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British Film and Television Industries (Communications Committee Report)

My Lords, it is very easy for me to continue where the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, left off. There are very few things in political life on which you look back and take great pride, but the battle to establish this committee was not an easy and straightforward one. I would like to think that I gave the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, support during a long and difficult time. Certainly, if she is the godmother of this committee, I like to think that I am the godfather. When the committee was established one of the things I was most keen to see was the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, as its chairman. Both the committee itself and the leadership he has given it fully justify his final plea. I hope that I do not have to strap on the armour again at the start of the new Parliament and that this time there will be a real understanding of the benefit of this committee. We had a great deal of opposition from down the Corridor because the DCMS committee thought that a committee in this House would tread on its toes. I do not think it has—it has shown great skill in selecting the issues. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, in this, the last debate we have on its work in this Parliament, we have a very forward-looking document which will be of great use to Ministers—whatever the complexion of the next Government—in setting an agenda for a very important part of our economy. My interests in the industries are all non-financial. I am chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on ITV and an active member of both the BBC and media groups. I also have—like, I suspect, many noble Lords—a firm belief that film and television play an important role in defining the social and cultural life of a country. Film can so often reflect accurately the mood of an era. We see the defiance of the 1940s in wartime films, and the optimism of the 1960s in the films of that time. With television and radio, we learn how to communicate with each other and how we speak to the world. Many obituaries of cinema have been written over the past 50 years but it is still, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, indicated, a vibrant force. Because we are in the midst of a technological revolution, similar obituaries are being written about terrestrial television. These are equally premature. No other platform, no other service, could have gripped the nation's attention in the way BBC1 did on Saturday night when we had our first view of the new Doctor Who, or last night on ITV when we held our breath to see if Inspector Frost walked off into the sunset or came to a sticky end. There are those, often with vested interests, who say that the need for a strong, publicly funded, public service broadcaster belongs to a bygone age. Convergence and new technologies create a new world of diversity and consumer choice. They also offer great opportunities because of technical skills, the English language and our acting and production in this country. This report is a timely reminder of how important film and television still are to our creative industries, and how, far from being replaced by them, they provide a launch pad for an impact on the new technologies. Let me start at what is first base for me. The BBC is essential, and it is essential that it emerges from the coming decade strong and well financed, the iron pole around which our commitment to public service broadcasting is sustained. Tessa Jowell once memorably said that the BBC licence fee is, ""venture capital for our creative industries"." So it is. But to survive and prosper the BBC will have to show both generosity of spirit and nimbleness of foot—skills often lacking in recent times. I have doubts about the proposals in the report for top-slicing or shaving—or whatever—of the licence fee. Any of these proposals will quickly become a soft option for almost any idea that comes up. I would need a lot of convincing before I saw the idea of touching the licence fee as anything other than a slippery slope. The BBC still has to fight its battles, with the rest of the media concealing vested interest behind their criticisms. When I read a knocking story about the BBC, I think the newspaper carrying it should carry a health warning—something like: "The media corporation that owns us will make millions of pounds by charging you for news and information you at present get from the BBC as part of your licence fee, if we can persuade the Government to prevent it providing this excellent service". Or perhaps Sky News could run a strap-line where it usually shows breaking news stories, stating: "If we can persuade the politicians to impoverish and marginalise the BBC, we will be able to charge you many times more than the licence fee for our inferior service". The BBC could help itself in the battles ahead. Executive pay in a broadcaster whose cash flow is guaranteed by public funds cannot use the private sector as a comparator. Chasing talent with a cheque book is also unacceptable. The BBC does not buy stars; it makes stars. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are not stars, but they will be if the first episode of "Doctor Who" is anything to go by. We pay our licence fee for the wide range of programmes that the BBC provides across television, radio and the internet, but we also pay it so that the BBC can be a breeding ground for talent. I welcome paragraph 317 of the report, which says: ""In the light of the variability of training across the sector, we welcome the continuing role played by the BBC and the BBC’s willingness to make its training more widely available through the launch of the BBC Academy"." That is what I meant by generosity of spirit. I know that it can sometimes be irksome for the BBC. How often have many of us sat on committees receiving evidence from somebody trashing the BBC, who says, "I know what I’m talking about; I was trained by the BBC"? Yet long may the BBC retain its record as a trainer which can endure such hand-biting. The report also had something important to say, as did the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, about training and skills, particularly in paragraph 305: ""In our view, apprenticeships and internships in the film and television industries are under-used and uncoordinated"." Also, in paragraph 313, it says that the film and television industries need, ""to provide more equal access to training and skills-based career development through greater use of apprenticeships and graduate internships"." That rings true not just for this industry but for the British economy as a whole. We have got to train, but in this industry we have positive evidence. The Americans who gave evidence said that one reason that they came to Britain was the skill base that we had. We have to invest to retain that skill base. Quite frankly, I was slightly surprised that not a single university or further education college, or a group thereof, gave evidence to this committee. It is an example of a lack of joined-up government that that should be so. I am on the court of the University of Hertfordshire, and we are told that our Faculty for the Creative and Cultural Industries, within the university, is making efforts to make contact with the creative industries, to see if they can identify their needs. Clearly, however, that message has not got through; there is a need for greater co-operation and co-ordination. It is also time that we stopped sneering at some of the "funny" degrees that some universities give; those funny degrees are exactly the skills that the new technologies and creative industries need. We have to understand that the creative industries are now job and wealth creators on a par, within our economy, with manufacturing and financial services. The report also has some important things to say about finance and investment. There seems to be general satisfaction in the film industry with the present tax structure and no great demand for new public money. Yet there is a lot of evidence that it could be used smarter and more effectively, and that there are too many disparate pots of public money for entrepreneurs to go searching through. Existing public money needs to work in a smarter way and public policy needs to help drive new business models, develop skills and secure meaningful access to finance. Film investment still seems to be a major problem. I noticed the evidence from the Corporation of the City of London, but that was about what a good job it does in locating sites within the square mile for film companies to film in. What has always puzzled me is why the City of London, which prides itself on being able to raise finance to mine tin in Bolivia—or to do almost anything else in the world—has no capacity for raising finance for British films. I know, because it used to employ me, that the corporation of London has an excellent economics department which produces and commissions some excellent economic studies. I suggest that one thing the City of London could do is to commission a study of how the City could be made a conduit for finance for British films. That certainly would be a way forward. I associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said about anti-piracy laws. I have been involved in various campaigns ever since I came into this House on the simple theme that, if somebody steals somebody else’s creative ideas, that is theft. We should have the laws to protect our creativity, particularly when everybody is telling us that it will be one of the things that will rescue us in the world ahead. I also share the noble Lord’s concerns about the rulings of the Competition Commission on Kangaroo and contract rights renewal. It seems that the Competition Commission is operating in a rather austere, narrow academic way. Frankly, I wonder whether it was sensible to have two regulators in this area rather than leave these matters to Ofcom’s judgment. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, indicated, they certainly do not seem to have taken the public and national interest into account. There is certainly also a need to look at the legacy regulation on the commercial public sector broadcasters. Frankly, it is a disgrace that 90 per cent of investment in original UK programming still comes from the main public service broadcasters, including £800 million from ITV—something to be remembered next time Sky blubs about being bullied by Ofcom. I pay tribute to Ofcom. It is not quite the Eliot Ness regulator hoped for when I sat on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, but it is respected and has proved itself a research-based and proactive regulator. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said that this was a timely debate. This is an excellent and thought-provoking report that should be required reading not only for the next Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, but for the Business Secretary, the Minister for Higher and Further Education and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The report and the creative industries deserve a joined-up response from government. On a final and personal point, Appendix 7 lists decades of British television highlights which I realise mirror the story of my life. It starts with "Crackerjack" and "Juke Box Jury" and ends with "Strictly Come Dancing" and "Faking It".