BBC Charter Review (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Communications Select Committee, under its excellent chair, the noble Lord, Lord Best, on having delivered an exemplary report that is both focused in scope and wise in its conclusions. I concur with and support much of what has already been said in its favour. It is to be commended to all parliamentarians, especially those who are eager to see the BBC broken up, sold off or simply shackled. The public—as a recent poll indicated—are not with them. The BBC remains a loved and admired institution by a great majority of those who own it, by which I mean the licence payers of this country. To act in defiance of their expressed opinions would be to damage one of the greatest of our national institutions simply to gratify the self-interest of the commercial radio and television enterprises.

When I interviewed Lord Reith in this House back in 1970, he was very disapproving of television. He deplored the fact that it broadcast jazz, which he regarded as the music of the devil. He had a distinct preference for educational programmes and those that instilled rigorous Christian principles of behaviour. But, of course, he was then a man at the end of his life, to some extent disappointed with that life and embittered by what he had seen happen to broadcasting. But I am still sure that the younger Reith—that vigorous young man who pressed ahead with exploring television’s possibilities in the 1930s to be ahead of the Americans, as he said—defied government interference, turning away Churchill’s emissaries at the time of the national strike. He would be proud of the leading role the BBC plays in sustaining standards, promoting British interests and influence around the globe, and in not having commercial breaks.

As we have heard, Lord Reith managed to sum up the purpose of the BBC in just one phrase, which can scarcely be bettered—namely, to “inform, educate and entertain”. As the right reverend Prelate said, that phrase is terse and exact. I did not think that it could be improved. However, the suggestion that the phrase “and to reflect” through the addition of a single word encompasses and enlarges the remit of the BBC appropriate to the times is to be commended.

The committee’s recommendations covered much so I will speak to just two of them. Having worked within the BBC throughout numerous licence renewals, I know that the prospect throws BBC management into a distracted frenzy of concern. Licence renewal casts a long shadow, distorting the focus and concentration of its managers, heads of departments, channel controllers and even programme makers. It is an ordeal that lasts for years. When the licence is finally renewed, everyone sinks back, sighing with relief that the negotiations have gone away, but for how long? It will be for a good few years.

This frenzy is even worse around the time of elections, whether they are coming up or are just over. Both leading parties—indeed all parties—blame the BBC for the supposed broadcasting bias that robbed them of victory or even greater success. They cannot all be right. But it is a matter of blaming the messenger, and it makes for a climate of resentment and revenge that is no mood in which to address serious and thoughtful considerations of the BBC’s future. For these reasons I support the committee’s recommendation that the charter should come up for renewal only every 10 years, and that it should be uncoupled from that deadly electoral cycle. The recommendation is sound and wise. It would allow for long-term planning, which, in the global media world, needs precise marketing knowledge and a sense of the rhythm of change to which this industry is subject.

The second concern of the committee that I wish to address is this matter of scale and scope. There have been suggestions, mainly from other broadcasting bodies, that the BBC should be limited in its scope, possibly confined to news, current affairs, serious documentaries, and education—all areas of broadcasting that attract low viewing figures and, therefore, are not prize pickings for commercial companies. This is clearly a pitch to cut the BBC down to size and would be disastrous for the BBC as a global player. It is essential that its creative heartline is given the scope to be inventive across the whole area of human activity. That is where its genius lies. What other company would have backed a modest idea to encourage people to bake cakes and see it grow into a global format? Once it were successful, would such a format then be declared beyond the BBC’s scope? What happens then? The whole concept is flawed and unworkable.

The BBC faces change, and needs to change. The media landscape is always shifting; the BBC needs the backing of government and the industry to continue as the flagship of broadcasting that it is known to be worldwide.