Broadcasting — House of Commons, 2016-10-18
Topic: Technology
John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. It is gratifying, and it is a positive sign, that the charter and the agreement essentially reflect the contents of the White Paper, which was the result of a great deal of work. At the time, it was very much welcomed by the BBC as putting it on a sound footing for the future. I believe that that is the case and that the charter and the agreement are, if anything, a bit tougher on the BBC than the White Paper was. The changes made to the charter and agreement go further—in ways that I welcome. Indeed, I might have recommended myself the changes to the salaries publication regime, whereby the Government have decided that it is right to publish the salaries of not only those earning over £450,000, but over £150,000 The issues that attracted perhaps most comment when the White Paper came out—they have featured in the debate we have had thus far—are the independence and the governance structure of the BBC. The governance structure was widely recognised by Members of all parties as having failed. The BBC Trust had virtually no defenders. When I chaired the Select Committee, we produced a robust report, saying that the trust model did not work. The Lords Communications Committee also produced a report making precisely the same point. The idea that the BBC should have a management executive and then this arm’s length body, which was part of the BBC but not in the BBC, was simply a recipe for confusion, leading to a succession of problems, including severance payments, the appointment and then departure of the director-general within a space of 54 days and huge wastes of money such as the digital media initiative, which cost the licence fee payer over £100 million We asked David Clementi to come up with a recommendation for a new governance structure, and he came back with the one that most people had always felt was the right solution—a strong unitary board with external governance from Ofcom. Then the debate was about the appointments made to that management board—the unitary board—and whether the Government should have a role in it The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) reads some sinister meaning into paragraph 4 of the agreement, where it says that the independence of the BBC’s appointments is important, but nevertheless has to take account of external factors. Let me explain that that particular paragraph is word-for-word identical to the paragraph in the agreement published in 2006, when the Labour Government were in office. It simply translates the same provision from 2006 into the new agreement. So if there was a sinister purpose, it was the creation of the hon. Lady’s party, not that of the present Government There was then a debate about the fact that, obviously, the unitary board was a more powerful and directly responsible body than the trust. It was recognised, I think, that it was right for the appointment of the chairman to remain a Government appointment, although my own view was that because the board was such a new creation there should be an open competition, and that was the view that the new Secretary of State and the new Prime Minister subsequently reached following the publication of a report by the Select Committee. I think that that was probably the right decision The Government appoint the four independent directors, each of whom will represent or speak for one of the nations of the United Kingdom, and, as has been pointed out, the BBC will appoint five non-executive directors. Even the Government’s appointments will, however, be made through the public appointments process. As I have said, they will not be in the majority. Perhaps most crucially of all, the unitary board will not have a role in editorial decision-making, although it will have a role in reaching judgments about complaints post-transmission. That crucial safeguard will ensure that those people cannot be accused of political interference I find it extraordinary, I must say, that all the people who suggested that the creation of the board somehow constituted a threat to the independence of the BBC—although, as was pointed out, it would have no involvement in editorial decision-making—have been strangely silent about what strikes me as a more dangerous precedent: the appointment of James Purnell as director of radio and education. When the BBC appointed James Purnell as director of strategy in 2013, just three years after he ceased to be a Labour Member of Parliament and about five years after he ceased to be Secretary of State, I questioned the director-general about the appointment in the Select Committee. I asked him whether he could think of any precedent for the assuming of a management role in the BBC by someone who was not just politically affiliated, but had been a very active party politician. He could not do so, but he did say this to the Select Committee: "I think the key thing is—James’s job of course is not editorial" James Purnell has now become director of radio and education. As director of radio, he has overall responsibility for the output of a large amount of BBC content, and it is impossible to say that he has no involvement in editorial decisions. Indeed, we are told that he has been groomed as a potential candidate for the job of director-general, a position which, of course, is also that of chief editor of the BBC I like James Purnell. We get on well, we have robust discussions, and we agree about quite a lot. I have absolutely no doubt that James Purnell is absolutely committed to the impartiality of the BBC, just as I am; I merely suggest that if I, as a former Secretary of State, were to be invited, in a few years’ time, to take on a management role in the BBC—[Hon. Members: "I’d back you!"] I suspect that, despite the support that I might enjoy from some on my own side, it would give rise to howls of outrage, and I do not think it would be appropriate. This is not to criticise James Purnell, but his appointment does establish a very dangerous precedent, which is far more of a direct threat to independence than the appointment of the non-executive, independent directors.