Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
BBC
WEDNESDAY 6 JUNE
2007
Q40 Mr Mitchell: If you are so confident
in yourselves—and this one goes to Jeremy Peat—why
not have the National Audit Office come in more frequently and
why not let it choose what it does and what it inquires into?
Mr Peat: We have specifically
made arrangements whereby we have asked the NAO for their suggestions
for the programme and we have agreed one of their suggestions
for this year and we will look at other of their suggestions with
them for the two years ahead. We are specifically asking the National
Audit Office for their suggestions and working with them to develop
the best programme.
Q41 Chris Bryant: I am not allowed
to raise any questions about my future pension from the BBC.
Mr Peat: I should note that you
have two pension Trustees sitting here.
Q42 Chris Bryant: Business continuity
is what I want to talk about first of all, because one of the
areas where presumably you have to assess the risk is when you
have a big high profile name fronting a big high profile Saturday
evening or Friday evening television programme or fronting sports
programming or whatever, they, by virtue of being so significant
for you, increase their value very dramatically, but they also
potentially might leave. How do you assess the value or the risk
of somebody leaving who is an important and significant talent?
Mr Thompson: Generally, when we
talk about business continuity, we take a somewhat narrow definition
about the ability to maintain our services on the air through
the broadcast chain, through having people available to work.
Absolutely, we would say, although we would call in a slightly
different topic, attracting talent and retaining talent is a risk
and it is on the risk register. What we do, both with individuals
and also with critical rights, sports rights and acquired programmes,
is, particularly for high value rights or high value individuals,
we go through an investment appraisal process. A recent example
would be the decision we made, with regret but nonetheless it
was the right decision, to withdraw from the bidding for the renewal
of Neighbours because in the end, when we looked at that
as an investment proposition, we thought that although Neighbours
had been good value for money for the licence payer in the previous
contract, the increase in the contract meant it was no longer
good value and we should walk away from that.
Q43 Chris Bryant: But do you ever
withdraw from that in the case of a named talent, like Jonathan
Ross or whoever, because it seems to the public as though you
never withdraw from that?
Mr Thompson: Absolutely. When
people move from the BBC to other broadcasters, oddly enough it
is seldom seen, although often that is the case, that we have
decided we do not want to renew a particular artist at a particular
price and therefore they go to another broadcaster. We seldom
get the credit for that. It tends to be regarded as the BBC losing
an artist. Actually, we are constantly making decisions both about
individuals and about rights and even though we have to balance
these things carefully because the public want outstanding entertainment,
they want outstanding sport from the BBC, there are occasions
where the right thing to do for the licence fee payer is to say
on this occasion we do not want to continue with the relationship,
and we do do that.
Q44 Chris Bryant: May I just tidy
up? I may have missed a question about the Alan Johnston situation.
I just want to make sure whether you feel that the BBC, in its
assessment of the risk in that situation, had got it right. One
could argue manifestly it did not, so what would you now do differently?
Mr Thompson: If I may answer this
as well, the most important thing to say is this is not the right
moment yet to make a full assessment. The situation is still ongoing
and we will be quite careful about how we refer to it. It is inevitably
a delicate business and I do not want to say too much about it.
What I would say is that a very careful and continuous assessment
of the situation in Gaza was made and will continue to be made,
so that throughout the period when Alan was a correspondent there,
there have been regular visits by our security experts, very careful
protocols in place to try to maximise the security of all of our
people who work in Gaza. The fact that abduction of westerners
was a very real risk in Gaza was self-evident and was well known
to us. What we did not foresee was that, unlike the many, many
other abductions of westerners there have been in Gaza in recent
years, most of which were resolved in a matter of a small number
of hours, the longest of which was resolved in 14 days, this was
going to be different. I believe, from everything I have seen
so far, that great care was taken in terms of the security of
our team in Gaza but, of course, we should look at that and see
what lessons there are to learn from that.
Q45 Chris Bryant: There must be BBC
journalists not just in somewhere like that but Fergal Keane's
Reports last week must have brought him into considerable areas
of danger, BBC Reporters who Report sometimes having travelled
into Zimbabwe illegally, which we would believe to be very important
work for the BBC to do.
Mr Thompson: It is very important
to say that the point about risk management is not to say that
you can have a risk free environment. We have a list of hostile
environments around the world with country after country after
country, often only part of a country, where we have reason to
believe it is hostile but there are many, many places where we
have to send people to Report what is going on in the world.
Q46 Chris Bryant: Is Russia on that
list?
Mr Thompson: I am happy off line
to share the list in private, but it is not particularly helpful
to be public about the list in terms of the safety of our correspondents.
Q47 Chris Bryant: May I move on then
to a completely different area? However, I would suggest to you
that 32 journalists in Russia have been killed in the last eight
years without anybody having been convicted for a murder of any
of them.
Mr Thompson: The broader point,
that this is becoming in some parts of the world a very dangerous
place to be a journalist for the BBC or anyone else, is absolutely
well taken.
Q48 Chris Bryant: None of us would
want the National Audit Office process to create a risk-averse
journalism for the BBC. It is not that we want people to put themselves
in danger but it is a very important part of what British journalism
stands for it seems to me. May I ask about a completely different
area which is about digital switchover? I guess that is part of
your business continuity issue. Not everywhere in the country
has the same rollout of Freeview, Freesat. You have promised a
Freesat operation. How important is consideration of these issues
to your assessment of your relationship to the audience, which
must surely be an important part of that business continuity risk?
Mr Thompson: It is very important.
We want to play a leading role in making the switchover from analogue
television to complete digital television and the switch-off of
the analogue signal as convenient and smooth as it can be for
every household in the UK and having a range of different platforms
available and available as soon as possible is part of that.
Q49 Chris Bryant: You were going
to do a BBC Freesat last September.
Mr Peat: The position on Freesat
was that under the previous charter, responsibility for making
a decision on the proposal on Freesat was for the Secretary of
State at DCMS. The governors put a proposal to her I believe in
June of last year. We did not have a response by the end of the
charter period and the papers were returned to the new Trustees
in the middle of January of this year. Under the new charter,
the decision was for the Trust and the Trust considered that rapidly
and actively and made a decision to agree that the BBC should
proceed with other parties with a Freesat proposition. So that
decision was made within four months.
Q50 Chris Bryant: Very quickly, is
there a date that you are aiming towards?
Mr Thompson: Yes, we are in the
process of setting up a joint venture with ITV and also working
with many others in the industry. I hope that we can have a Freesat
standard and therefore Freesat boxes in the market during the
course of 2008.
Q51 Chris Bryant: Completely different
again, about the risk assessment for the many people who are not
your employees. A significant number of the people who work in
the crafts within television and radio are freelancers, employed
on very short contracts; sometimes they have not actually received
their contract until they have already finished their piece of
work. How do you make sure that this right approach to risk management
is embodied within the whole of those who work for you?
Ms Patel: First of all, everyone
who works in the BBC is covered by our duties around occupational
risk management, but that is why training, particularly health
and safety training on production environments, is really important.
When we get freelancers on board, we have a history of what training
they have already had in the BBC, because they have worked in
the BBC before, and we update that before they start on a contract.
We have a history of which productions they have worked on and
what training they have already had as a way of making sure that
we did not re-train and re-train the same people over and over
again. There is no distinction when it comes to any kind of training
between a freelance and a permanent employee because they are
all doing the right job.
Q52 Chris Bryant: I am afraid I do
not believe that.
Ms Patel: Let me give you an example.
Where I have production accountants who are running productions,
and they tend to be freelancers in drama, those people are properly
trained in the financial management and controls framework before
they are allowed access to our systems. Those who come back frequently
to work on drama productions have a history of having been trained,
so we give them refresher training. We treat them in the same
way we would permanent employees.
Q53 Mr Davidson: The National Audit
Office Report is illustrated by a quite effective picture which
illustrates a white male middle manager on the basis that he has
got a suit on and he is not quite at the level where he has somebody
to carry his briefcase for him. Then when we come to the full
Report it is quite boring and bland. That seems to me to symbolise
the difference between the National Audit Office who are prepared
to use interesting illustrations to make their point and the BBC
who have been so risk averse as to give us one of the blandest
covers we have ever seen.
Mr Thompson: Do you not think
the BBC's creative magic has rubbed off on the cover? Clearly
not.
Q54 Mr Davidson: I just wonder what
that tells us about BBC's attitude towards risk, not to mention
colour printing.
Mr Thompson: It is a value for
money point.
Q55 Mr Davidson: That is interesting.
So given a choice between the economical and the daring, you would
always choose the cheap and bland.
Mr Peat: This demonstrates that
the BBC Trust, who produced this, does not have the creative energies
of the executive part of the BBC.
Q56 Mr Davidson: What are you doing
to correct that?
Mr Peat: Our responsibility is
to secure value for money for the licence fee payers and we rely
upon the Director-General and his team to deliver the creativity
that licence fee payers so enjoy.
Q57 Mr Davidson: I surely understand
the point that is being made. I made the point about the middle
manager who obviously would fit certain characteristics. May I
just ask about the extent to which the BBC is risk averse in its
recruitment? When we spoke to somebody from the Army recently
he said he would give us figures about the educational background
of the top ten staff and we discovered that nine of the top ten
were ex-public school boys. What is the position in the senior
management of the BBC?
Mr Thompson: The short answer
is that I do not have the information here but I should be very
happy to make that available.[2]
Q58 Mr Davidson: Write to us then and
give us that figure because I would be interested to see the extent
to which you actually reflect the society to whom you communicate.
Similarly, to what extent do you recruit safety first from public
school and Oxbridge in your broadcasting staff? I very much have
the impression as a Member, being phoned up by BBC staff on a
regular basis—they are not all called Tristram and Jemima,
I accept that—that there is a certain narrowness of educational
and social class background that makes me think that you always
go for safety first in terms of whom you recruit? Can you clarify
the position?
Mr Thompson: I absolutely believe
that the BBC should strive as well as it can to reflect the population
who own the BBC and to whom it broadcasts. They own the BBC and
it should reflect all the talents and all the voice and experiences
by educational and social background, by ethnicity and so on.
Q59 Mr Davidson: Why do you not?
Mr Thompson: This is an area where
the BBC has done a great deal in recent years in some categories.
The role of women in the BBC has been—
2 Note by witness: The BBC does not, as a matter
of course, record information on the schools attended by its staff.
In the case of our Executive, this information is however (in
part) publicly available. Of the fifteen members of the BBC's
Executive Board (including five non-executives): six attended
independent schools, five attended comprehensive schools and four
attended grammar schools. In addition, six of the fifteen attended
university at Oxford or Cambridge. Biographical detail about members
of the Executive Board is available online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/running/executive/biographies.shtml.
Also see Ev 17 Back
| 
