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BBC Royal Charter

rose to move, That this House takes note of the First Report of the Select Committee on the Review of the BBC’s Royal Charter (First Report, HL Paper 50). The noble Lord said: My Lords, we are grateful for the advisory points that the Minister has made. The most recent Friday debate that I took part in as a Back Bencher was in the other place, where three or four of us, including the much-missed Lord Carlisle, turned up to debate official secrets. So perhaps I may say first that it is good to see so many noble Lords here and so many speakers on the list. It bears some witness to the importance of this House and to the importance of the BBC and the media industry. The Select Committee was established just before the Government published their Green Paper on the future of the BBC and much, but not all, of our inquiry was focused on the Government’s proposals in that Green Paper. Throughout our inquiry we met twice a week to take evidence. We conducted visits to Bristol, Wales and Germany. We were particularly well-received in Germany, although that may have had something to do with the fact that the Germans had received the impression that the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, was the star of the countless movies made by her cousin Helena Bonham-Carter. We were just very happy to travel on the Bonham-Carter family coat tails. I am grateful to all members of the committee for their hard work on this report. Perhaps I may single out the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, whose persistence resulted in the committee being established. I am grateful for the quite exceptional support we received from our official team—Chloe Mawson, Peter Hill-Jones and our adviser Richard Collins—and last but not least I am grateful to all the witnesses who gave evidence to us. We had working journalists such as John Humphrys, Nick Robinson and Adam Boulton as well as the chairmen and chief executives of not only the BBC but, for example, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, and BSkyB. I do not claim they all agreed with our proposals, although there was substantial agreement on one point: the value and high reputation of the BBC. That is perhaps the starting point. The BBC is the cornerstone of broadcasting in the United Kingdom. The committee approached its task from a position of admiring the standards of the BBC and wishing to preserve them. Perhaps I may put this gently: that has not always been the starting point of parliamentary committees like ours. We think it is fundamentally important that the BBC’s standards of fair, balanced reporting should be maintained and, although obviously there are errors, we note that the public rating for the reliability of the BBC is very high. That applies to television, radio and, I should add, the BBC World Service. I remember as a reporter myself in the Middle East war in 1967 being in Beirut and watching American reporters desperately trying to tune into the World Service to try to find out what was actually happening. Some 35 years later, my stepson covered the Iraq war and found the same situation—reporters relied on the World Service for accurate news of what was happening. Much has changed in the past 35 years, but the World Service’s reputation remains very high. There is one other reason why the BBC is important. Thanks to the Communications Act 2003, ITV could be taken into foreign ownership, perhaps American, and its programme character changed. The BBC and Channel 4 are the only broadcasters who must remain under national ownership, with all that means for the production industry. The title of the Government’s Green Paper was A strong BBC, independent of government, and in choosing that title the Government proposed the criterion by which their proposals should be judged. In practice, our view was that the Government’s proposals do not reduce the BBC’s vulnerability to political pressure and, in particular, the pressure of government. When I talk of ““government””, I mean governments of both parties. I served with two Conservative Prime Ministers—my noble friend Lady Thatcher and John Major. Neither was what I would call an outright supporter of the BBC. At a dinner of the Cabinet to mark her 10 years in power, I remember my noble friend Lady Thatcher remarking, ““If I was ever tempted to say anything nice about the BBC, Denis soon persuaded me out of it””—not that she was tempted very often. I say in parenthesis that we are all delighted that she is now out of hospital.