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Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): I find the right hon. Gentleman's comments very interesting. As he points out, the BBC is not some sort of holy organisation or religious sect, but does he agree that its circumstances and the licence funding arrangement, as he rightly describes them, enables it to be a world-class exemplar for public service broadcasting? Does he also agree that it seems encouraging that the Government have taken on board the important link between the current method of funding the BBC and the direct beneficial consequences on its ability to focus on top-class programming, rather than on ratings or advertising?
Sir Gerald Kaufman: I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, although I will come to one or two issues that relate to the funding in a moment. There is absolutely no doubt whatever that, if the BBC contributed nothing else to our national life and to international life, its contribution, even under the dumbed-down era of the previous director-general, is incomparable: five symphony orchestras, which we simply would not have in this country without the BBC—including, if I may be territorial, the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester—and the proms. All right, the BBC inherited the proms from Henry Wood, but it continues them.
I will just make one self-indulgent point—it may well be the only self-indulgent point that I make in my contribution. [Hon. Members: "No, no. More"] Well, if I am urged, I might expand. Although I am a great admirer of the BBC's contribution to this country's culture—indeed, I have not referred to what I personally believe to be the best of the BBC's television channels, BBC 4—nevertheless, I am using, or perhaps misusing, this moment in my speech to beg Roger Wright, the controller of Radio 3, to get rid of the constant chattering and gibbering that we hear on Radio 3 every morning. There is a presenter, as I understand they have to be called, called Sandy Burnett, who sounds like the gibbering of a demented parakeet, and I very much hope that Roger Wright, in accepting the tribute that I pay to what Radio 3 can be at its best, will get rid of that awful chattering, the requests for e-mails and the other nonsense on what ought to be the most estimable radio channel in the world.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire) (Con):
The right hon. Gentleman's experience in this sector is
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renowned, but does he agree that the amount of time that the BBC uses to promote its digital channels increases the anger of all those people who cannot receive them—they are paying for something that they cannot receive, but they have no option about whether they pay for it—and that, if the roll-out of the digital channels is slower than expected, their anger will grow?
Sir Gerald Kaufman: The hon. Gentleman is right, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport refers several times in her Green Paper to the anger that is created by cross-promotion in BBC programmes. One need not be a critic of the BBC to be concerned about the way in which the BBC is deteriorating in several respects, particularly when viewers and listeners rely to such an extent on the BBC for information, art, entertainment and news.
Mr. David Watts (St. Helens, North) (Lab): Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sir Gerald Kaufman: I will give way, but may I remind my hon. Friend that this is only a three-hour debate and other hon. Members will wish to speak? So, if I can be forgiven, this will be the last time that I give way in my speech.
Mr. Watts: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that many hon. Members—for example, those who represent the north-west—are very concerned about dumbing down and the reduction in regional programming and news? Has the BBC not got an obligation to show a greater commitment to regional programming and regional news?
Sir Gerald Kaufman: I agree with my hon. Friend, and of course, there is a very good chance that that can be rectified when the BBC moves to what it calls its hub in Manchester. I cannot think of any city—or, indeed, any locality in the entire country—to which it is more appropriate for the BBC move to try to deal with the concerns that my hon. Friend expresses.
We who serve on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport accept, as we did 10 years ago, that whatever concerns one has about the licence, it is the only viable way to fund a public BBC, but I would tell my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that we, like her, having accepted that the licence must continue, ask that certain matters that relate to it be rectified because the BBC is in the unique position of being the only collector of its own funding—the only hypothecated tax in the country, and the only one collected by its recipient with rules laid down by the recipient. I am sure that every hon. Member will know of examples from her or his constituency of the anomalous regulations that relate to the licensing, or otherwise, of sheltered housing. When I had a certain problem in my constituency, I wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. She referred me to the chairman of the BBC, who referred me back to my right hon. Friend. What we did not get in the end was a solution to the issue, and I am grateful to her for wanting to find one.
I hope also that my right hon. Friend will move forward from what she says in her Green Paper about the penalty for not having a licence and accept in full our recommendation that failing to pay for a licence should
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be decriminalised and become a civil offence. All the statistics show that the predominant number of those who fail to pay for their licence are single mothers on low incomes, and turning them into criminals is not acceptable. Incidentally, to continue the ghastly campaign by the BBC, warning us in the most threatening Big Brother way that we will all become criminals if we do not pay for our licence is unacceptable. In my own case, I was sent a threatening letter, asking me why I had not paid my licence fee, when I pay it by direct debit—thus showing that the way in which such matters are dealt with is not absolutely brilliant.
Meanwhile, I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider adopting the recommendation that issuing fixed penalty notices may well be the best way to deal with those who fail to pay for their licence. When we were discussing my right hon. Friend's statement last week, I became conscious of the fact that there is a lot of support for the view that, although some of us have accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance that the licence is the most appropriate way to fund the BBC, we believe that it is the most appropriate way to fund only the BBC and that the recommendations made in several quarters to top-slice it to fund other public service broadcasting is just not acceptable. Our constituents will be just about ready to pay the licence fee to fund one major broadcasting organisation, but I do not believe that the use of the licence fee as a kitty to finance other ventures will be acceptable to the overwhelming majority of licence fee payers.
I am very sorry that my right hon. Friend did not find it possible to accept our recommendation that the BBC should be placed on a statutory basis, rather than via a charter. I understand completely her concerns about any possibility of either Government or Parliament intervening in the workings of the BBC, but let us consider Channel 4, which has been a statutory organisation throughout its existence—through the wisdom of Lord Whitelaw, who was responsible for its foundation—as has S4C as well. Channel 4 has been, if one sets aside the Hutton episode, far more controversial during its existence than the BBC has ever been. It has a far more aggressive news programme than anything that the BBC screens or broadcasts, yet nobody has ever been concerned for a moment that Channel 4 would be subject to interference from the Government or from Parliament. I hope that before we get to the White Paper my right hon. Friend may be willing to reconsider the recommendation.
One of the issues to which I have already referred—my right hon. Friend rightly devotes considerable space to it in the Green Paper—is digital switchover. We are reaching a time when digital switchover, for most people, will not be a problem. People are moving towards reception of digital TV themselves, either by Sky, cable or Freeview. It is extremely important that nobody should be excluded from digital reception when the switchover takes place. The recommendation that we make in paragraph 3 of our report is that the Government should give
"serious consideration to the need for measures . . . to make digital switchover affordable and practical to people on low incomes and those with special needs."
I do not believe that that has been given sufficient attention by my right hon. Friend in the Green Paper. I hope that as she moves towards the White Paper she will accept that it is an extremely important matter.
Like a number of my hon. Friends who are in the Chamber, I represent a constituency with a good deal of deprivation, with many people living on benefits. That is through no fault of their own. It is extremely important that such people, often with young children, should not be excluded from TV reception when analogue is turned off.
What my right hon. Friend sets out in the Green Paper with regard to governance, with more than a nod to the Committee's report, makes a great deal of sense, but with one exception. The exception is my concern at the idea of the chairman of the BBC being the chairman of what my right hon. Friend calls the BBC trust. The huge mess into which the BBC got itself under Mr. Davis and Mr. Dyke was due, to a considerable degree, to Mr. Davis defending, almost obsessively, the system of BBC governance. There was the notorious Sunday evening meeting, for example,
Many of us who are delighted with the appointments of Michael Grade and Mark Thompson are worried that the Green Paper and the charter and agreement might be, as it were, fashioned in their image. We cannot always rely on such absolutely first-class people holding the two top positions in the BBC. Indeed, the people who they succeeded were very far from being absolutely top class, and that is me being kind and generous. Whatever my right hon. Friend fashions, I put to her that it should be in place to deal with the worst contingencies rather than leaving them to the albeit admirable people who now run the BBC. I am pleased that in the Green Paper my right hon. Friend accepts what we are saying in our report about the need for professionals who understand the media and business to be on the BBC trust. We have only to look at the antics of Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, who claimed to cause a fuss about the Hutton issue while at the same time going on the "Today" programme regularly to take sides on the Hutton issue, to realise how important it is that we get the right people.
I hope that while my right hon. Friend pays attention to our recommendation that what she calls the trust should sit in public, she will decide that it ought to sit in public, as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States does, for example. In this country, in many public bodies, there is too much of a net curtains attitude—the idea that things are too important to be conducted in front of the children. The children in this case are the people who pay the licence fee and fund the BBC. I hope that my right hon. Friend will think about that tendency. I hope also that she will have another think about making the details of BBC finances available to the National Audit Office.
In a curious way, all of us—with misgivings and with some disagreements—have reached a consensus about the future of the BBC. That is right because it is an exceptionally important broadcasting organisation. I hope that high as our opinion is of Michael Grade and Mr. Thompson, they will not be complacent in believing that all the problems are over. By the time that the White Paper is published, I hope that my right hon. Friend will
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have assuaged some of the misgivings that remain so that we can all go forward to support the BBC into the wholly digital age.
1.16 pm
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