Examination of Witnesses (Questions 348
- 359)
TUESDAY 7 SEPTEMBER 2004
BECTU, EQUITY AND
NUJ
Chairman: Gentlemen, welcome. We are
very pleased indeed to see you, as always. Derek Wyatt will start
the questioning on behalf of the select committee.
Q348 Derek Wyatt: Good morning, gentlemen.
May I just put a couple of questions to you quickly. Do you think
in the year 2017 there will still be an educational system for
the primary and secondary schools in this country?
Mr McGarry: Yes.
Q349 Derek Wyatt: Do you think in
2017 there will be a health service called the National Health
Service in this country?
Mr McGarry: Hopefully. It may
not be in the form it is now, but hopefully yes.
Q350 Derek Wyatt: Given that two
very public services are a given in 2017, surely the BBC will
be with us in 2017, and since neither education nor health has
a Charter or some statute, what is the purpose of giving a ten-year
Charter when we know the BBC are going to be with us?
Mr McGarry: Firstly, I certainly
hope there will be a BBC in broadly its current form in 2017—that
is very important to us. I think you all know our constituencies,
as it were. For our members the BBC is the biggest single employer
so we have a very direct interest in seeing it there and continuing
to flourish and to succeed. The nature of the period of its renewal
under Charter I think is important, because I think there is a
need for stability in an area of ever more rapid change. The BBC
is at the heart of television ecology, as it were, and is an important
player—key to the role of public sector broadcasting. Whether
or not it is a Charter, or has to be a Charter, I think we would
be fairly neutral about that, but it has worked pretty well to
date and seems to give the proper degree of accountability, and
accountability to government. I think a period of ten years would
be the very least we would want to see that extended for.
Q351 Derek Wyatt: You probably do
know in a previous National Heritage Committee, which some Members
were members of, they recommended it should be reduced from 15
to 10. It was one of the recommendations taken up by the then
government. So ten is not a given. The government has now said
over the recess that that a digital switchover will be completed
by 2012. Given the substantial changes coming—both in terms
of hard drives where BMW will announce in their next range there
will be a hard drive inside a BMW so you can get on-demand television
and films as you want them, per passenger seat if necessary, and
where an i-Pod, which was unheard of three years ago, is now a
billion dollar business, which is another hard drive implication—do
you not think the pace of change is so phenomenal that youngsters
(and we) are moving to a different scale and type of broadcasting
which is less broadcast-driven but more software-driven; and by
giving ten years you might actually create the death of the BBC
rather than the life of the BBC?
Mr McGarry: I do not believe that
is the case. I understand that the impacts of new technologies
are going to affect us all. It will affect the way people we represent
work; it will affect the way people watch and how they access
programme material; but I am pretty confident in that period you
are talking about there still will be a very considerable demand
for high quality programme production and broadcasting in
this country—and without the BBC I cannot see that happening.
Therefore, if anything, it is not the case that the BBC and its
funding is lessened by those developments—conversely, I
think it is strengthened. It is the major production base in this
country. Very few of the new channels and new outlets of recorded
performances in fact generate much new work from the point of
view of the actors and other performers I represent. It is the
BBC which is at the core of that process. I do think it can, does,
should and will produce the kind of programmes which will still
attract very, very significant audiences.
Q352 Chairman: Could I just follow
up Derek's question. We have two public service broadcasting organisations
in this country—one is the BBC and the other is Channel
4. Channel 4 was created by statute; it operates under statute;
and it operates, indeed, under a statutory remit. Although there
is, from time to time, talk of privatising Channel 4 (which I
personally would be very strongly against) nobody talks about
ending Channel 4. The BBC, on the other hand, is subject to periodic
review because of the approaching expiry of the Charter. As Derek
has pointed out, last time, on the recommendation of the National
Heritage Committee, the Charter period was cut down from 15 years
to 10 years. Would there not be an argument to say that the BBC
should not have a Charter—the concept of which is, after
all, 77 years old—but it should be reconstituted under statute
and just be there as a given under statute?
Mr Bolton: I think that is an
argument, as Ian has said, that we would be open to persuasion
on. Our starting point in looking at your terms of reference and
the questions you might ask was to ask ourselves what damage the
Charter has done in terms of the BBC and in terms of its history.
Has it been a stabilising influence? We think that it has, in
the main, been a stabilising influence. We have not yet heard
any convincing arguments for moving away from the Charter and
what the implications of that would be.
Q353 Derek Wyatt: Let me give you
a suggestion. Five of us were at the Edinburgh Television Festival
where we heard Mark Thompson's speech about the future of the
BBC. It seems to me that we are in this loving period where they
are being jolly good. The Governors are going to behave and be
independent. They are all going to be jolly and do decent programmes.
Panorama is going to have more money. There are going to
be more documentaries. Gosh! Wow! Why? Because they are coming
up for Charter renewal; but as soon as Charter renewal is done
it is done and that is it, and they will not do anything for ten
more years. If they were under more pressure, like a department,
and every three years they had to come back and say, "Listen,
we said to you we wanted more documentaries. Where are they?"
then there is more leverage for us, on behalf of our citizens,
to say, "You haven't delivered". A Charter is just for
them but it is not for us.
Mr Bolton: Is there anything in
the Charter itself that compels the BBC to make those types of
programmes? The Charter is an enabling piece of legislation that
would allow the BBC Board of Governors to exist and to hive off
most of its activities to outside bodies. I do not think the Charter
itself requires the BBC to make any particular type of programme
at all, does it?
Q354 Chairman: That is the point,
is it not? The Communications Act has got a very clear and specific
remit for Channel 4. It is the only broadcasting organisation
in this country which has a statutory remit to which it has to
conform. The distinctive identity of Channel 4 under different
chief executives stems from its statutory remit. All we have got
for the BBC (which of course has a much wider catchment area)
is the assumption that it will provide public service broadcasting.
Mr Grade himself took up a theme first voiced in this Committee,
namely that the only definition of "public service broadcasting"
(except for that mumbo-jumbo that suddenly appeared in the last
Communications Act) is that public service broadcasting is whatever
the BBC broadcasts.
Mr McGarry: The Chairman of the
Content Board of Ofcom said to us not long ago, when asked how
to define "public service broadcasting", that he could
not think of any better example in the world than BBC radio as
providing a public broadcasting service to this country in terms
of the range and quality of programmes which it does. He said
to us very openly and publicly he would cite that as the best
example of public service broadcasting that there is.
Q355 Chairman: By "BBC"
you mean Radio 3?
Mr McGarry: I mean radio altogether—the
BBC's radio services.
Q356 Chairman: I was in Canada last
month and I listened to CBC2 and I thought it was at least as
good as Radio 3.
Mr McGarry: I know for a fact
there is no other broadcasting authority in the world that produces
the range, quality and depth of drama production, for example,
that BBC radio does. Nowhere in the world is that the case. I
personally think that is worth the licence fee in itself.
Mr Bolton: On an international
basis, they look at the BBC's output with envy, and look at it
as being a driver in terms of excellence for the rest of the broadcasting
market.
Mr McGarry: Chairman, you should
not assume we are sitting here as uncritical supporters of the
BBC. We have fairly long-established relationships with the BBC,
which have sometimes become quite difficult, but we do believe
that the BBC is essential to the future of broadcasting in this
country, and we do think it needs a degree of stability. I was
not sure whether you were asking if the Charter was the best way,
or otherwise, of securing that; or whether it is the length of
the Charter, or whatever replaces it, which is the issue before
you. It does, I think, take a long time to build up and develop
the kind of programmes the BBC does produce. I think a degree
of stability at least is a strong argument for not changing a
system that does work. I think the point that the BBC does now
seem very ready to approach its own internal reviews—and
maybe that is because of this review there—I do not personally
think it is likely that the BBC will depart from the conclusions
of those internal reviews the moment it has got its Charter renewed.
Mr Dear: I think it would also
be unusual if the BBC were not to be particularly friendly at
this point coming up to Charter review; after all, most governments,
coming up to an election, also like to show their benevolence
towards the electorate. In terms of the question you are asking,
partly it is about the flexibility around technological change
and if there is going to be a ten-year or 15-year Charter does
that mean the BBC is not going to be able to adapt to what are
going to be massive changes in the industry? I do not think that
is the case. They have always been able to adapt within the current
Charter. They also need, to some extent, to be able to plan for
these things. You cannot run an organisation (all the ones you
mentioned, really) on the basis that you cannot make long-term
decisions about technological change and being able to deliver
on technological change. I think the importance from our point
of view is that there is proper scrutiny both by Parliament and
by citizens, through whatever mechanisms those are and through
the governors: whether that is through a Charter, statute or whatever
is less an issue than that there is proper scrutiny of what the
BBC does and that it is held to account for what it says it is
going to do, and for what Parliament and the people want it to
do.
Chairman: In your two minutes, Mr Dear,
you have raised about 15 questions!
Q357 Derek Wyatt: Over the last ten
years viewing audiences have gone down for the BBC and they are
going to go down further—it is inevitable given the way
in which we receive entertainment that it will not be above 20%
by the end of the decade but probably be 15% by 2012 or 2014—yet
you in your evidence want us to continue to give the licence fee
and RPI+1. Why? Why should viewers have to pay more for less?
Mr McGarry: Because it is in the
public interest that they should because by so doing they provide
a firm dependable source of finance which enables the BBC to invest
in programme production and programme making in a way which is
in everybody's interests.
Q358 Derek Wyatt: Even if people
are not convinced it is worth doing?
Mr McGarry: I am not sure I accept
your view that there is an inevitable straight line decline in
audiences of the BBC, because there has not been so far.
Q359 Derek Wyatt: Look at the facts.
Mr McGarry: I think we would accept
there is likely to be some decline as audiences fragment; but
I still think it is important for the cultural life of this country,
as well as the ecology of broadcasting, to have those millions
of pounds that come in through licence fee payments to fund what
is, after all, the biggest and most successful production based
television in this country.
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