Broadcasting

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Karen Bradley)]

I beg to move,

That this House approves the draft Agreement (Cm 9332), between the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was laid before this House on 15 September 2016.

I start with an apology. Although I am delighted to be here for the debate, I will have to leave at some point this afternoon—I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the House will forgive me—because we have, as Members will know, a magnificent celebration of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes. It was an enormous pleasure to be in Manchester with them yesterday, and I look forward to seeing them again today.

I am delighted to welcome the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) to his place. It is a great pleasure to see him sitting opposite me, and I am sure that we will enjoy many happy debates across the Dispatch Box.

The BBC is the best broadcaster in the world, and it is widely recognised as such throughout the world. Despite what some people would have the world believe, the Government know that the BBC is one of our greatest institutions and must be nurtured and cherished. The fact that we received more than 190,000 submissions to our consultation shows how deeply people care about the BBC. It is, therefore, quite right that the changes we are making to the BBC will strengthen it, secure its funding, protect it, decouple the charter from the electoral cycle and ensure that the BBC not only survives but thrives.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has talked about providing appropriate funding for the BBC to make sure that it is funded well. At the same time, the Government have inappropriately imposed on the BBC the costs of free licences for the over-75s and of overseas monitoring for the security services and the Foreign Office. What does she have to say to that?

[Karen Bradley]

I have also enjoyed sparring with the hon. Gentleman across the Dispatch Box. I will come on to the details of the funding later, but I believe that this funding settlement is a strong one that puts the BBC on a sustainable footing with an inflationary increase in the licence fee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

The funding settlement is to pay for the very best BBC, which we all want to see. I am absolutely confident that this funding settlement will provide that.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Karen Bradley]

No, I will make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I will come back to funding shortly, but I want to put on record the fact that the draft charter contains a few small, technical omissions and errors. We will publish shortly a revised charter that includes all those points, on which I know some hon. and right hon. Members have picked up.

The BBC royal charter and agreement will support a BBC that makes and broadcasts world-class content; that provides impartial, high-quality news; that is independent, transparent, and accountable; and that works with, rather than against, the rest of the United Kingdom creative sector. The BBC director-general, Lord Hall, hailed the draft charter as

“the right outcome for the BBC and its role as a creative power for Britain”.

The new royal charter will make the BBC stronger in a number of ways. It will increase the BBC’s independence, improve its regulation, make it more transparent and accountable to licence fee payers, and make it better reflect the whole United Kingdom. First of all, the BBC will become more independent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian C. Lucas]

rose—

[Kelvin Hopkins]

rose—

[Karen Bradley]

I have taken several interventions, and I am afraid I want to make some progress.

We are making the BBC more transparent and accountable, as is only right for an institution that receives so much public money and means so much to the public. The salaries of individuals who earn £150,000 and above will be made public. There will also be a full, fair and open competition for the post of chair of the new BBC Board. The National Audit Office will become the BBC’s financial auditor, and it will be able to conduct value-for-money studies of the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries. The NAO is held in very high regard, and it has extensive experience of scrutinising commercial and specialised organisations such as Network Rail and the security services.

Finally, the Government have listened carefully to those who said that the BBC must better reflect and represent each of the home nations. They are right. The charter provides for a strengthened public purpose, emphasising the fact that the BBC has a central role in the creative economy across the UK’s nations and regions. Appointments to the unitary board of members for the nations will need the agreement of the devolved Minister or, for the England member, the Secretary of State. The charter obliges the BBC to appear before Committees and to lay its annual reports and accounts in the devolved legislatures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I particularly draw Members’ attention to the fact that I have only recently stood down as vice-chair of the all-party group on the BBC.

May I say how much we are looking forward to working with the new Secretary of State and her team? She was generous and engaged in constructive dialogue when she was a Home Office Minister, and I hope that we can continue that relationship in our new posts. I also wish to thank my predecessors in this role, my hon. Friends the Members for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who has shown that he has not lost his tenacity or his energy in this policy area, and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who offered such robust scrutiny of the White Paper when it was discussed earlier in the year.

The Labour party welcomes the fact that the charter provides the BBC with the funding and security it needs as it prepares to enter its second century of broadcasting. The BBC embodies those enduring British values of hard work, creativity, innovation and co-operation. It helps to ensure that Britain’s voice is heard around the world, and it has informed and entertained countless millions of listeners, viewers and web users. It did so once again over the summer with its truly exceptional coverage of the Olympics in Rio, and I know that the whole House will agree that we should acknowledge that on the day we celebrate the achievements of our athletes by throwing a fantastic party in Trafalgar Square later.

While we welcome the charter, we have some misgivings, as the Secretary of State has seen, about the responsibilities that the BBC has been obliged to accept. In particular, we are extremely concerned about the Government’s decision to force the BBC to meet the cost of providing free TV licences to the over-75s. That was done without meaningful public consultation and little parliamentary debate, and it was part of a deal that was made behind closed doors.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as shadow Secretary of State; I am sure he will enjoy the job.

The imposition of the cost of licences for over-75s was carried out at the same time as the charter was being negotiated. Does that not imply that a degree of duress was involved in making the BBC accept that decision?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Watson]

I hope that I have not given the hon. Gentleman the impression that I do not think viewers need value for money—they certainly do. The transparency measures agreed by both sides of the House have helped to ensure that the value-for-money case is made internally within the BBC.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Hon. Members are eliding public spending, which is paid for by taxation, and licence fee spending, which might be seen as a relatively regressive form of taxation, but is not public funding in the same sense.

[Mr Watson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

We will always make the case for a strong, independent and well-funded BBC. That was what we did in government and it is what we intend to do in opposition. I hope that we can move on from the days when a small group of campaigners routinely questioned whether the BBC should exist at all. For a handful of people, the licence fee that has funded the BBC for nearly a century is an aberration. They believe that the only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit. Perhaps they believe that 40p a day is an outrageous price to pay for the BBC’s startling array of television and radio news coverage, current affairs programmes, natural history, drama, comedy and children’s programmes. Perhaps they would rather see the BBC smaller and a little duller. I do not believe that and the British public do not believe it either. That was why there were 192,000 responses to the Government’s consultation on the future of the BBC, and why the overwhelming majority were favourable and supportive.

I pay tribute to the campaigners whose tireless work helped to deliver a BBC charter that is likely to secure its future: the Great BBC campaign, founded by Lord Waheed-Alli and Charlie Parsons; the Save our BBC campaign; the 38 Degrees petition to protect our BBC, which now has over 390,000 signatures; and all the creative industry trade unions, including the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union, Equity, the Musicians’ Union, the National Union of Journalists and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. All came together in a coalition to defend the BBC. They raised awareness, generated support and helped to deliver those 192,000 responses to the Government’s consultation. On both sides of the House, we are indebted to them all.