Economy: Broadcast Media

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed and his admirable maiden speech. He listed the qualities that John Buchan admired, and we saw exhibited in his speech exactly those same qualities. In my noble friend Lord Purvis we have a formidable political talent in our midst. He started out his career in the office of my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood and went on to become the youngest Member of the Scottish Parliament. It is a tribute to this House that he no longer has such a claim to fame, which shows how things are changing. He worked tirelessly for the campaign to keep Scotland beautiful, clean and green and is now a campaigner for devo-max, although that should perhaps be a subject for another day. Given the speech that we have just heard, and the other maiden speeches we have heard, with one more to come, we can look forward to some very talented new Members of this House keeping us entertained and broadcasting well to the nation.

According to the late, great David Frost, television was an invention that allowed you to be entertained in your living room by people you would not have in your home. I would like to think that those who have tuned into this debate might view it slightly differently as they have heard such a variety of views already from people from very different walks of life who have a lot of interesting things to say. Therefore, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury on instituting such an interesting debate. I also congratulate the two maiden speakers from whom we heard before my noble friend Lord Purvis, as I mentioned.

I wish to concentrate my remarks on soft power, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, particularly the soft power exercised by the BBC World Service. The World Service reaches 192 million people weekly and broadcasts in 28 languages. It is the most phenomenal asset for any country to have, wins friends not just for the BBC but for Britain and is truly an example of soft power at its best. When Aung San Suu Kyi was here last year, she referred to the difference that the BBC World Service had made to her life in captivity. Her unfortunate obsession with Dave Lee Travis—as some might say—did perhaps engender more attention than it should have done, but it was the World Service which kept her going.

We should make the most of what the World Service has to offer. I am particularly keen that we should listen to a point of view put by Claire Bolderson, who spent 26 years working for the World Service and the BBC. She has come up with what I think is a brilliant idea. She wants to know why we do not take all those language services and put them on digital radio in this country. Why can we not reach out to those people who are not first-language English speakers and let them hear the news in their own languages? Not only would we endear them to the BBC but perhaps we might make them feel part of the UK. Perhaps we could infiltrate those communities rather more than we are doing now through the good offices of the BBC World Service. The content is there—it would not need to be altered very much. I would love to see some moves made in that direction. One BBC insider said, “The Swahili service will have to take its chances against ‘Strictly Come Dancing’”. I have to say that I do not think that the World Service should have to take its chances against “Strictly Come Dancing”. I would not perhaps put my views in entirely the same language as the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, but I think that public service broadcasting might do better by doing less.

We have so many different broadcast channels now. I am not convinced that the BBC needs to be deeply involved in reality TV any longer as plenty of others are more than capable of doing that. However, that is not at all to undermine the success of our programmers. We are very lucky to have some of the best programme makers in the country making their work here and enticing others to do so and, of course, that generates huge sales abroad. I gather that “Titanic”—the series made by my noble friend Lord Fellowes, who gave us the wonderful “Downton Abbey”—was sold to 86 countries before it had been broadcast anywhere. That tells you a lot about what reputation can do for you, and in particular the reputation of the programming that goes on here. Our TV exports now reach sales of £1.25 billion a year—a phenomenal contribution to the economy.

However, beyond that, broadcasting is now bringing us a very local economy, too. It is marvellous that another 56—I think—local TV channels are coming along. These will reinvigorate local democracy and will take over where local papers, in many cases, have failed to do what they used to do—that is, keep people up to date with what is going on in their locality. In London we are very lucky to be served by a daily paper that is a genuine newspaper, but in many parts of the country that is no longer the case, not even on a weekly basis. It is a danger to local democracy if local politics is not being covered properly. We should look to these new local television stations to fill that gap and I have every confidence that they will.

Broadcasting now covers such a vast range of media. YouTube did not exist a decade ago and yet today 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute. It is hard to envisage what that really means. It is a part of the broadcasting media that no one could have imagined 10 years ago. As we have already heard, BT Sport has scooped the pool when it comes to football rights, yet a couple of years ago BT Sport meant nothing to anybody. I do not know whether the price that it paid for the relevant rights is the right one, but it will certainly shake up the world of sports viewing. However, I do know that in what used to be the International Media Centre down at the Olympic park, BT Sport now has the most phenomenal set of state-of-the-art studios with the best technology. It is in there working at least two years ahead of the schedule that the owners of the park thought would be possible. Broadcasting is a fast-evolving world.

There is one aspect of broadcasting which, however, has not yet featured in this debate. Taking a deep breath, I shall mention advertising. There are some who view the advertising as an opportunity to nip to the kitchen and put on the kettle. However not everybody shares that view. The attention that has been paid to the Christmas advertising from Marks & Spencer and John Lewis is an indication of the fact that advertising is an art form. In Britain, we have some of the best creative work in advertising anywhere in the world. Anybody who has watched American television for any length of time will know that the standard of advertising there leaves a lot to be desired.

The Advertising Association published research which shows that every pound spent on advertising benefits GDP by £6. Who am I to query statistics published by the Advertising Association,although it may have a certain axe to grind? Nevertheless, advertising is a very creative part of our economy, and when we look at broadcasting as a whole, we should not forget the contribution that advertising makes.