European Union Referendum Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-07
Topic: Technology
William Nigel Paul Cash (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not want in any way to sound as though I am drawing on the fact that I have been in the House for 30 years, but with great respect, the hon. Gentleman ought to know that I am not known for dodging issues or not taking a serious point seriously. If I did not say anything at the time, I do not regard that as a fault on my part, but if he is right about how the BBC dealt with the issue, I deplore it. I think that is all I can say on that subject for the moment The BBC recently published an annual report that was rather critical of the fact that Select Committees ask questions about the BBC’s performance on so-called editorial independence. I am not denying that it is important that the BBC should have a degree of independence in order to be impartial, but I think I have made the case that there has not been the complete impartiality that we believe the BBC should deliver to the British public. That is perhaps the result of the lack of a monitoring system, or perhaps because of a certain cultural bias of the kind that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned, and we can see it in the evidence that we have accumulated in the European Scrutiny Committee and in the reports of News-watch What I read in a recent article by Rona Fairhead, the chairman of the BBC Trust, was peculiarly unsatisfactory. She stated in that article, published in the past week or two, that "the BBC needs to be driven by evidence and fact, not by prejudice" However, in addition to what the annual report had said, she effectively stated that the BBC should not be subjected to Committee questions in the way that it is. I can only assume that she meant the European Scrutiny Committee, but perhaps she meant the Culture, Media and Sport Committee as well—my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley asks some tough questions when people from the BBC appear in front of that Committee. Rona Fairhead stated: "Research carried out for the trust"— on what basis I do not know— "shows clearly that the public see a need for independent scrutiny and regulation, but they want this done by a separate body representing licence fee payers, not by politicians." However, we have overarching responsibility for the accountability of Ministers, and of the BBC, which has to appear in front of the Public Accounts Committee and so on. Rona Fairhead’s article continued: "That independence has needed defending over decades, not just from governments but also from parliament, with a growing tendency in recent years for select committees to question BBC executives about detailed editorial decisions." That is quite an extraordinary statement We took evidence and legal advice, and the bottom line is that the BBC does not have complete, unfettered independence, editorial or otherwise. It has to comply with the charter. We make it clear in our report that we expect the impartiality requirements that are embedded in the framework agreement and other documents to be complied with in the light of what the charter states. The first port of call is what the charter says and unfortunately we felt, very strongly and unanimously, that the BBC had fallen short. We look to it to remedy that. I have referred to the correspondence on 15 and 18 June between the BBC Trust, Ofcom and the Secretary of State. I do not have the time to go into its recommendations in detail, but there seems to be recognition that something has to be improved.