Nigel Huddleston
Main Page: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Mid Worcestershire)
Maria Eagle
I do not agree with that analysis.
The proposed new unitary board will run the BBC. In his statement on the White Paper in the House on 12 May, the Secretary of State suggested, in effect, that the new board would be like the BBC Trust but without its current regulatory functions, which would go to Ofcom, but in my view that stretches credulity. Page 51 of the White Paper states:
“The board as a whole will have responsibility for setting the overall editorial direction and the framework for editorial standards.”
There is to be only one board instead of two, and that unitary board will run the BBC in all meaningful senses. The Secretary of State plans to enable Ministers to appoint up to half the new board members, including the chair and deputy chair. That creates an unprecedented power for the Government directly to influence those who are responsible for editorial matters at the BBC.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Page 50 of the White Paper clearly states that the appointment of the chair
“will be subject to a confirmatory hearing before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee”,
and that the appointments of other members of the board will be subject to discussions with the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Is the hon. Lady not satisfied with that?
Maria Eagle
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman both for promoting me to the Privy Council and for suggesting that I might be a member of the Tory party, which was probably going a bit too far.
It is, of course, true that some safeguards are implied in the proposals, and that is to be welcomed, but how the proposals look is also important to those outside. I think that simply reiterating that the director-general is the editor-in-chief does not really allay the fears created by the Secretary of State’s plans. I also think that his recent record in respect of public appointments does not reassure those of us who are worried. When the independent panel that was established to appoint a trustee to the National Portrait Gallery failed to shortlist his five favoured candidates—three of whom were Tory donors and one of whom was an ex-Minister—he simply scrapped the appointments process, and attempted to impugn the integrity of the chair of the panel. This prompted a furious slap-down from the now-retired Commissioner for Public Appointments, who accused him of exercising political interference in a supposedly objective public appointments process. We only know about this debacle because Sir David Normington’s letter was leaked.
Members on both sides of the House have expressed concern about the implications of the White Paper for the BBC and its editorial independence. The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) might have had his concerns allayed, but he has described editorial independence as a red line. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee Chairman said as recently as yesterday that the plans had prompted “a lot of concern”, and the Voice of the Listener and Viewer has said that
“there remain a number of concerns relating to independence”.
It is still not too late for the Secretary of State to make it clear that the appointments to the new unitary board will be made through a demonstrably independent means and that he will not seek to influence the outcome of the process. Indeed, it would benefit him if he were to do that. Why does he not undertake today to agree that the Commissioner for Public Appointments should run the process of appointing the board members, and restrict his own power to appointing those people who have been selected through such an independent process? He really needs to provide proper reassurance, and he can do so. Such an undertaking would be heartily welcomed across the House.
Ofcom will have a new role setting service licences and quotas for the BBC. It is important that this regulatory regime should not be used to interfere with the editorial and creative freedom of the BBC to use licence fee payers’ money to produce the programming it decides to produce. There must be no efforts from the Government to pursue the wilder proposals on scheduling and so-called distinctiveness that did not, in the end, find their way into the White Paper. We will seek assurances that Ofcom’s role in this respect will not impact unduly on the BBC’s editorial independence or be a weapon to be used by the Government or the BBC’s commercial rivals to interfere with the BBC’s creative freedom.
The BBC must be seen to retain its financial independence as well as its editorial independence. In that respect, the explicit statement on page 97 of the White Paper that
“the licence fee is not solely for the use of the BBC”
is deplorable, and could impinge on the BBC’s financial independence. I am glad that there is to be no more top-slicing of the licence fee. That would have constituted a breach of last year’s funding agreement—of which the House knows I have been critical in any event—between the BBC and the Government. The White Paper proposes the creation of a contestable pot of licence fee payers’ money, worth £20 million a year over three years. This sets an unwelcome precedent. Governments of all stripes have been too keen in recent years to see the licence fee as money for the Treasury to allocate to its own priorities. I believe that licence fee payers’ money should properly be seen as belonging to the BBC to enable it to fulfil its remit. It should be for the BBC to decide how it wishes to do that, not for the Secretary of State or the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Secretary of State has said his Department will consult on this proposal. If the consultation responses are against establishing the contestable pot, will he undertake to drop the idea? Will he tell us today when his consultation will start and when he intends it to finish? Can he confirm that the same levels of transparency and accountability that apply to BBC funding will be applied to this contestable pot if his pilot goes ahead? Has he considered the fact that this could be categorised as state aid if it is given to other broadcasters to use, as he no doubt intends?
We agree that the BBC should be as transparent and accountable as possible in relation to the licence fee payers’ money that it spends, so we support the idea of the National Audit Office being allowed to investigate the publicly funded areas of the BBC. However, allowing the NAO to audit the BBC’s commercial operations, which are not in receipt of any licence fee payers’ money, could place those operations at a significant market disadvantage. What argument is there for doing that? The commercial operations of museums, for example, are not open to the NAO scrutiny, and I know of no organisation in the private sector that receives public money that is subject to NAO scrutiny.
Failure to get this right could have the effect of reducing returns for BBC Worldwide, thereby limiting the extent to which the BBC is able to subsidise the licence fee through its commercial operations. The money that it makes from BBC Worldwide operations currently amounts to more than 12.5% of the BBC’s entire content budget, which would save licence fee payers the equivalent of more than £10 each if the licence fee had to be increased to cover a shortfall of that amount.