothing to do with public funding? If this goes ahead, it will set an interesting precedent. I want to hear from the Secretary of State why he thinks this might be appropriate. I want to hear his arguments for doing it, because I think that there could be difficulties.
I am also concerned about the imposition of a mid-term health check on the new charter. It seems suspiciously like the break clause—which the newspapers were briefed that the Secretary of State wanted—by another name. We welcome the fact that the charter is to last for 11 years, and it should not be compromised or have the agreement that underpins it reopened by the back door during that period. I am concerned that the so-called health check—the break clause by another name—will be destabilising for the BBC and create uncertainty, which will not be helpful. Page 58 of the White Paper states:
“It will be for the government of the day to determine the precise scope”—
of the health check—
“consulting the BBC’s unitary board and Ofcom”.
So, the Government could decide, were they so minded, to reopen such questions as whether the licence fee belongs to the BBC or should be given to other broadcasters, the extent of the contestable pot, whether the licence fee is indeed the right form of funding, and any number of other things that would in effect reopen the charter settlement.
The Secretary of State told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee yesterday that this was not his intention. He now has an opportunity to guarantee, in the charter and the agreement he makes with the BBC, that any such process will have the narrowest possible focus and cannot be used to reopen the fundamental tenets that underpin the charter halfway through its term. We need reassurance, in other words, that it will not be a five-year charter in all but name.
I know that Members raised this issue when the White Paper was published. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) pressed Ministers for more detail on this point immediately after its publication. In the other place, the Conservative Lord Fowler has questioned the plan to have such a review, arguing that these functions should be left to a
“strong board of independent directors”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 May 2016; Vol. 771, c. 1825.]
He stated that those directors should be allowed to run the BBC “without interference”, and I find myself agreeing with him. Can the Secretary of State confirm today that the health check—if he decides to persevere with it—will be able to recommend proposals to be included only in the subsequent charter, rather than being used to compromise the BBC’s independence midway through the charter term we are about to embark on? Will he reassure the House, especially Opposition Members, that it will be set in the narrowest possible terms?
The BBC’s core Reithian mission to “inform, educate and entertain” has worked well for over 90 years. It is the foundation on which the corporation’s success has been built. There has always been a virtue in the clarity provided by the simplicity of the current mission statement that has stood the BBC in good stead, so why is the Secretary of State determined to alter the substance of the mission statement to include
“an explicit requirement to be distinctive, high quality and impartial”?
What exactly do the Government mean by “distinctiveness”? It is one of those words that can mean all things to all people. It certainly means something different to him than it means to the BBC or members of the public. Page 32 of the White Paper defines distinctiveness as:
“A requirement that the BBC should be substantially different to other providers across each and every service”.
That hardly pins it down. Ministers must allay the concerns that this could be interpreted as the BBC being forced to withdraw from anything its commercial rivals wish it was not doing, for their own commercial gain.
The Secretary of State has questioned the distinctiveness of some of the BBC’s most popular programmes, such as “Strictly Come Dancing”. The White Paper states on page 71:
“The government is clear that it cannot and indeed should not determine either the content or scheduling of programmes.”
However, it also sets out prescriptive content requirements for radio and TV. To take one example for TV, it demands on page 38:
“Fewer high-output long-term titles.”
He seems to be telling the BBC to stop producing much-loved shows, such as “Countryfile”, “Casualty” and “Doctor Who”, that happen to have been produced for many years. What reassurances can he give that he will not simply require Ofcom to make the BBC back off doing things he does not like, on the basis of those extremely prescriptive requirements?
Sammy Wilson
I do not think that anyone wants the BBC to be unable to make popular programmes, but does the hon. Lady accept that companies such as ITV have a valid point when they say that the money that is available to the BBC every year through the licence fee gives it an advantage in the ratings war and in buying in programmes that help it in that ratings war?
Maria Eagle
I think that competition between private and commercial broadcasters and public broadcasters in this country on the basis of high-quality programming benefits all sectors, the British public and our creative industries. I do not accept that the BBC being able to make good-quality programmes, perhaps over an extended number of years, somehow compromises the capacity of the rest of our broadcasting and TV industry to do similar things. It gives us a better, bigger, richer broadcasting ecology.
If the Secretary of State, who is a free marketeer by instinct, wishes to intervene by micromanaging the public sector elements of our broadcasting industry, he is making a very big mistake, as well as turning into a statist, interfering Minister who should leave our broadcasters to get on with the job that they do so well, particularly those who work in the BBC.