BBC Mid-term Charter Review

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on giving us this opportunity to discuss the BBC. He brought up the concept of “BBC sympathies”. Virtually everybody in the Chamber—in fact, I think literally everybody, including him—has expressed at least some BBC sympathies in this debate. That is testimony to the fact that Members with all sorts of views on the BBC’s future, past and present have managed to find something they love about the BBC.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) recognised, for instance, the value of radio, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter). My hon. Friend also rightly raised concerns about the BBC’s future and spoke about the possible implications of different funding options. He demonstrated that he values it as a trusted news source, and mentioned that that must continue, but without a proper funding arrangement, it could be weakened. I value his contribution.

The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) gave a thorough review of the importance of the BBC to our national life, our economy, our role in the world. He made powerful arguments about the ways in which funding options have hitherto affected the BBC’s output. He mentioned in particular the radio output, as have others. The concern has been raised by many Members, including some who are not here today, that the cuts and changes to local radio, for whatever reason, have had an effect. Future proposals may, as the hon. Member for Warrington South said, have an effect on competition. Concerns about that have been raised with him, as well as with my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), who has been taking radio stations’ views on the proposals. I think it right that we consider the effects on competition—the unintended consequences, as the hon. Member for Warrington South said.

The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) has been a distinguished member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee over the past 10 years. We have many former members of that Committee here, even in our low numbers, and they bring such expertise. He gave a detailed description of the implications of different forms of widening revenue. I urge all Members looking at the different funding options to read the Hansard report of this debate, because Members have made great contributions with thought and care. The hon. Member for Warrington South described himself as a critical friend of the BBC. I think that was an apt way to describe himself, because he raised concerns about competition and new proposals while also sharing what he believes to be unique and distinctive about the BBC.

It is worth spending a small amount of time on what is unique and distinctive about the BBC. Members have mentioned radio and podcasts. I would add BBC Bitesize, which so many young people relied on during the lockdown years. We have the BBC website. How many Members are getting BBC News alerts popping up on their screens right now? That is so often our method for learning about something that has just happened. We use it to check the weather in the morning, or to listen back to something that we have missed during the day but which we find really valuable. The content that the BBC is able to put out because of the role we entrust it with—a unique role in our public life—is what makes it such a great public service broadcaster.

As the Secretary of State wrote in her foreword to the BBC mid-term charter review, the BBC is an unmatched media institution that

“matters deeply to this country”

and to

“people right across the world.”

I agree. The Government have an important role in both scrutinising and championing the BBC, but the Secretary of State and some of her colleagues have had an odd way of showing it. I gently suggest to the Minister that the Government need to focus on supporting the BBC to fulfil its public service broadcasting mission, rather than using it as a punch-bag, as so many Conservative Members—many of whom are not here today—have done consistently in recent years.

I will underline the importance of the BBC to our national life before addressing the mid-term review itself. The BBC is one our greatest institutions. It brings wealth, jobs and joy, alongside other public service broadcasters. It brings people together for shared experiences, as many right hon. and hon. Members have said. From sporting occasions to royal occasions, we were all there. Most people turned to the BBC in the last few hours of the late Queen’s life, but we also turned to it for great moments of rejoicing when our new King was crowned so recently. The BBC brings together people from the world over in news output, which is particularly recognised and trusted, as the right hon. Member for Ashford said.

The BBC is an important part of our soft power, but it is also vital in the ecosystem of our creative industries. It contributes £4.9 billion to the UK economy every year, 50% of which is outside London. Many Members would argue that that percentage should be higher, and we will hold the BBC to its plans to take more investment outside London carefully. I have seen the benefit of that for myself in my constituency of Bristol West, which is home to the BBC’s world-renowned natural history unit. It is not just about the natural history unit itself, but the clustering of creative industries that has developed around it, with independent production companies flourishing. The BBC is the single largest investor in original UK content, creating jobs but also helping us to tell our national story in a distinctive British way. That is the first “B”—it is the British Broadcasting Corporation; it is not anything else but British—and it keeps British life front and centre.

I salute the BBC for its desire to improve and innovate, and to widen its range of content. The hon. Member for Stone talked about a diversity of views, and I believe that that is already with us. We have a diversity of output—of regional output, of regional voices and of stories told—but every Member should always challenge the BBC to go further on that, because championing a diversity of views is one of the things we are here to do in our role as MPs. However, the BBC is now competing for our attention with global media conglomerates that are motivated by profit, rather than by public service—those are different functions. Those include streaming services, but also content across social media, so it is important that we support and work with the BBC to change with the times, as well as challenging it to do so. We need to make sure it gets the support it needs.

Of course, the BBC needs a modern governance framework that is robust, proportionate and fit for purpose. The introduction of the unitary board to govern the BBC and the regulation of the BBC by Ofcom were both new elements in the 2015-16 charter review. That review included a focus on governance and regulatory issues, and therefore the BBC’s mission, public purpose and funding model were written out of the scope of this mid-term review. The Government chose to focus on six themes. The first was editorial standards and impartiality, which many Members have addressed today, and the second was the handling of complaints. I have to mention to the hon. Member for Stone that just because a complaint with which he sympathises is not upheld, it does not mean that the regulator was wrong. He poses an interesting argument: that a large volume of complaints not being upheld means that the complaints system is not good enough. The Minister may wish to address that point in her remarks.

The other themes were competition and market impact, commercial governance and regulation, diversity, and transparency. Overall, the findings of the review indicate that the BBC’s governance and regulation are working well. It says that that is particularly true of the BBC’s commercial activities—something that is worth noting. I welcome the review’s recommendations to push the BBC to continue making improvements in relation to diversity—diversity of view, of voice and of identity—and transparency. If I am the next Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, I will continue to push the BBC to do so. The BBC has made clear commitments in both those areas and is making progress towards meeting those commitments, but there can never be room for complacency in any creative organisation. I will always hold the BBC to account: it takes public money to do the work that it does, and representing the widest diversity of voices is so important.

As other Members have said, it is right that Ofcom should assess the impact of the BBC’s decisions on the wider market, but it should also be noted that of all 35 materiality assessments reviewed by Ofcom since the start of this charter period, it has disputed only one. It is also right that the BBC has a clear, easy to understand and robust complaints process—that is why the principle of “BBC First” was introduced in 2017, so that licence fee payers can hold the BBC directly accountable. It is important to be guided by evidence. Of course, it is right that the BBC is impartial, and that there is a process for assessing that impartiality; that is the only way in which the BBC will remain the UK’s most trusted source of news and, some would claim, the world’s most trusted source. It should therefore be noted that Ofcom has upheld only one complaint against the BBC regarding impartiality in the eight years since the beginning of this charter.

It is important that Members of all views recognise the role of the mid-term charter review, but also the work that Governments of all colours will need to do. In a context of rising disinformation and misinformation spread by highly sophisticated state and non-state actors, and in a year in which the citizens of so many countries are taking to the polls, our public service broadcaster could not be more precious. Our democracy is the richer for it.

The information that the mid-term review gathered on the public perception of the BBC is also evidence—it is evidence of what the public think about the BBC. That is fundamentally important, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston raised that in reflecting the views of his own constituents. The BBC spent 100 years building trust, and it cannot stop now and it cannot take its reputation for granted. I believe it is doing neither. I believe it is working hard to move forward, but it will always be held to account.

The next charter review will, I hope, take place under a Labour Government, and we will work constructively with the BBC to make sure it is fit for the 21st century. It will be informed by the BBC’s biggest ever public engagement exercise, which will begin next year. It will be informed by an understanding of the great contribution the BBC makes to storytelling—British storytelling—as well as to the growth of the creative industries in the UK, and its unique role in bringing communities together. Most importantly, it will be informed by a true appreciation of the value of a source of both entertainment and news that we can trust.