Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-94)
13 JULY 2004
Mr Michael Grade, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones and
Professor Fabian Monds
Q80 Chris Bryant: You do accept then
that the audience out there, who write to us on the Committee
all the time, often in green ink or brown ink or whatever—
Mr Grade: Sometimes from Tunbridge
Wells.
Q81 Chris Bryant: —saying that
it is all rubbish, may be right.
Mr Grade: Highly subjective.
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones: They
may be right. I am one of the governors who monitors this objective;
this statement here. We still are not satisfied that we do understand
what the evidence shows. When we say we are going to look at it
further, it is on the basis of already having done further research
and still not being happy about whether we have got to the bottom
of the question: is it BBC broadcasting or is it some more secular
trend in society about less television being watched?
Q82 Chris Bryant: Last year you had an
objective which particularly mentioned art and current affairs
and you are not going to have one for next year. Presumably you
think you have sorted out arts and current affairs.
Mr Grade: We have to a large extent.
However, what the new service licences, which we are introducing
for each of the BBC services, which the governors are going to
introduce as part of the governance reforms, will ensure is that
on a systematic and annual basis, in the dishing out of the money
at the budget stage, each service will be very, very clear what
is required of it, what its remit is and what its requirement
is in terms of the mix of genres. The service licences will obviously
encompass the objectives, but they will be more specific.
Q83 Chris Bryant: Do you think comedy
is good enough on the BBC?
Mr Grade: You can never have enough
good comedy.
Q84 Chris Bryant: That is a no, then.
Mr Grade: No, I did not say that.
There are some good comedies. What is important is that the BBC
is fulfilling its role of developing new talent, particularly
on BBC Three, where there is some great young talent coming through.
The BBC is a fantastic nursery for talent. There has not been
a situation comedy hit on ITV since the year dot. BBC has the
ability to develop talent through its talent initiatives, through
its smaller services which are growing now. I think we have a
terrific track record.
Q85 Chris Bryant: The reason I am pushing
on this area is because in the past you have had clear objectives
in the annual report about specific genres, like comedy four years
ago, like arts and current affairs last year. It seems that you
are accepting that the audience is not convinced that you are
doing well enough in some of these areas, but there is no specific
plan to rectify that.
Mr Grade: I do not think we should
ever regard audiences as satisfied. We have to strive and strive
and strive. I do think the service licences, which we are going
to introduce, will mean that all these areas on all the BBC services,
radio and television, digital or analogue, will come under annual
scrutiny rather than having to wait two or three years before
we get round to looking at comedy again.
Q86 Chris Bryant: A completely different
question. Last year you spent £625,325 on paying people in
lieu of notice, members leaving the executive; 5,391 licence fees.
Do you think that is fair?
Mr Grade: The BBC has a duty to
meet its contractual obligations.
Q87 Chairman: It would be useful if you
looked at some of those bonuses and wondered whether it was a
good idea and whether they were justified.
Mr Grade: It is fair to say that
in the Remuneration Committee under Dame Pauline we are looking
at the bonus scheme.
Q88 Mr Flook: Last year you had a brilliant
objective, number nine, ". . . greater appreciation from
UK audiences for the BBC as an open, creative and trusted public
service organisation". Extremely laudable; good news. It
is not in the new six for this year, the governors' objectives
for 2004-05. That laudable aim which is currently called Objective
9 in this annual report is not there. How will you ensure that
laudable aim, which a lot of us think public service broadcasting
is about, as personified by the BBC, will be an overarching aim
of your six objectives? Number nine is not among the six this
year. Your objectives for this year are on page 23 and page 20.
Mr Grade: If I am correct—and
I am waiting for one of my colleagues to correct me here—last
year was the first time we had stated the objectives and therefore
they were rather pulling together the core values of the BBC.
They are the core values of the BBC and they are in the water
supply of the BBC, if I might put it that way. Because they are
not included in more objectives set for 2004-05 does not mean
that they are not at the heart of everything we do.
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones: There
is always a dilemma when you look at your objectives and this
is a fairly new thing that we are doing. Do you stick with them
when you are not satisfied with them, or do you begin to adjust
them? We felt that some of them did need adjustment. We recognised
that one of the questions which then might be asked was: why is
this objective not in? Is it no longer considered important? That
is not the case. Clearly what we need to do is to ensure, either
in the objectives which are set, or in other mechanisms—and
the important ones now coming on obviously are the grant of the
service licences—that these core activities and these core
values come through. I would hope that you would not have any
doubt that the core value will still be there, even if it is not
stated in this particular year as being an "objective"
in its own right.
Professor Monds: The document
has to be taken as a whole. Just inside the front cover the purpose,
vision and values of the BBC are elaborated and they do provide
an overarching set of values for the BBC in the future. In terms
of the actual specific six objectives, they have the merit of
being specific. Their purpose is outlined on page 23 and they
ought to be taken not only in the context of the overall purpose,
vision and values of the BBC, but also the statements of programme
policy which articulate in very quantitative detail what the BBC
is trying to do. I would suggest that we have not abandoned in
any way the spirit of Objective 9 last year.
Q89 Mr Flook: In which case, I hope in
preparation for coming here before us today, that you will have
read what we wrote last year, having seen last year's report,
that we "found some difficulty in assessing the performance
of the BBC against its objectives given that some were unspecific,
some not readily measurable and some incremental without reference
to the adequacy of current levels of activity". Do you think
that we will be impressed by the six which we shall be looking
at for this coming year, or do you think you will be able to change
our perception of what we thought of last year's and perhaps we
may think of this year's when we write our report.
Mr Grade: I would sincerely hope
that we will be able to provide you with evidence of progress
in meeting these objectives. It has to be seen. I do not regard
these objectives as the beginning and the end of the means by
which the governors will deliver the core values of the BBC. They
have to be seen in the context of the governor's reforms and most
particularly the service licences which have yet to be introduced,
but which hopefully we shall be on track to introduce in time
for the budget round for 2005-06.
Q90 Rosemary McKenna: To emphasise what
Frank Doran said, there is a discussion in Scotland about football
coverage, which is really important for us to look at. On the
very, very plus side, I am delighted that a wonderful comedy called
Still Game is coming on and is being networked throughout
the UK. I hope everybody enjoys it as much as we do. BBC Scotland
has a wonderful record of producing superb comedy. I should like
to ask you about children's programming and children's characters,
the steps you took this year to limit the franchising. Could you
expand on that? I think it is very important and I do not think
many people understand.
Mr Grade: As I understand it,
BBC Worldwide has the rights in certain instances to license characters
for further exploitation through endorsing food or toys or books
or clothing or various things. As a result of considerable debate,
BBC Worldwide now has a policy that they will not, irrespective
of the commercial upside, license BBC controlled intellectual
properties where there is a question about children's health.
I think they have tightened up the procedures quite a lot.
Q91 Rosemary McKenna: Yes, I think so
and I should like to see that spread to other broadcasters. There
is nothing quite as powerful as advertising on television for
children.
Mr Grade: I have a five-and-a-half-year-old
of my own.
Rosemary McKenna: As a new granny I share
that with you, although I do not think the people of Mull would
share that because of the influx of tourists in Balamory; it certainly
has become heavily over-populated in the summer with under-fives,
but then that is a good thing.
Q92 Chairman: I should like to put one
question to you which is more easily put to you since you were
not in charge at the time. I raised in the House of Commons the
publicity campaign conducted by the BBC on licence avoidance.
It is accepted that licence avoidance is a serious issue. There
are statements in your report pointing out that licence evasion
has been reduced. At the same time, the BBC is unique in this
country, not only in that it is the only organisation to receive
a hypothecated tax, but that it is the only organisation which
collects the tax which funds it. There was a period a short time
ago when the licence campaign consisted of a series of posters
which struck me as nasty and ugly, namely "Get one or get
done" and the same poster also stated that the BBC knew every
household in the country which had a television set and did not
have a licence. That seems to me to go very much against the tone
of what the BBC ought to stand for and I believe the kind of tone
which you have been projecting since you became chairman.
Mr Grade: We have a duty, in collecting
the licence fee, to all licence payers to make sure that everybody
pays. Advertising clearly plays a part in effective collection
of the licence fee. Everyone will have their view as to what is
effective advertising and not effective advertising and if we
can encourage people to pay their licence fee and not get into
trouble for not paying, that is a worthy objective. You are then
into a highly subjective issue of tone and so on. As I pay my
licence fee by direct debit—and I double checked that before
I accepted the job—the advertising passed me by. It has
been raised internally as an issue. I should like to look at it
and I should like to think that if we are going to use scare tactics
of that kind, we need to be very certain why we are doing it and
that the tone is appropriate.
Q93 Chairman: I do get complaints from
constituents about the way in which the licensing authority operates
and I have to say that I got a letter at my home in Manchester
rebuking me for not having paid my licence, when for many years
I have paid it by direct debit. The other point I should like
to put to you is that you say, and absolutely rightly, and it
has been the theme ever since you became chairman and ever since
the document you published to pretty wide acclaim on 29 June,
that we are in a transitional period, that you have a lot of material
in this report which comes from the previous regime. What I noticed
last year in the governors' report was a feeling that if any shortcomings
had been demonstrated during that year, it was not the BBC which
was failing its audiences, but its audiences were failing the
BBC. Ethnic minorities were somewhat rebuked for their carelessness
in not watching the BBC or listening to it. On page 13 we still
get some afterglow of that in the second paragraph, the first
paragraph in black type. It says " . . . there has been a
decline in audience perception of the BBC's quality and work needs
to be undertaken to understand this". I would have thought
that work needed to be taken to rectify it actually. Again, in
the very last paragraph on that page you talk about a concern
"about a decline in perceptions of the quality of BBC output
over recent years" but you end by saying "Work will
be undertaken over the coming year to understand audience perceptions
of quality better and in particular to find out whether the perceived
decline in quality relates to the BBC in particular or broadcasting
in general". That sound like a bit of a get-out, does it
not? The responsibility of the BBC is not to see whether people
are disillusioned with broadcasting, but what people think about
the BBC.
Mr Grade: I think it is bad drafting
rather than bad policy. There is a lot of work going on including
one particularly big piece of work which the governors have yet
to take, which will address this. I would not like to come here
next year and be saying anything in this annual report that we
did not feel we could either say we were going to deliver, tell
you how we were going to measure whether it had been delivered
and then tell you what we were able to do if it was not delivered.
Those seem to me the three key stages of everything that we are
going to be doing from now on. Much of my input into the Building
Public Value document, which was in very, very good shape
when I arrived, was really to drill down into very good ideas
and promises of what we were going to deliver via those three
stages: why are we doing it; how do we know we have delivered
it; what do we do if we do not deliver it? Those are the three
questions which we are going to be asking over and over again.
Unless we can satisfy those outside of the BBC, including this
Committee, that is how we are approaching things, it is valueless.
Q94 Chairman: Thank you very much. On
that note of harmony, I think it might be useful to bring this
session to an end. I do not know whether we will have satisfied
Sir Christopher Bland, but at the same time I very much hope that
you found this useful. We have.
Mr Grade: I think it is important.
Chairman: Thank you.
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