Examination of Witness (Questions 200
- 214)
TUESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 1999
SIR ROBIN
BIGGAM AND
MR PETER
ROGERS
200. Why do you think the Davies Committee did
not consider it?
(Sir Robin Biggam) The reason they gave for not going
into it was confidentiality. One appreciates that when you get
down to the detail it would be confidential to the BBC. As a public
corporation making a request for public funds, they have a duty
to disclose sufficient information so that people can pass judgement
on it.
201. Such as new services.
(Sir Robin Biggam) Very much new services, because
the new services in a sense are harder to justify than funding
the existing BBC1 and BBC2 because there is certainly no shortage
of digital capacity and other programme suppliers for these new
digital services.
Mrs Golding: If Mr Wyatt had a problem
asking questions, I am quite certain the Davies Committee would
have had a problem asking questions as well.
Miss Kirkbride
202. I was intrigued a minute ago when you said
there was legislation forthcoming on your own industry. Is that
to replace the original ITV legislation?
(Sir Robin Biggam) The Secretary of State announced
in Cambridge that the intention was that there would be legislation
somewhere into the new Parliament or the start of the new Parliament.
We expect that to be in two to three years' time or thereabouts.
203. Affecting your industry?
(Sir Robin Biggam) Yes.
204. With a view to doing what, do you anticipate?
(Sir Robin Biggam) In our view, given the changes
taking place between analogue and digital, you are moving from
essentially scarce capacity to an abundance of capacity. In our
view that does require new broadcasting legislation simply because
of the sea change the industry is going through. We are finding
that within the existing Acts there are obvious deficiencies which
were not recognised at the time the Acts were passed.
(Mr Rogers) We are currently encouraged by the Secretary
of State to carry out a systematic review of all of our regulatory
measures to see what we can do to simplify, streamline and modernise.
That is at a fairly early stage but I have no doubt that some
part of that will require legislation because we are locked into
current practice at the moment.
205. Going back to whether we should have an
increased licence fee to pay for digital services, could you take
us through your view on the specifics of that? Should the BBC
be doing these digital services or are they provided perfectly
adequately by your own sector? What broadly speaking is your view
on that?
(Mr Rogers) The position is at the moment that we
are not yet convinced that there is a need for an extra licence
fee to cover the BBC for dealing with digital over the next few
years. As you see from the press notice at the back of our document,
they have actually already had considerable funding to do that.
That is not to say there is no case, but we have not seen the
evidence for it. Our concern is if a case is held to be there
that it should take the form of a general increase in the licence
fee and not a specific one which is related to digital. This is
because we fear the deterrent effect on early joiners, particularly
those viewers who either cannot afford or have decided for whatever
reason initially that pay TV is not for them. The whole of digital
is being driven by the pay sector at the moment, by ONdigital
and by Sky, and they only have 30 per cent of the market after
spending huge sums of money to try to set it up. We should be
delighted if that were going to get us to 99 per cent of the market
in the timescales for switch-over, but it will not. Therefore
there has to be some form of counterbalancing move to try to persuade
people who currently decide and will for some time, some for ever,
that pay TV is not for them to switch over to digital. There is
little enough on offer to them at the moment—although we
have some thoughts about what more might be done—but the
one thing they do not need is something which makes it more expensive
to go into digital, and worst of all is a special digital fee
which declines over time and therefore you get benefit for waiting
longer.
206. Which is diametrically opposed to the evidence
we heard last week from Gavyn Davies and Lord Lipsey, who said
they thought it would be an incentive.
(Sir Robin Biggam) May I pick up how important it
is that we attract the 40 to 50 per cent of the population who
are not yet attracted to and may not be able to afford the pay
option. That is where I think the BBC have a very special role.
They were allocated capacity through the multiplex they got for
digital, as were ITV, and frankly there is nothing in the programmes
at the present time which will attract people into digital. All
the broadcasters really have to get together and try to come up
with programmes which are going to help attract people to digital
who have rejected or cannot afford the pay option. That is terribly
important in terms of Government policy and an early switch-off
of the analogue system. It is not there just now. None of the
programmes is really worthy of note, even the Parliamentary Channel
on digital terrestrial is on sound only. I do not know whether
you are aware of that. There are no pictures of you on digital
terrestrial.
Mr Maxton
207. I watch it on cable and satellite too now.
(Sir Robin Biggam) That is all right, you get it on
satellite but on digital terrestrial the Parliamentary Channel
is on sound only and it looks so much better when you can see
people speaking.
208. Is it not other services which will bring
people to digital rather than an increase in the number of channels?
(Sir Robin Biggam) This is digital terrestrial and
this is this very limited audience but it is one quarter of a
per cent of the population.
Miss Kirkbride
209. Is that not an argument for the expansion
of digital services on the BBC?
(Sir Robin Biggam) It could be; it could be.
210. In order to expand the number of people
who are actually watching.
(Sir Robin Biggam) Yes, if they came along with something
which was going to attract more people into digital, that is not
necessarily pay TV which is satellite and cable, but into a free-to-air
digital/terrestrial offering, then I am sure there would be a
lot of sympathy for that.
(Mr Rogers) They really do have scope to increase
penetration by producing more free-to-air services and cracking
good extra ones to attract those viewers who are only interested
in free-to-air to switch to digital. If they were doing that instead
of saying they wanted to double the spend on BBC1 and BBC2 in
an undifferentiated way, we would be in a very different position.
211. Then how should that be paid for? Should
that be done by the existing licensing?
(Sir Robin Biggam) It depends. If they make the case.
Again that is when you have to say if they want an increase in
the licence fee to pay for new and additional services then it
has to go to public consultation and then they can explain in
public what they are actually going to do with the capacity they
have on digital terrestrial. Just now it is only BBC Choice.
(Mr Rogers) If and in so far as the BBC needs an increase
in the licence fee, with switchover in mind, our preference would
be that it should be an increase in the general licence fee and
not a digital supplement.
(Sir Robin Biggam) Not a digital supplement because
that again will switch people off from moving from analogue to
digital.
Chairman
212. The theme which is emerging—a theme
but perhaps the theme—from this entire exercise is efforts
to make the BBC accountable. The Gavyn Davies Committee recommended
that the National Audit Office should be brought in, the Secretary
of State has already brought in consultants, you are recommending
public consultation. The BBC is already accountable to you for
its commercial activities. Do you think the time has come when
the BBC as a whole should be accountable either to you or to some
other appropriate body?
(Sir Robin Biggam) It is fast approaching. We are
not saying it should necessarily be to us but if there is going
to be new broadcasting legislation in the next two to three years,
then it is an issue which does need to be examined. The other
alternative we have to offer is that there should be clear blue
water between the governors and the staff of the BBC. By clear
blue water I mean separate resources available to them, separate
building, and effectively de facto acting as a regulator
of the BBC. There may be one or two signs that it is beginning
to move in that direction, but it would need to be a very, very
clearly defined split and that would help to clarify the split
also between the commercial and the non-commercial interim public
service funded activities of the BBC.
(Mr Rogers) That would pave the way at a later stage,
if that were what Parliament wanted to do, to bring the two together.
On the BBC side you mirror what is now done on the commercial
side and then if at some later stage you wanted to bring them
together, Sir Robin Biggam) It may be better to have two
stabs than one but I am sure there does need to be a change in
the structure of the BBC and a fairly fundamental one.
213. You talk about the BBC mirroring commercial
companies. Every company for which you are responsible—and
you are responsible for the entire sector, apart from the BBC—or
which is responsible to you has a chairman, board of directors
and a chief executive. Is it not therefore anomalous that what
we have in the BBC is a non-executive chairman, a director general
and a board of governors who are selected not for their knowledge
of broadcasting but as various kinds of token, a trade unionist,
a woman, etcetera, who are there allegedly to represent the viewer
but are not seen to represent the viewer because they do not really
ask the viewer what the viewer wants, the kind of consultation
exercise you talked about. You have talked about the need for
a fundamental review of the BBC. Does that not indicate that one
of the parts of such a review is to look at the actual structure
of control and management of the organisation?
(Sir Robin Biggam) If you were going to get a clearer
separation between the governors and the director general and
staff, it would need a fundamental review of the overall structure
of the BBC. We are not here to propose a solution to it because
that goes beyond our remit. We, as regulators of the whole commercial
sector, do believe that the two need to be brought more closely
into alignment at the time of the next Broadcasting Act.
214. Your responses today, both yours and Mr
Rogers', have to a considerable degree been quite iconoclastic
and in my view all the better for that. Is it necessary, do you
not think, for a bit more iconoclasm in high quarters?
(Mr Rogers) I would go along with that. I do think
that the self-regulation of the BBC has delivered some wonderful
material which we have all deeply enjoyed over many years, but
it is simply out of sync with modern concepts of accountability
and openness. To put a case which is perhaps not wholly fair to
those concerned, just over a year ago the ITC publicly criticised
and fined one of its licensees £2 million for fakery. There
was a lot of it going on around the system it turned out. If,
heaven forbid, that programme had been broadcast on the BBC, how
much would you have known about it today and what would have happened
to whom?
Chairman: That is a very good point with
which to conclude this session. Thank you both.
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