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Mr. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab):
I begin with an apology: I have a ministerial meeting at 3.30 pm and I shall therefore be absent for the winding-up speeches.
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I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). On Monday, we held a dinner in his honour because he has chaired the Select Committee for 13 years and he will not chair it again. The high esteem in which he is held was shown by the attendance of so many hon. Members who served from 1992 to 1997 and from 1997 to 2001. We have enjoyed the fun and especially the intellectual rigour under his chairmanship.
Let me consider the duration of the charter. We have Departments for education, health and foreign affairs. Does anyone in their right mind believe that we will not have such Departments in 10 years? Of course we will. Does anyone in their right mind believe that the BBC will not be here in some form in 10 years? Of course it will. Why, therefore, do we need a charter for 10 years? Why is that such a magical period? The charter's duration has always been inconsistent—for example, it has been for nine months and for three years. Why, when we are confronting the greatest change in technology, should we consider granting the charter for 10 years? We must be careful. I do not accept that it is being renewed for five years with a review. The BBC will always be with us, so what is so precious about 10 years, five years, one year and so on? That debate has not been held in the public domain.
The debate is especially important now because, if we had held it three years ago, no one would have mentioned an iPod or broadband. Those two innovations alone have caused phenomenal change in the way in which we do business and conduct ourselves around the world. Who is to say that there will be no son of iPod or son of broadband in the next two or three years? The pace of change will increase phenomenally and any public sector broadcaster needs to change at the same pace. That is impossible and, therefore, although I do not believe that the argument about the duration of the charter is fatuous, I wish that it would go away. There will always be a BBC and I support the Select Committee's recommendation for a statutory basis. That is the easiest and cleanest way to resolve the matter.
There is another reason for putting the arrangements on a statutory basis. When we want to put a question about the BBC on the Order Paper, we have to go through an interesting process. I had to ask the Clerks whether could I table the question, because it does not come under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State. I did that, but I was then told that it did actually come under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State but not of the House. So I wrote to the Secretary of State—not the present one—and he said, "Actually, it is not my jurisdiction. It is the jurisdiction of the governors." So I wrote to the chairman of the governors, and he said that the matter did not come under his jurisdiction, but under that of Parliament. These things go round and round. If the arrangements were put on a statutory basis, there would be an obligation to answer such questions.
All the fudging that we have talked about this afternoon has been talked about for quite a while, including issues relating to the National Audit Office and other things that we want. Our discussions are taking place round the edge of the issues because we cannot get to the meat. We cannot get what we want, but we should be able to because we are elected Members
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acting on behalf of the public. We should be able to cross-examine the BBC in real depth, especially on its accounts. I hope that the Secretary of State will give some more thought to the statutory versus charter argument, and to the length of the charter.
On independent productions, not only has the BBC failed to reach its targets, but I do not think that it wants to reach them. This presents a big cultural problem. Let us raise the bar to 50 per cent., because that would make the BBC achieve 50 per cent., and let us make that a minimum. How should we do that? Let us consider what the BBC is proposing and try to understand the model involved. Let us imagine that I am the head of BBC documentaries, for example, and therefore also the commissioning head of BBC documentaries. I would get inside offers as well as outside offers, but I could not be impartial. Will the Government consider the ITV network centre model that was created 10 years ago? It operated under a different regime, in which there were many more independent television operators. Under that model, bids had to be made to centre and against the independents. The head of drama or documentaries at ITV network centre would then say, "This is the best proposal; we will go with this." That was quickly accepted as the best model. One of the reasons that the 25 per cent. target cannot be achieved is that the system is not transparent inside the BBC. If the BBC cannot solve this problem, we will have to do it for them. It needs a model like the ITV network centre model that will give people inside and outside the BBC the chance to bid. Such a system would be fair. The present system is not, which is why we have problems.
I am uncertain about the move to Manchester, because Manchester is already a substantial artistic and cultural centre in the north-west. If Government regions have to look outside the M25 and take poverty indicators into account, I cannot see why the BBC should not have to do the same. What is wrong with Sunderland, for example? I cannot see what would be wrong with establishing another media centre somewhere else in Britain. Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester are already well established.
Furthermore, the £500 million cost of the move to Manchester is simply unacceptable. It equates to the cost of five major hospitals or 40 community hospitals, and such expenditure is intolerable. Under the proposed trust, a director-general could say, "We are moving to Manchester", only for the trust to say, "Oh, hold on. We haven't approved that." That would upset all the staff involved and all sorts of discussions would ensue about which departments were moving and which were not. That is not the way to run a company. I shall give the new trust some time, but my instinct tells me that the governance of the BBC should involve a FTSE 100 system. If that works for the companies involved, it should be good enough for the BBC. I would use that method to run the BBC, rather than having a trust.
I am a huge fan of top-slicing. If it was correct, in the 1920s and 1930s, to see the BBC as a cultural icon for the nation—in a different way from how it is seen today—and if it was correct for it to have five orchestras, why is it not possible for the BBC to have a film centre? Film is one of the great cultural institutions in this country, so why does not the BBC make films? I do not see the logic there. If the BBC is a great cultural icon with five orchestras, it should also make films. Less than
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£10 million of the BBC's £2.7 billion income went into making films, yet it has bought £78 million-worth of American films to be shown in Britain. All that money could have gone to our nascent, youthful film makers here. Why should they all have to go to Hollywood? Top-slicing is critical in that regard. We could include a film option. Why, too, is there no community channel in the BBC? Why are there no education, arts or sports channels? Why is there no UK film channel?
The BBC now has BBC3 and BBC4. Before that, it had BBC Prime and BBC Choice. They lost between £500 million and £600 million, and hardly anyone watched them. Still no one watches BBC3, and only a few people watch BBC4. They cost £120 million each, which is a huge sum. The BBC might not want to provide them, but people out there would like an arts channel, a film channel and a sports channel. How can we get a public sector broadcasting model that is more nimble and nifty if we do not have top-slicing? I encourage the Secretary of State to think again about that.
On the question of Ofcom and who should regulate the BBC, it would be ironic if the public service publisher model were delivered by Ofcom—however it might be funded—resulting in Ofcom regulating a brand-new public service publisher but not regulating the BBC. That would be madness. The regulator must ultimately be Ofcom. That is logical. It would not be sensible to set up an alternative Ofcom just for the BBC. Will the Secretary of State think again about the role of Ofcom in this regard?
On how we are viewed overseas, we talk about the BBC being one of the great bastions of broadcasting, and it is. The BBC World Service is sensational. It is one of our great cultural battalions overseas, along with the Open university and the British Council. However, BBC World television is not sensational but embarrassing. BBC News 24 is not good—it, too, is embarrassing. If the BBC cannot do that properly, why do not we put out a tender and ask UK companies to run those two channels? I bet that ITV News, Sky and the BBC could come together to run a really effective BBC News 24 on half the money that is currently spent. I bet, too, that that would produce a cultural icon that would represent the best of the BBC and provide all the necessary programmes from the independents. I no longer accept that the BBC is the best in that field, and that is a problem that has not been examined properly in the Green Paper.
2.17 pm
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