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BBC: Charter

My Lords, this could be a crucial debate for broadcasting in Britain. In my judgment we are at a turning point in the history of what has been an exceptional tradition of broadcasting in this country—I would even venture the word ““unique”” about what we have had, especially in the area of well funded, on the whole, well made and well scheduled public service broadcasting (PSB) programmes. The public service aspect of broadcasting will be the focus of my remarks, and I will proceed by indirections. I will argue mostly via ITV. I declare an interest. I am an executive for ITV running its arts and features department. I am also a contributor to BBC Radio 4. In such company as this, my Lords, there is little need to rehearse the reasons for my initial assertion of the potentially momentous nature of developments in broadcasting. We can talk without hyperbole of a sea change, a tipping point, a transformation or even, in some cases, a melting point. There is evidence to support the wildest Cassandra and the most radically prophetic number cruncher. Bob Dylan’s ““Times they are a changing”” are now. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and his committee on their excellent report, which has set a clear, new and important agenda. Like the noble Lord, I, too, am a great admirer and supporter of the BBC, and, like ITV, although independently as well, I am wholly in favour of a strong BBC funded by the licence fee. I hope that this is allowed to thread through the rest of my remarks and be taken as a given. The BBC does programmes no other broadcaster in the world would do, but it is part of a bigger picture. No one system is an island today, not even the BBC. I am concerned most of all with PSB. Again, in your Lordships’ company I need not spell out what this generally means. PSB has made the British broadcasting experience British. But now, with unlimited channels and increasingly inappropriate regulation, PSB has become a problem. Does public service broadcasting have a future—that is the key question—and, if so, where? The BBC is the best, but it is only one guarantor of the future, although the BBC does many plainly popular programmes and its institutions and corporate imperatives—pre Michael Grade—could appear to engage in what would once have been regarded as off limits commercial ventures—not so easy to couple with its prescribed and traditional Reithian remit and its public service spirit. This causes some legitimate unease. I wholly understand that the BBC must reach out to most of the people some of the time. But those, like the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who have expressed surprise at the recent Hollywood spectacular payments to contributors not transparently core to the public service remit, those who are puzzled by the industrial payments, bonuses and perks give to so many middle and upper management at a time of cuts in the lower ranks and those who question the pre Grade commercial imperialism of the BBC are not to be ignored. I have great faith in the reforming zeal and acuity of my friend Michael Grade, chairman of the BBC, but, as he knows, there is a certain restlessness abroad that the BBC is seen inside and out as rather an unseemly body, feeding on the fatted calf of public money—not too terrible in the great scheme of things, but a touch worrying and indicative to some that the BBC—pre Grade—is losing some of its service identity. The PSB in other areas, I think, will check that. Caesar’s wife comes to mind. It strikes me as unacceptable that while the BBC and Channel 4 are currently undergoing a review which will examine their public service remit, ITV, which does more PSB than Channel 4 and more than BBC1, has been hung out to dry. It has to wait, according to the latest government information, for another five or six years for its review—a long term. In the long term, as Lord Keynes said, ““We are all dead””. In my view, which may or may not coincide with that of ITV, there is a very small chance indeed that ITV can maintain anything like the current level of spending on PSB for another five years, should existing conditions develop in the way that most informed critics predict. By the time the then government in 2012 run an MOT over ITV, PSB could be D-E-A-D. I think, I say with regret, because I am an admirer of so much of the work done by the DCMS over the past few years, and by its leader Tessa Jowell in particular, that no long-term thinking can have been given to this eventuality. This Government, who have done so much, will, unless they act now, fail through neglect to maintain the crown and purpose of our broadcasting system. If, or when, PSB on ITV shrinks, the British public will be deprived of a fecund resource which has stayed faithful to the seriousness of programmes in so many outstanding areas for more than 50 years. A tradition will be lost and the BBC will be gravely unbalanced, and all for the want of nailing the problem now. There is no other commercial channel in the world which even approaches ITV’s slate of public service programming. For instance, the national news bulletin and international reports compete with and sometimes even overleap those of BBC1. Its regional news is the most comprehensive in the UK, with 27 regional and sub-regional services. Channel 4 does no regional programmes. Even more investment is going into these regional services despite the advertising difficulties. Almost all it does is originally commissioned programming made in this country. All this helps to support a major part of our flourishing creative economy. In fact, for 50 years ITV in itself has been a flourishing creative economy, employing thousands of skilled men and women throughout the United Kingdom, and especially in Manchester. For example, ITV invests around £300 million a year in original British drama. This is more than half of Channel 4’s entire budget. ITV seeks and succeeds in commissioning more than 50 per cent of network programmes from outside London. Quite simply, this is under threat. We need a PSB review of all the major channels because it is the only responsible and effective way to address this. PSB, above all in this country, is a single weave throughout the broadcasting system. It does not belong to one channel at all. It will, unless the matter is addressed, result in dividing the channels, one from the other. The delay will cause dilution and eventually dissolution of public service broadcasting on ITV. I wish noble Lords could believe that I am crying wolf. I hope that I can convince the House that I am not doing so. For if ITV—again this is my personal opinion—is to survive the new hydra-headed commercial world, it has to get rid of ballast to make it to a home harbour. PSB is the ballast it will get rid of. A recent bid for ITV said that it would succeed when it took over ITV only by cutting the programme budget by 25 per cent. Where do you think those cuts would have come from? The situation is exacerbated by the widening gap between the income of the BBC and that of its commercial rivals. It could be argued that in an increasingly relativist world, a still centre of certainty becomes more and more essential. There is undoubtedly something to be said for that, and for the BBC holding that. But if the BBC opens up a chasm in funding between itself and its chief commercial competitors, what is the gain? That is not to tie the BBC down to a leaner licence fee, but it is to argue that the commercial sector needs to be considered and needs restructuring now. If PSB goes from ITV, the system will begin to unravel—rapidly, I think. What could a commission do? First, it could reinforce the position of the BBC as the cornerstone of public service broadcasting. Secondly, it could consider some radical options being put forward by serious commentators. For instance, the noble Lord, Lord Bird, former director-general of the BBC and himself a successful and committed PSB broadcaster when he was with ITV, has argued that some of the licence fee should be for public service broadcasting per se, not inviolably dedicated solely to the BBC as an organisation. That is an argument worth having. The retiring chief executive of Ofcom, Stephen Carter, said this week:"““We should have been bolder over ITV””." He says that he believed that Ofcom could have gone further and removed all of ITV’s PSB programmes. Such a move, he argued, would have sharpened the inevitable debate about who would then provide PSB in a digital market. He said that the debate about who was going to do it would therefore have been much more urgent. Those ideas are around. I have dwelt at length on that issue because, as someone who started work on the BBC World Service in 1961 and who has worked in the public service area all my life—in the regions, on radio and television for the BBC and ITV as well as in London—I see this as the issue that threatens to get lost in the argy-bargy about deals, percentages and number crunching for the BBC final settlement, which, I repeat, must be fit for purpose. Part of the commission’s purpose would be to ensure that other broadcasters have their structures helped so that they, too, would be fit for purpose to continue with their PSB work. Like most of your Lordships, I wish the BBC well and intend to continue to support it fully, but the public service broadcasting tradition so uniquely built up must not be wounded or weakened in the process. I think that it threatens to be.