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Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) (Con): I am grateful to be called so early in the debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who introduced it.
We are fortunate to have the BBC. It is arguably the most professional and respected broadcaster in the world. It has an unrivalled reputation for quality, with high quality programming not only on television but on radio, with its news and current affairs coverage and its coverage of the arts and music, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. The promenade concerts constitute probably the greatest classical music festival in the world. Its coverage of sport is largely unrivalled. The best that anyone else can hope ever to claim is that its broadcasting is as good as that of the BBC. I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that if we are fortunate in gaining the Olympics in 2012, the coverage of our broadcasters of that great event will, I am sure, show viewers throughout the world what we can do.
We should be in no doubt that the BBC is one of our great national institutions. I believe that we have an interest and a responsibility in this place to secure it. The debate on which we are now embarked, which will last well into the next Parliament, enables us to discharge that obligation in a thorough way. We need to secure the BBC's future in what is already a vastly different broadcasting environment from the one in which it has flourished up to now. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton referred to that. The rapid growth of digital television has surprised many people who were sceptical about how quickly it would be developed.
I have been lucky in my time in this place to have been able to be involved in a number of broadcasting debates and broadcasting Bills. I served on the Home Affairs Select Committee that, in 1988–89, published its own detailed report on the future of our broadcasting, which led to the White Paper, "Choice and Diversity". I served on the Committee that considered the then Communications Bill with my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale)—we represented the Opposition view on that Committee. I have been the secretary of the all-party media group for some time.
I think that it is fair to say that the Select Committee report, on which the debate is based, has provided a good basis, in response to which the Government have published their Green Paper. I shall make a few initial remarks about the Green Paper. The title of the document, "Review of the BBC's Royal Charter: A strong BBC, independent of government", is a welcome and worthwhile goal. As we begin to fathom through the proposals and try to come to a judgment on them, I think that we will want to assess how realistic is the ambition "A strong BBC, independent of government".
It will be difficult for the issues rightly flagged up in the Green Paper to be determined without Government intervention and without decisions being made ultimately by the Government. That is particularly true of funding. The funding review announced by the Secretary of State is welcome, but it will be conducted by
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the Government. As far as I can tell, if we keep the licence fee for a further 10 years or so, in the end it will be the Government who ask Parliament to agree to its cost. Similarly, whether we or the Labour party are in government, decisions must be made about governance, the handling of complaints, competition and digital switchover that will have a significant bearing on the future of the BBC. I welcome the objective of creating a strong BBC independent of Government, but it will be difficult to achieve completely.
The licence fee is the issue that most troubles Members on both sides of the House. On cost, the bounds of acceptability have been under pressure for some time. A licence fee currently costs £121, but it was because people found it difficult to pay that the Government introduced free television licences for the over-75s. I am not sure whether it was a fortunate responsibility, but I was shadow spokesman on culture, media and sport when the Government, against the advice of the Select Committee, decided on an above-inflation increase in the licence fee. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), the then shadow Secretary of State, and I argued against that increase—not because we wanted to vote against it, but because we wanted to have a debate about the issue. We said that the settlement was too generous, and many of our warnings have turned out to be true. In particular, we believed that the BBC would invest heavily in new digital channels that many viewers would be unable to access, as has been said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. It is difficult to see how that problem will be resolved, but until the digital switchover people will be peeved at having to pay a fee while they do not have the opportunity to watch those channels.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath) (LD): The hon. Gentleman rightly said that the issue has already been raised in our debate. For some people, Freeview is the way forward, but for others, even though they have to pay some money up front, Freesat is an option. However, that option is not available to everyone, because planning regulations may prevent them from putting up satellites. That has to be factored into the equation.
Mr. Greenway: I am familiar with that problem in my constituency. It is not realistic to expect everyone in the country to put up a satellite dish.
Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham) (Con): To reinforce that point, according to Ofcom, the Tyne Tees area is likely to be the last area to undergo the digital switchover, and that will probably happen in 2012. As a result, more than 10,000 of my constituents in Hexham and the Tyne valley cannot receive digital terrestrial television until then, which is hugely frustrating for a large number of people. Was my hon. Friend a little disappointed by the Government's one-paragraph response to the Select Committee report? It is vital that the BBC and other terrestrial broadcasters find a way around the problem and that there is a free-to-air satellite service apart from Sky's Freesat.
Mr. Greenway:
My hon. Friend makes his point extremely well. As part of my own constituency is in the Tyne Tees area, I am familiar with that problem, which
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is an example of the friction between the current licence fee and people's belief that they should be getting value for what they are paying. It does not matter whether hon. Members have individual views about whether £121 is good value for money. I think that it is—I mentioned the promenade concerts, and it could be argued that £121 is an extremely good deal for more than 50 concerts on Radio 3 and television when we consider what we would have to pay for a subscription service.
If we are to continue with the licence fee for at least 10 years, its sustainability will depend on the public's perception of value for money. I warmly welcome the Select Committee's consistent argument for setting the licence fee increase at the level of inflation, because the fee now exceeds the bounds of acceptability. Also, we are giving the BBC more money to expand broadcasting services, which the commercial sector is perfectly capable of doing. If we are to keep the licence fee it should be set at a realistic and fair level. Equally, we should continue to put pressure on collection costs. I share the view of a number of hon. Members about the heavy-handed nature of some of the BBC's collection practices, particularly towards people who do not have a television, as their declarations are not always believed.
In the charter renewal and the general redefinition of the BBC's mission, we should ensure that there is a service that can be universally accessed and enjoyed. It should be valued, valuable, unique and of high quality, and should retain and sustain programmes and coverage of events that are important to our national life but which other broadcasters choose not to cover. In the past, we have had arguments with directors-general and chairmen of the board of governors about the ratings war, but we must accept that quality programmes should be popular and that people should want to watch them. That is a difficult balance to strike. We had an argument with Christopher Bland, when he was chairman of the board of governors, about the downgrading of "Yesterday in Parliament". One of my colleagues said, "But you have the licence fee, so you should not be concerned about the fact that people switch off and do something else at 8.45 am. That is what the licence fee is for."
We want the BBC to do things that enrich our cultural diversity and allow innovation without it being constantly concerned about viewing figures or the size of the listening audience. While I am concerned that the licence fee may not last the 10-year period that the Government have in mind—we may have to look at alternatives before the end of that period—it is difficult to envisage an alternative, as the Government's consultation has demonstrated. People should feel that they are buying into the BBC through the licence fee and they should receive something that they value.
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