European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I beg to move the amendment standing in my name and those of my noble friends. I think that the new clause tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is superior to my version, so I will not go into detail on mine I have found it a bit of a long and tiring day, so I ask permission to conclude my remarks from a sedentary position An Evening Standard report in April 2012 had extracts from a leaked report carried out by the BBC when my noble friend Lord Grade was in charge. It admitted bias on a range of topics. In that report Andrew Marr is quoted as saying: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people ... It has a liberal bias, not so much a party political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias". As Mr Rod Liddle, a former "Today" editor, repeatedly says in his splendid column in the Sunday Times, BBC staff do not set out to be biased and believe utterly that they are neutral and represent middle England. They take their guidance from the Guardian, which they think is an absolutely centrist paper, with the Times a bit to the right and the Telegraph off the right-wing scale. I believe that recently some senior BBC insiders, such as Robin Aitken and Peter Sissons, have also confirmed that there are still institutional prejudices prevalent in the BBC. Of course, when accused of bias, the BBC denies it; but I can recall at least two occasions in the last 10 years when the BBC has said, "Well, yes, we looked at our coverage of immigration issues in the past and it was a bit biased but it’s all okay now". I think it also said, "We looked at our coverage of the welfare debate and yes, it was biased in the past but we are getting it right now". So that is the standard defence: we were biased in the past but we are perfect now When an organisation called Minotaur Media Tracking measured the level and content of the BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme’s coverage of the European Union, it found that the BBC gave less coverage to EU issues than the newspapers, gave roughly twice as much coverage to pro-EU voices as anti-EU voices and consistently presented the Eurosceptic case as wanting to leave Europe instead of the European Union. I read somewhere recently, but I cannot find it now, that the BBC has concluded that its past coverage of EU issues was slightly biased, but it is going to be okay in the future. In that case, I look forward to interviewers referring to the BSE campaign as the "Britain Stronger in the European Union campaign"—but I do not hold my breath for that The EU’s transparency website shows that £20,152,000 was disbursed to the BBC from EU funds between 2007 and 2012. A lot of that went to so-called research and development projects and to creating programmes to bring about change in countries outside the EU. In 2009 alone, the BBC got almost £1 million to, "provide support for media capacity in the area of EU integration" Noble Lords may say that I am biased on this, but surely there is an element of conflict of interest somewhere which calls into question the ability of the BBC to police itself on EU matters when it is receiving funding from the EU My new clause suggests that broadcast coverage of this referendum is too important to be left to a combination of Ofcom and internal BBC policing. Everybody trusts the Electoral Commission for its impartiality. I suggest that for the duration of the referendum only, all media monitoring of TV and radio currently carried out by Ofcom and the BBC should be transferred to a unit under the control of the Electoral Commission. Noble Lords can read the subsections for themselves, and I will not bore the Committee by reading and explaining them. Indeed, I will go further: I know that this new clause is going nowhere, so I do not expect, and the whole Committee would not want, my noble friend to spend a long time demolishing the eight subsections and pointing out their inconsistency, inappropriateness, illegality and everything else that is wrong with them. My intention is to highlight to the Government that there is a track record in the BBC of bias on EU issues and it would be intolerable if it continued right up to referendum day. No one wants to interfere with the independence of the BBC, but I believe that we should interfere with the bias of the BBC, since I believe it exists. All I want to hear from the Minister—my noble friends may wish for other things—in her wind-up tonight is what the Government will do to ensure that the broadcast media are absolutely fair, impartial and unbiased in all their reports, news and programmes leading up to polling day. As soon as the exit poll is issued, I do not care what happens. I beg to move.