BBC: Diversity — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Civil Rights
Andrew John Turner (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing this Back-Bench debate. He focused on the important and interesting topic of black and ethnic minority diversity in the BBC, and I can see that he is worried that he will just get plans; he wants action I would like specifically to consider diversity of opinion on the BBC. Britain has always been proud to have a broadcaster free from advertisements and Government interference, but I cannot be proud of a supposedly impartial public service that, time after time, takes the opportunity to promote political opinions. This relentless promotion of opinion is not right, mainly because impartiality is supposed to be at the core of the BBC’s commitment to its audience. Impartiality should ensure that its output can be trusted by people of all political opinions in the UK’s cities, towns and villages, but I believe that that trust is increasingly being lost Last December, the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member, took evidence from Rona Fairhead and Richard Ayre of the BBC Trust. During the sessions, it became clear that the BBC’s impartiality relied on three safeguards: the editorial judgment of programme makers using the editorial guidelines, the impartiality reviews, and the feedback from "50 million viewers and listeners" First, there are the trust’s editorial guidelines, which are intended to help editors and producers to produce work that meets the highest ethical and editorial standards. They include a chapter on impartiality, because the royal charter requires impartial coverage. However, the chapter is only a framework enabling editors and producers to interpret the impartiality requirements. In an organisation as large as the BBC, that is simply not sufficient as a primary safeguard. Furthermore, it has been shown that minor editorial decisions build up to form a larger pattern that, cumulatively, creates unintentional bias Secondly, there are the trust’s regular impartiality reviews, which are intended to serve as studies to establish how content evolves over a significant period, and are also said to produce objective and in-depth analysis. The Bridcut report of 2007 is quite a good example of how an impartiality review should not be conducted. Almost 70% of the committee that produced the report consisted of BBC staff and trustees. Its members did not aim to look for systematic bias, so, unsurprisingly, they did not find it Then there was the Prebble review of 2012, which was intended to be a "Review of the Breadth of Opinion…in the BBC’s Output" In other words, the authors of that report were also not directly looking for systematic bias. News-watch, the public service monitor, has found that problems were ignored by the researchers. For instance, the report failed to explain a 50% drop in the number of UK Independence party appearances during the five years between 2007 and the time leading up to the report. Instead, it suggested that the UKIP’s views were represented by the Conservative party. I am quite sure that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would disagree robustly with that conclusion The final safeguard is supposedly the complaints procedure, with feedback received from those "millions of views and listeners" However, the complaints procedure is patronising, complicated and inefficient. In fact, News-watch went so far as to say that the procedure’s automatic response was to discourage and dismiss complainants The next issue that I wish to raise involves programme content. The BBC is not allowed to express opinions on current affairs. Can it be right that, as the Daily Mail tells us, Jonathan Dimbleby urged his audience to write to their MPs to save the BBC from further cuts? The alleged incident took place just a week after the Culture, Media and Sport Committee published a critical report about the BBC. Dimbleby’s call to arms was made at the end of "Any Questions?", in front of the Hereford audience.