BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report) — House of Lords, 2016-04-21
Topic: Technology
Peter Fowler (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the committee on this report. I congratulate the noble Lord on his leadership of the Communications Committee and the way that he has introduced his report. I must say, I found myself in agreement with virtually everything that he said It is an important report, and I hope that the Government will follow its proposals. I particularly endorse what the committee said on the principles and guidance of Lord Reith, which make clear, and above all comprehensible, that the aim of the BBC should be to inform, educate and entertain—and even reflect, which has been added. Each is important. I have always been most supportive of the aim to inform, meaning that the BBC should provide the best possible objective news coverage; a duty which to my mind, and in spite of all the sniping, it fulfils excellently. The aim to entertain must be recognised. There should be no question of that being jettisoned so that the commercial sector can fill the gap. We all know what the result of that would be: an assault on the licence fee on the basis that the BBC was not reaching the whole of the nation The report begins by going back to 1927 and the formation of the BBC. However, there was a stage before that. In 1925, an all-party broadcasting committee set up by the Government proposed that a public corporation should be set up to act as a trustee for the national interest in broadcasting. It added that the corporation should be set up by statute. But Governments are the same, I fear, in every age. Ministers did not like the idea of them not being in the driving seat or it being set up by statute, because that meant putting things to both Houses. They said that it would become a "creature of Parliament". So they brought forward the proposal that it should be under a royal charter, and thus it became a creature of government. The royal charter gave the Government the ability to evade Parliament and the power for Ministers to do virtually what they liked. For that is what the royal charter means: a transfer of power to the Executive. That is the position that basically we have today: government may make fundamental changes but without the inconvenience of getting parliamentary approval. How do the Government defend this indefensible position? They say, as my noble friend said only on Tuesday: "For nearly 90 years a royal charter has been the constitutional basis of the BBC, underlying the independence of the BBC from political interference".—[Official Report, 19/4/16; col. 539.] I make absolutely no criticism of my noble friend, who is one of our very best Ministers, but this is the consistent line of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and has been for the past decade and probably more. Even when it says that it is protecting the BBC from political interference, that really is the greatest nonsense. The political interference comes not from Parliament but from government. The worst political interference is that of Ministers, and so it has been during the past few decades It was not Parliament that handed over to the BBC a £600 million bill for free television for the over-75s; it was the Government. Governments are notorious for interfering politically. Unless one understands and accepts that, we are not going to make vast progress. Let us recognise that, quite irrespective of party, all Governments and all Prime Ministers have their views. Lady Thatcher made no effort to disguise her scepticism. At a dinner of the Cabinet, I remember her telling us that if ever she was tempted to say anything nice about the BBC, "Denis soon persuaded me out of it". It was not that she was tempted very much in any event, but there was just the odd occasion. And then, of course, following the last election, all kinds of threatening noises came from No. 10 that now was the time to take on the BBC Antipathy towards BBC reporting is not confined to one party. Harold Wilson was not renowned as a great supporter of the independence of the British Broadcasting Corporation and, even more up to date, nor were Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, who were beside themselves with rage about the corporation’s coverage of the Iraq war. In the last charter review in 2005-06—there are a number of us here who were on my committee which looked at the charter then—they invented the BBC Trust and deliberately divided responsibility at the top of the BBC So when the DCMS says that the charter, "has served us so well for 90 years",—[Official Report, 19/4/16; col. 540.] and I fear again that I quote my noble friend, I think we are entitled to say, "Just who are you kidding?". In 2005, I was chairman of the Select Committee which looked at charter renewal and the proposal for the BBC Trust, which provided divided leadership at the top of the corporation. Like virtually everybody else, we rejected the proposal. Of course, that had not the slightest impact on the decision. The Government, using their charter powers, imposed it. And now, 10 years later, can one see what is happening? It is going to be abolished as a bold step by the new Government. Goodness knows what the cost to the taxpayer is of this fruitless adventure, and this is the direct product of the royal charter that has served us so well The only sensible question to be asked now is what we can do about it. There seem to be two possible courses. We can turn the BBC into a statutory corporation like Channel 4. That has substantial attractions. With Channel 4, for example, it means that fundamental changes would have to be approved. It means that if one wanted to privatise Channel 4, and there are rumours of that kind, one would have to introduce primary legislation and bring it through both Houses of Parliament—I am not a Whip, but I would not give too many chances of that surviving all that. It means that if the Government have the slightest sense, they will not attempt such action, so it is a great check on the power of Governments to act. That is one course. The alternative is to make the charter changes subject to approval by both Houses of Parliament. In this way, the BBC Trust proposal would have had to come to Parliament and be approved by both Houses. That is an alternative and perhaps less elaborate way of doing it. My noble friend Lord Lester—I should say the noble Lord, Lord Lester, but he is my friend as well—has a plan in this regard which I shall allow him to set out The point is that the charter as it now stands needs either fundamental reform or total abolition. It is utterly undemocratic; it makes a nonsense of parliamentary sovereignty and it hands all power to Ministers. I would not have thought that that was what anyone in this country really wanted I have not tried to cover the whole of the BBC waterfront, but, in conclusion, perhaps I may be allowed just to say this. I am passionately in favour of an independent BBC absolutely free from government interference; of a BBC with a place in the world and a strong BBC World Service; of a BBC where news reporting is put high and the reporting skills of correspondents are properly valued; of a BBC with a licence fee and not some subscription model; of a BBC which is subject to check, but not the check of the BBC Trust, particularly when we have a perfectly good regulator in Ofcom; and, above all perhaps, of a BBC where the director-general and an independent board make decisions regarding the corporation inside the budget that they are given What I do not want is for a board for the BBC to be set up consisting of government placement of one kind or another. The other thing that I really do not want is five-year reviews rather than 10-year reviews. All that would mean was that the BBC was not only constantly under review but constantly under the threat of change. It would also mean that government’s involvement in the corporation would become greater rather than less, and I do not think that that is what the public in this country want My hope is that the Government will recognise the importance of the BBC and its national and international reputation. My hope is that the Government seek to strengthen the BBC, not to weaken it. My hope is also that the Government will follow the advice of this excellent report from the Communications Committee and implement the proposals within it.