Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has made an assessment of public accountability mechanisms for the BBC in the event of it being granted a permanent Charter.

The Culture Secretary has set out that while the structures and the funding for the BBC will continue to be negotiated every several years, she will seek to end the bizarre situation where if the Charter isn’t agreed in time, the BBC ceases to exist.

More broadly Charter Review is looking at a range of options to ensure the BBC is accountable to the public it serves, and in the Green Paper we made clear our view that we think that it is necessary for there to be regular reviews of the BBC as an organisation. As part of the Charter Review process, we are continuing to look at the responses to the public consultation and we will set out policy decisions in a White Paper, expected to be published later this year.