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Future of the BBC

My Lords, today is the 16th anniversary of my maiden speech in your Lordships' House. During that time, I have spoken on matters about which I have known something and on matters on which I have been briefed—that is certainly not the same thing. I have also spoken on matters about which I feel very strongly and that is the case today. I know little about the BBC but, like many others in this House and in the country at large, I feel very strongly about its future. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for giving me this opportunity to say something. I want to speak up for the BBC because, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, put it, the BBC sees me as a citizen and not a consumer. I want that to be preserved. Yes, the BBC plays an essential role in maintaining and developing our culture—I mean culture in all its aspects. One of the more obvious aspects is music, which is especially important to me. The BBC commissions music; it has some of our finest orchestras; and it runs the Proms, which is our biggest musical festival. Then there are the drama and comedy programmes and human interest programmes which inform and entertain us. Perhaps less obviously cultural is the news gathering and the news dissemination about which many noble Lords have spoken. What is cultural is the fair, balanced and thorough way in which that is done, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester explained. That culture of public service broadcasting needs to be preserved; it needs to be impartial; and it must not be an arm of the state with political pressures, nor an arm of commerce with commercial pressures, but its pressures should be budgetary and ethical. I want to see that continue in the future. The BBC helped its case by having Professor Sandel as this year’s Reith lecturer. He spoke about the common good and the limits of the mind. He provided the answer to those who would like to commercialise the BBC more and who see the licence fee as distorting the market, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, described. We now know that markets may serve us as consumers but they do not necessarily serve us as citizens. To protect us from exploitation as consumers we need the agencies and regulators, like Ofcom, because without that protection we would get bland content for entertainment and selected news and current affairs with incomplete and unbalanced information. That is the limit of markets. Of course, that cannot happen in a vacuum. To serve the public properly, public service broadcasting needs to come from a variety of broadcasters from every region and needs to serve every minority. I agree with your Lordships’ Select Committee that plurality is required here, and that the market will not provide it. Because of the emerging broadcasting platforms and viewing patterns due to digitalisation, it is obvious that the advertising business model is no longer sustainable. Unless the regulatory and market framework is changed, the dominance of the BBC will become so great that it will have a virtual monopoly. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler: monopolies spell danger. The future of public service broadcasting will be secure only if there are alternative providers to the BBC, or if the BBC works with others. That, together with a variety of sources for commissioning and content, will provide the competition to encourage the raising of quality and the incentive for innovation. That is a difficult balancing act, complicated by the current financial crisis and the rapidity of changing technology. Of course, that is one of the purposes of the Digital Economy Bill, which your Lordships debated yesterday. The Bill places a particular duty on Ofcom to ensure that many broadcasters provide public service content. Perhaps the Minister will say something about that when he winds up. What about the BBC and the new digital technology? Digital technology, like all technology, is a means to an end—an end that opens up new possibilities. It is the artistic content and development that will drive it. That is why the plurality of the licence fee and commercial funding should serve us well. We do not know where the digital age is leading us. We have a good idea of the direction of travel, and alternative viewing patterns and platforms are appearing, but who knows what the destination will be? That makes it especially important to preserve the private and the public sectors in broadcasting. Some of the great technical and innovative advances have been made possible by public involvement and support. I agree with my noble friend Lord Maxton that the online activities of the BBC, a public broadcaster, are leading the way. As other noble Lords have said, central to this is the independence of the BBC—independence from politicians, financial short-termism and the pressures of a race to the bottom. Mark Thompson is right to seek that all political parties should respect the royal charter, which gives the BBC its independence, the multi-year funding regime and to let the trust conduct responsible and ethical stewardship. Let the trust hold the management of the BBC to account, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, put it. I have always thought that one of the great strengths of our arts organisations was that funding is handled by an intermediary, which takes its stewardship responsibilities very seriously. It works far better than when the donor calls the shots. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, that responsible stewardship is badly lacking in the private sector. That is something that business could learn from the BBC. A stewardship issue regarding the BBC and most parts of the public and private sector is the pay of senior executives, about which the noble Baronesses, Lady Bonham-Carter and Lady Howe, spoke. I have a slightly different perspective. A combination of the spectacular earnings of rock stars and footballers, and boards matching the pay of senior executives in an ever-upward spiral means that top executives this year will earn 81 times the average pay of full-time workers. Nine years ago, that figure was 47 times the average wage. This cannot go on. Has anyone noticed a corresponding rise in competence accompanying this spiralling rise in pay? I have not. It will not stand up to public scrutiny. As well as being transparent about salaries, a welcome initiative from the BBC would be to adopt the proposal in the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Gavron, which we have debated in your Lordships' House. It states that organisations and companies should state what the ratio between directors and shop floor workers currently is and, perhaps, what it should be in their organisation. That is what is called "serving the common good". If the BBC would adopt it, what a nice way it would be of showing that it listened to its own Reith lecturer.