Helen Goodman
Main Page: Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland)(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The BBC is an important national institution and I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate which has, as other hon. Members have said, come at a timely moment. Obviously, the BBC has special funding arrangements. The licence fee is unavoidable for anybody who wants to watch television. As a consequence, or perhaps in recognition of its very high status, 96% of the public use the BBC in an average week.
However, as other hon. Members have said, a series of scandals have rocked the BBC in the past few years. The most serious was clearly the Savile scandal. It looks now as if perhaps 500 people were victims of this man, and the initial horrors have been followed by wrong editorial decisions. Then there were serious financial problems—£100 million squandered on the digital initiative, and massive executive pay-offs. It was not just the sums of money, but the mismanagement of the agreement to these pay-offs that was criticised. Those massive pay-offs were partly caused by the fact that there was excessive pay at the top of the management of the organisation.
We on the Labour Benches believe that the BBC must get a grip. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has said that
“it is odd that though the BBC rightly sees itself as different from commercial broadcasters—in terms of how it is regulated and treated in terms of market share . . . they argue that it’s the market pure and simple which should dictate their pay.”
She went on to say that
“they cannot have it both ways.”
The consensus across the House today is that the BBC cannot have it both ways. Hon. Members also referred to the editorial errors in the case of the “Newsnight” descriptions of Lord McAlpine, and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke about North Korea. I thought she was going to talk about the questionable practices in the documentary about North Korea, which also raised concerns among many people.
All those episodes seem to me to show that the BBC’s management needs to be improved. They also show that its governance has failed, because the Trust did not fulfil its role of defending the licence fee payer. In this situation, we are presented with the question, “What is to be done?” Some hon. Members believe that the model has failed and the licence fee should be abandoned. The Secretary of State has said that she believes that the National Audit Office should have further powers and rights to go through the BBC’s accounts. I hope that she will say a little more about that when she responds to the debate. In particular, I hope that she will explain how she would achieve that while avoiding either the reality or the perception that politicians are interfering with the BBC.
The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), made it clear that he believes that the BBC should be considerably smaller and that there is a question mark over whether it can continue to be financed through the licence fee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) proposed a new model for a mutual BBC, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) all seemed far more supportive of the status quo and the current model—
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but I am not all that supportive of the current model. I think that the role of the chairman of the Trust and that of the director-general have to be very clearly delineated and separated, which I do not think they are at present.
Helen Goodman
I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon, although I must say that is a rather detailed point, compared with the radical proposals coming from the Government side of the House.
When we consider the future of the BBC, it is interesting to look at what the director-general said last week in a major speech. He said that he wanted to see public service at the heart of the BBC and promised leaner management and further cuts of £100 million. It is true that some of the recent mistakes have been phenomenally costly, so a “right first time” culture would be incredibly helpful. He spoke at length about the possibilities for the BBC of technical innovations, including improvements to iPlayer, a BBC store and iPlayer radio.
The director-general also spoke about the significant contribution the BBC not only makes now, but can make in future, to the creative industries generally in this country. I think that is something we would all applaud. The fact that we put a 25% quota on the BBC to commission externally has turned out to be an extremely useful way of promoting and supporting other creative industries, and indeed exports, in this country. His proposals for a partnership with the British Library and a digital space with other institutions were extremely positive, as were his proposals for increasing the number of apprenticeships and the amount of education for young people in new technology. He mentioned something that I think we have all agreed with over the course of today’s debate: the importance of seeing more investigative news reporting. He also wants to strengthen the BBC’s global news presence, which will be facilitated through the incorporation of the World Service.
Although the director-general made a number of important statements about the BBC’s content and the possibilities for technology, he said less about the management. That has been a major concern in this debate and I think that it would be helpful if the BBC paid significantly more attention to it. In addition to the issue of top pay, we will obviously look at governance in the process of royal charter renewal. Rather than leaping to some new model, I think that it would be more helpful to have a proper royal charter process that includes consulting the public. As my right hon. Friend said, the fact that the governance arrangements did not work in the Savile episode, for example, does not prove that the model is broken; it demonstrates that the individuals did not fulfil their roles as well as they could have done. I urge caution before we tear up the current model and move into a whole new world—I am pleased to see the Secretary of State nodding in agreement.
It is also worth considering the future of the BBC in relation to the other large media organisations and the importance of maintaining media plurality in this country. The position of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that we should of course include the BBC in the overall understanding of the shares when measuring media markets, but that does not mean that we should apply the same remedies to the BBC as to other media organisations, and that is because of the different governance arrangements. I am not saying that those arrangements or transparency—the point made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan—cannot be improved, because I am sure that they can, but I think that all Members of the House must acknowledge that the BBC has a very different place from the private commercial operators.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I think that the hon. Lady is right up to a point, but surely we should also be looking forward when it comes to governance issues. Many of our local newspapers across the country are dying because they cannot monetise their online provision. In the United States, however, many local newspapers are thriving because they can monetise their online provision, and that is because they do not have a very big BBC online presence providing that content. I think that we need to look very carefully at that when we talk about media plurality.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is a long-standing concern that the BBC should not use its privileged position to compete unfairly with other market operators. Local newspapers have claimed that stories are taken from them and that they are not paid for them properly, which obviously is something we need to address if we are to have plurality at both local and national level.
When we are looking at transparency and public accountability, I think that it is worth thinking about ways in which the public can be involved in commissioning. The best job in television must be that of commissioning editor. I think that a more open approach to the public on commissioning would be extremely welcome. The director-general says that he wants the public to feel that they are the owners of the BBC and that it is theirs, and we say amen to that, but we do not want it to be a piece of rhetoric; we want it to be a piece of reality.
Hon. Members also spoke about the management and culture of the organisation. Clearly, the need to be more conscious of value-for-money issues is still essential. Only last month senior executives gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, and it was clear on that occasion that there is still some way to go. We would also like to see more women in the BBC, both behind the scenes and on air. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) spoke about the serious cases of bullying that the National Union of Journalists has highlighted to us. One of the things that the NUJ has said—it is a good and reasonable point—is that the BBC should have an independent, external process for handling bullying or harassment cases. Doing everything in-house does not give members of staff the confidence that they need in the system.
I want to raise an important point about standards. There is a clear watershed on television; the content is suitable for children earlier in the evening and suitable for adults later. My impression is that the BBC does not operate radio to the same standards and that, from time to time on Radio 1 and Radio 2, there are songs, lyrics and language that are really not suitable for children. We cannot expect families always to put children into a silo of separate channels—that is not how people lead their lives, and the BBC must take that into account.
I felt that the criticisms made about BBC bias by some hon. Members, in particular the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), were a little unfair. We can all think of occasions when we have been enraged by what we have heard on the BBC, but feeling extreme irritation sometimes does not mean that there is bias overall.
We want to tackle the issue of top pay and strengthen accountability, but we must acknowledge that three quarters of the population believe that the BBC maintains high standards. The most important guarantee of that is continued editorial independence. Although I completely understand that the BBC must evolve with changes in technology, in the end what we look for from it are values and commitment to truth and independence.
I end on a personal note. My mother is Danish. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in world war two, the Danish relied completely on the BBC to get the truth. Those high standards of editorial independence and truthfulness are as relevant today, and will be as relevant in 10 years’ time, as 70 years ago. Those standards are what we want from the BBC.