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Future of the BBC

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on this debate, which is both topical and timely. I declare an interest as an associate of an independent production company and as someone with insider knowledge, having worked for many years at the BBC. While we have heard nothing but praise inside this Chamber, out there the BBC is under attack. The Government want to top-slice the licence fee, while the Conservatives, in the shape of David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt—if not the noble Lord, Lord Fowler—want to freeze it. Rupert Murdoch wants to reduce the corporation to a US-style public subscription channel offering only education and information and providing absolutely no competition to the commercial sector. His son James accuses it of being, ""a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision"," and, I am afraid, normally sensible newspapers have taken up this accusation. Feeling the pain of competition with the internet, they have turned on the BBC, despite the fact that in every other country—none of which, unfortunately for them, has a BBC—newspapers are facing equally dire problems. The head of Australia’s public service channel said about James Murdoch’s pronouncement: ""But strip away the lofty language, and you see that the James Murdoch solution is less about making a contribution to public policy than it is getting rid of the BBC’s services, effectively destroying the BBC as we know it—a tragedy for the UK—a tragedy for the world"." Simon Schama, in self-imposed exile in New York, has said: ""There is nothing like a little distance to make you reflect on what makes Britain really great. Since I live in the United States for most of the time I can tell you that many is the time I wish deeply that there was a presence like that of the BBC"." An ICM poll a couple of months ago of those of us who live here, which the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referred to, showed that public confidence in the BBC has grown; 77 per cent regard it as a national institution that we should be proud of, 69 per cent declare it trustworthy and two out of three people think that it provides good value for money. Politicians and Sun journalists would pay for such accolades. As all of us taking part in this debate know, British broadcasting has reached a critical point: the transition from one age to another, from analogue to digital. The analogue age lasted for about 100 years, during which time Britain developed arguably the best broadcasting system in the world. Central to this system was and is the BBC. In 1922, when the British Broadcasting Company was set up, it had a staff of four people. I do not know how many noble Lords have seen that admirable series, "A History of Modern Britain" with Andrew Marr, but it had wonderful footage of those pioneering days when the BBC—radio, of course—appears to have been the possession of a Captain Eckersley, who would, to use the words of Andrew Marr that accompanied the film, ""trundle his piano from his local pub to an equally local army hut from which he would perform to the nation"." Then along came Lord Reith, who put an end to Eckersley and such frivolity. The BBC was financed by the licence fee and of course in those days it was a monopoly provider, a situation that we must not return to. The creation of Independent Television in 1955 and the introduction of competition had a profound impact on broadcasting: the BBC lost its captive audience and large numbers of viewers deserted it. It had to learn to connect and it did. It did not jettison its values but it changed what it did. Then the independent TV companies, raking in the money in those days, were asked to spend a proportion of it on PSB. BBC2 was created and then Channel 4, and in parallel with them was the creation of the independent production sector—and we enter a wonderful world of plurality and diversity. This purely terrestrial world was further enhanced by the advent of subscription channels such as Sky and for a time there was peaceful cohabitation. Today we see this under threat. Competition from digital channels and the internet has led to declining advertising revenue for the commercial public service broadcasters, exacerbated by the fact that we are in recession. Those critics whom I referred to at the beginning of my speech fear a return to a monopolistic, overpowerful BBC. Here I depart slightly from what has been said so far today, because I believe that the BBC has not helped itself. Its behaviour in some areas has only fed concerns about its size and scope. I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, here. The salaries paid to its executives are ridiculous, with 39 of them earning more than the Prime Minister, one with the title "director of organisational development and change"—perhaps what Prime Ministers should aspire to be. These salaries are being paid against a background of cuts to high-quality news programmes that are central to the BBC’s PSB remit. Recently a BBC reporter told the Evening Standard that on many current affairs programmes the producer is flying solo, with no researcher to help them dig into the story and check the facts. I used to be a producer on "Panorama" and "Newsnight", and it is not a job that you can do well on your own. The BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, charged with making profit to cushion the public service BBC, has been told this week by the BBC Trust that it should desist from activities that are not in keeping with the BBC brand—such as the £90 million purchase of Lonely Planet, perhaps, which so many of us supporters of the BBC questioned at the time. Like other noble Lords, I have sympathy with those running BBC Worldwide—their remit, after all, was to make money—but the way in which that remit was sometimes handled reminds me of an image conjured up in a speech made by Tim Gardam, once my boss and a former senior executive at the BBC. In it, he asked his audience to remember Walt Disney’s "The Jungle Book", and compared the BBC to that, ""well meaning herd of elephants, stomping through the jungle, trumpeting its achievements, each executive holding onto the tail of the one in front. They are undoubtedly a force for good, but unfortunately can be oblivious to what might get crushed under their enormous feet"." Now, more than ever, this elephant behaviour has to be banished. Like the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, we on these Benches would like to abolish the BBC Trust. We called long ago for a truly independent regulator of the BBC and argued at the time that the BBC Trust was established that this arrangement would only perpetuate the muddle between regulation and governance. It has. Considering that these were the very sentiments expressed publicly by the latest Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, does the Minister not think it odd that the matter of BBC governance is not addressed in the Digital Economy Bill? Next, there is the fact that, while commercial public service broadcasters are struggling and suffering, the BBC is seen as being too big. It was good that the director-general’s speech, a week ago, acknowledged this; we look forward to his commitment to establishing more focused, slimline boundaries within the BBC. The other essential element in ensuring a healthy future for the BBC is competition and we welcome the Government’s commitment in the Digital Economy Bill to Channel 4. The transformed economics of commercial PSB have put the provision of regional and local news under particular threat. Without intervention, the BBC will become a monopoly supply in this area, so we also welcome the launch in April of three independently financed news consortia pilots. We Liberal Democrats, as I think everyone in this House knows, were always against £600 million of the licence fee being used to pay for digital switchover’s targeted assistance programme. Now it appears that not all of that money is needed and some is to be used to pay for those news consortia pilots. While we were against BBC money being used to fund the social cost, we support the surplus being used to help to fund commercial public service broadcasting—but there it ends, because we are absolutely against top-slicing the licence fee, which threatens the independence of the BBC and blurs lines of accountability in public service broadcasting. Andy Burnham, the last Culture Secretary, when responding to a Conservative debate on the licence fee, said: ""Would any Government be properly challenged by the BBC when the corporation’s fate was always under review and the corporation was engaged in almost never-ending debate with civil servants and Ministers about … funding?".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/5/09; col. 1582.]" No—and the present Secretary of State should take heed. While we do not believe that the licence fee should be raided, we feel that the BBC needs to share the good fortune that its funding formula gives it. A year ago, with a great fanfare, the corporation announced that "the power of partnership" was to be the name of the game and the answer to everything. However, a year on there seems to have been little progress. The proposals to share regional news resources with ITV have come to nothing and talks with Channel 4 are at best ongoing. Andy Duncan, the recently retired chief executive of Channel 4, told the Communications Committee, of which I am a member, that, ""had the BBC wanted to ... they could have moved a lot quicker than they did. They kept their options open and it has been frustrating trying to get the partnership nailed down"." Historically, partnerships have not been what the BBC has been best at and it seems that, unlike with the advent of competition back in 1955, it has failed to change its culture. It must learn to share. In conclusion, through the years there have been many attempts at defining the elusive quality that is public service broadcasting and why it is so important. Sir David Attenborough is to me, as he is to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, a man who exemplifies what our broadcasting system—at the heart of which sits the BBC—has allowed to flourish. I choose on this occasion to refer to his words in a lecture last year. He described the advent of broadcasting in this country, and the public service remit that is so integral to it, as, ""that miraculous advance, still not a century old, that allows a whole society, a whole nation, to see itself and to talk to itself … to share insights and illuminations, to become aware of problems and collectively to consider solutions"."