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Chris Bryant: I have already accepted that it is a regressive tax, but the benefits accrue primarily to the poorest people in the country. That is one of the great strengths of the licence fee.
It is important not to succumb to the market failure argument for the licence fee and the BBC. I do not want a BBC that provides only programmes that would not be provided elsewhere, such as Shakespeare, Schiller and Shostakovich. I know from speaking to my
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constituents that they value many of the programmes on public service broadcasting that I suspect the hon. Member for Blaby least enjoys—
Michael Fabricant: And does not watch.
Chris Bryant: Yes, so he has no idea whether they are good.
It is important that the licence fee ensures that something is available for everyone. Historically, the BBC devoted too much of its time, energy, budget and creativity on a particular brand of middle England listening and viewing. It is entirely right that in recent years it has been more courageous. One of the best programmes produced by the BBC in recent years, although it is not much watched or commented on, is "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps". Everyone in the Chamber seems to be staring at me as though they had never heard of it. It is a fine programme.
We have heard reference to the fact that the BBC makes provision for the cultural elite of the land through BBC4, but that it reaches wider audiences through BBC3. If the licence fee is to be sustainable into the future, it is important that the BBC makes provision for young people and people from different ethnic backgrounds, and not simply to the political class that likes to hear itself on Radio 4 at the end of the day or the next morning.
The licence fee is a good principle, because other methods of funding public service broadcasting around the world simply do not work and are inadequate. Conservative Members have argued that it is important that the licence fee should not be used as a means of rigging competition in the market. They should acknowledge that countries such as Germany, where there is a mixed system with a licence fee and advertising funding, have precisely those problems, but writ large. It is important that the licence fee alone should fund the BBC.
The system of funding public service broadcasting in Holland was changed recently. The licence fee was abolished, and it is now funded with a percentage of tax take every year.
Mr. Siôn Simon (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab): If the licence fee is important in maintaining what is good about the BBC, which it may be, is it not important by the same logic to get rid of at least part of the licence fee to put right what is wrong with the BBC? If the means of funding protects what is good, does it not also protect what is bad and prevent reform?
Chris Bryant: My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I shall come to some of the dangers of a monolithic BBC. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) referred to the BBC sometimes being too focused in London. Similarly, in Wales it is sometimes too focused south of the M4. It is difficult to hear voices from the valleys or north Wales on BBC services.
There are problems with the licence fee, but we must ensure that there is scrutiny, not by politicians trying to tell broadcasters what to put on television, but by exposing them to the scrutiny of those who pay the licence fee and whom we represent. I do not believe that there is much support in the land for advertising to
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support the BBC's finances. That would make it more difficult for other commercial operators, and as the Government's consultation shows, people value the fact that the BBC is without adverts. They sometimes become irritated by the BBC's adverts for itself, which we hear too regularly now during an evening's broadcasting.
The BBC must be big enough to make a difference in the market. When I worked for the BBC, a taxi driver in Brussels asked me who I worked for. When I said the BBC, he said, "I love the BBC and the programmes it produces, especially 'Inspector Morse', 'Brideshead Revisited' and 'The Jewel in the Crown'." I did not like to tell him that none of those was produced by the BBC.
It is important that the BBC is a large enough organisation and has a large enough pot of money to produce serious quality programmes and to provide competition for quality in the market. That helps other UK broadcasters to rise to a higher standard, because they know that they must compete for audiences on the basis of quality and not just in the bargain basement. However, the BBC should not be a monolith, and one of the problems in recent years has been to ensure that it fulfils its statutory requirement to purchase programming from the independent sector, which can provide the vibrancy, excitement and variety that the internal BBC model simply cannot provide.
Year after year, the BBC failed to reach the 25 per cent. level, which the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) referred to as a ceiling. It is intended to be not a ceiling but the minimum. If we are to have a strong audiovisual sector throughout the UK, it is important that the BBC moves further out of London and the M25 circle and commissions programmes not just from companies with a brass plate on a door in Banbury and so on, but from companies that are genuinely based further afield around the country. It should increase the amount of commissioning from the independent sector.
It would be remiss of me not to say something about access. My constituents do not have access to Freeview, which cannot be rolled out there until the digital switchover. That is why some 70 per cent. of households have already moved to digital through Sky. However, many cannot afford to take out expensive subscription services. Some might say that we now have the Sky Freesat option, but it is a little like the Holy Ghost—I know that it exists, and I have read about it in lots of publications, but I have never actually seen it.
Kevin Brennan: Like a Tory in the Rhondda.
The Sky Freesat option is phenomenally difficult to purchase. Before Christmas, Sky tried to increase the take-up of its services with an enormous publicity campaign, but it did not publicise the Freesat option at all. I hope that the Government will consider pushing the BBC a little further not only to support the Sky Freesat option, but to consider an alternative free satellite option that might allow equal access to all who pay the licence fee.
It is a convention that when we talk about broadcasting we spend nearly all the time talking about television, but radio is a still-growing area of broadcasting in this country and the BBC's radio services are just as important as its television ones. I
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have in mind not only the services that we all listen to, such as Radio 4, Radio 3 and, increasingly perhaps, Radio 2—
Chris Bryant: My hon. Friend is just reminding us of the programmes that he appears on. We should underline that BBC radio should provide a genuine alternative to commercial services, and not always just ape them.
Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend supports the BBC and so do I, but will he accept that in the past 10 to 15 years the BBC has significantly undervalued and underinvested in its local radio services?
Chris Bryant: I am grateful to my hon. Friend because that is precisely the point that I was going to make. The BBC needs to understand that local radio services should mean genuinely local radio services. For example, it is astounding that the BBC in Wales has no ISDN link for people to be able to do interviews anywhere in the valleys or in mid-Wales. That is the sort of issue that the BBC needs to resolve for the future if it is to maintain its regional strength.
The hon. Member for Blaby mentioned the World Service briefly, and it is an important part of Britain's contribution to the world. One need not talk to many politicians in countries that have experienced dictatorships or restrictions on state broadcasters to realise what an important part the BBC has played, through the World Service, in maintaining Britain's reputation and enhancing human rights. However, I wish the BBC had more freedom to provide a better international television service. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could address that point when she winds up. I would like to see a BBC television world service, because that could offer the world something very significant.
3.23 pm
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is knowledgeable about BBC matters, although I do not always agree with him. I share with him the privilege of working under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman). I joined the National Heritage Select Committee—now the Culture, Media and Sport Committee—in 1992 and I have been a member since, apart from a brief aberration when I joined the Home Affairs Committee.
The BBC is a subject to which we often return, and it is interesting that in this debate we have come to praise the BBC, not to bury it. Although some hon. Members have expressed their disquiet about individual aspects of the BBC, we all recognise that, as someone said earlier, the BBC is the pre-eminent public sector broadcaster, not only in the UK but in the world—
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