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BBC: Charter

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Davies and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for giving us the opportunity to debate the BBC’s new charter. As many have said, it is a crucial moment in the development of broadcasting. No longer are we seeing the shared experience; today you can create your own programme content through concepts such as podcasting. They can only increase in an era where broadcasting is changing in many different ways, with high-definition television, digital switchover and so on. It is therefore appropriate to look at the past before examining the future. Like the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, I ought to declare an interest in that I too am an ex-governor of the BBC, someone who has been in the belly of the beast, so to speak. I am also chair of the One World Broadcasting Trust. That tends to colour your views. As a governor, you are given the full five-volume history of the birth of broadcasting by Asa Briggs. I confess that I have not read it from cover to cover—I have not yet met a governor who has—but I dip into it from time to time. One of the chapters describes broadcasting as a public service and states:"““The Postmaster-General’s eloquent tribute would have been more convincing had he not been attempting for some time to reduce the licence fee on receiving sets. Some disgruntled Members of Parliament were pressing him to do this, while others were asking for differential licence fees for the owners of crystal sets and valve receivers””." That is a chastening thought for those of us who can remember the crystal set and trying to receive anything at all on it, although occasionally you did get the dubious delights of Radio Luxembourg. I then looked at another chapter, From Company to Corporation, which stated:"““The Postmaster General at once specified a continued restriction on the freedom of the BBC. He informed the House of Commons on 15th November 1926 that he had instructed the Corporation that when it began operations it was not to broadcast its own opinions on matters of public policy, nor was it to broadcast on matters of political, industrial or religious controversy””." That would have made for a short ““Today”” programme, that is for sure. Thus Reith’s plea for controversial broadcasting, cogently restated to the Post Office in July 1926, had been rejected, and it was not until 1928 that the ban on controversial broadcasting was withdrawn experimentally. I found it interesting that when they were concluding the terms of the first draft of the charter, one of the points of disagreement was the no advertising clause. Surprisingly, Reith was arguing for advertising. He said:"““There should be some liberty with regard to advertising as a supplementary source of revenue in case of need””." That is an interesting fact that I had not observed before. Another debt that we owe Lord Reith—who, after all, probably did more than anyone else to create the concept that we call the BBC—was for probably the shortest and most effective mission statement on record: to ““inform, educate and entertain””. If there is a shorter one that is more relevant, I have not yet come across it. It is as relevant today as it ever has been. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said—unfortunately he is not in his place at the moment—because he is always worth listening to. It was nice to hear him refer to the BBC as almost an oasis of balanced reporting and pay tribute to the World Service. I echo that. However, I share some of my noble friend Lord Gould’s concern about news. You sometimes wonder—this does not relate only to the BBC but across all broadcasters—whether they are sometimes concerned, not with reporting the news but with creating it. It is a delicate balance which not even the BBC, I would submit, always gets right, although it does have a justifiably good reputation. The World Service is not the only jewel in the BBC’s crown; there are many other such aspects, for example the BBC’s website and, of course, Radio 4. There has been a great deal of criticism about how we achieve a digital switchover. I have some sympathy with those who express concern about the costs of this being a part of the licence fee, given the sensitivity of the licence fee and that, we have to acknowledge, it is a regressive tax. Nevertheless, whatever its critics say, no one has yet come up with a better instrument for funding the BBC. So, perhaps, rather like Churchill’s definition of a fair democracy, it is the least worst form of fundraising. There has been some criticism about regeneration in the regions and the move to Manchester. I do not share that criticism. I am one of those people who felt that if there was a criticism of the BBC’s funding and so on it is because it is too London-centric. So I share the view of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester on that. As to quality—these are subjective views—I am one of those sad souls who, every week, buys his copy of the Radio Times, which contains a reasonable mix of what some describe as intellectual, cultural and entertainment material. It is still trying to achieve the Reithian objective. I cannot resist—I do not know how large the volume is—referring to the wit and wisdom of Greg Dyke. He amused me on one occasion, when the BBC was being criticised for the number of repeats, when he said, immortally, that it is only a repeat if you have seen it before. It is hard to argue with that assessment. But there is some value in repeats. We are in a transition period, where analogue is being transmitted at the same time as digital and, if you have bothered to get yourself a Freeview box, you can see some of the excellent programmes that have been broadcast on BBC Four emerge on BBC Two. Personally, I think that is a good use of repeats. The noble Lord, Lord King, who is not in his place, said that he doubted whether anyone supported the current proposals on governance. I must be one of the small band of people who do. That is not because I think they are perfect—I can understand of my noble friend Lord Ryder’s analysis that the separation of powers might be imperfect. But as a BBC governor, I argued that the previous arrangements were far too incestuous, that the relationship between the two was much too close and that there was not enough independence. I think this is a significant improvement. Is it perfect? No, I do not think that we can arrive at a perfect arrangement. My noble friend Lord Inglewood said that no two people would agree. I tend to agree with him. So we will have to see how it pans out. But it builds on the reforms that were begun by the governors in what might be described as an in extremis situation and it extends and codifies those changes. I personally welcome the two reforms. The first reform is that the trust will determine whether the BBC should undertake new services; it will no longer be a task for Government or the DCMS. That is important. The second, complementary reform is that the trust shall have a duty to have regard to the competitive impact of the BBC’s activity, and in deciding whether to accept management proposals for a new service it will look at the market impact—it can rely on a survey from Ofcom—as well as the public value of the service. That, to me, is a step forward. Is the charter absolutely right? It is probably as good as any declaration of purpose for the BBC as a public service broadcasting corporation. Six purposes are set out—I do not have the time or think it is necessary to go into all of them—but, in terms of sustaining citizenship and civil society, the breadth and depth of the BBC news and current affairs programming stands out. As to whether the BBC is fulfilling its remit, perhaps I may give one example. The BBC has, for a long time, broadcast ““Question Time””. If you watch it, you might find it, as I do on occasions, irritating sometimes because it only scratches the surface of an issue, or sometimes because of the clearly partial views of those who participate, or sometimes because the audience is not to your taste. Nevertheless, it is a popular way of ensuring that the key issues of our time are being debated. Further, for the past few years, the BBC, with partners, has been running ““Schools Question Time””, where schools are encouraged to run their own version, submit their own ideas for issues and panellists, with the winners having the chance to produce their own edition and having it broadcast on BBC One. This seems an excellent way of encouraging citizenship and participation in the political warp and weft of our society. Secondly, as regards stimulating creativity and cultural excellence, the different views are interesting. I can remember being impelled to put pen to paper to disagree with an art critic who was castigating the BBC for delivering a programme called ““Rolf on Art””, which was a very popular way of looking at art. It had an audience of between 2 and 3 million. How many other programmes looking at art in detail would have achieved that audience figure? So there is not only one way of stimulating creativity and cultural excellence, and we should applaud diversity in this area. There has been criticism from some in the commercial radio sector that BBC Radio—particularly Radios 1 and 2—are merely replicating the music played on commercial stations. That is interesting because the accusation ignores the facts. Indeed, Ralph Bernard, the chief executive of GCap, said:"““It is a myth that the BBC is more dominant than commercial radio. The commercial sector has a larger share of the audience that matters, 15–44 year-olds””." Over half of all daytime music on Radio 1 was new during the last survey period in October 2005, with an average level of new music on the commercial stations surveyed of just 30 per cent. Of Radio 1’s music, 57 per cent was by UK artists. Noble Lords possibly do not enjoy much of it, but I know that my teenage children do. No other station played as great a range of new songs by UK artists. Compared to other stations, Radio 2 tends to play a greater number of songs, repeating them far less often. I could go on, but I do not think that it is appropriate. I shall comment briefly on the licence fee, on which there has understandably been a fair amount of comment. Those who say that the Government should scrutinise the bid by the BBC are right. There is a balance to be struck between delivering the expectations of licence fee payers, while doing so at the lowest possible cost. No doubt negotiations will be pretty tough, as they should. I note my noble friend Lord Ryder’s assessment of what it should be. That is the important thing. I used to feel in pay negotiations that you did not always get exactly what you claimed, although you would have liked to. It is worth noting that over the next 10 years the BBC has undertaken, as part of its licence fee bid, to fund 70 per cent of its new investment from self help, being on course to secure £355 million savings. I shall end by picking up my noble friend Lord Bragg’s point about looking at public service broadcasting as a whole. That is right. The strength of British broadcasting has been its diversity. It is not just the BBC, although it probably is the jewel in the crown that we seek to preserve. My thanks once again to those noble Lords for ensuring this debate.