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We also have a new Minister in this House, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), who was recently appointed to take responsibility for Digital Britain and broadcasting policy. We have learned that he is unpaid. We should perhaps applaud the Government for trying to make some savings, having driven this country into the largest debt that we have ever seen, but it may also be a signal of how seriously they take broadcasting policy. With the utmost respect to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), who I have got to know in the months and years in
which I have shadowed his Department, it seems extraordinary that today of all days, when we are debating such an important Bill about the future of the BBC, the Department has sent the Minister responsible for sport to the House, especially given that it has so recently appointed that talented Minister with responsibility for broadcasting, who displays his interest in and influence over broadcasting policy by not being in the Chamber but someplace else. Perhaps when the Minister winds up he can explain why his colleague is not here to deal with this important Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I have debated the future of the BBC licence fee in this House on another occasion, and I commend him for continuing to bring before the House important issues to do with the BBC. As I said in the previous debate, it is not Conservative party policy to abolish the licence fee; I will speak later about the principle of the licence fee. It is also important to state that I am a strong supporter of the BBC, as are my Front-Bench colleagues and, indeed, the leader of our party. The BBC is a bit like family, in the sense that we do not question its existence, and we admire and respect it, but that does not mean that we are not prepared to criticise it when appropriate. My hon. Friend cited some good examples of the programming that the BBC is putting out on BBC 3 that it might be relatively difficult for it to justify. I, too, have not spent my leisure hours viewing these programmes, but they seem highly questionable programmes for the BBC to fund. Nevertheless, it is important to restate the fact that all of us, in all parts of the House, should be jealous of the BBC’s editorial independence.
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern about the BBC’s failure to cover the speech by Daniel Hannan, a Member of the European Parliament. I have known Mr. Hannan for very many years. In fact, he started his career—this is perhaps pertinent—as my photocopier: when I worked in the Conservative research department, he spent a summer holiday doing my photocopying. It was there—I would not say at my knee, but perhaps at my elbow—that he learned some of his guiding political principles, and he has gone on to become an astonishing success on a far wider stage than I have. The decision not to cover his speech is a matter for the BBC, but it is interesting that it was second-guessed by the great British public, and indeed the global public, who endorsed his remarks about the Prime Minister.
What do the public want from the BBC? I hesitate to cite a report commissioned from MORI by Ofcom in case it provokes interventions from many of the hon. Members in the Chamber who might be sceptical about its provenance. First, it showed—motherhood and apple pie, as it were—that the audience sees television as a key source of entertainment. Although the Bill sets out worthwhile criteria for the definition of public service broadcasting, it is important to remember that when people switch on the BBC, as much as when they switch on ITV and Sky, they want to be entertained. However, some of the valid concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch are met by the fact that people also want television to be seen as providing an understanding of British culture and identity as a whole, as well as building understanding and awareness between communities about different values, lifestyles and perspectives in the world around them.
Many respondents believed that the BBC had a role in educating and informing people. In fact, 83 per cent. said that they had learned useful things from television—whether that was from watching the BBC 3 programmes that my hon. Friend cited is not clear from the survey. Some 78 per cent. believed that television was influential in shaping public opinion. That addresses the point about the lack of coverage of Mr. Hannan’s speech, although it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that our party continues to succeed despite the coverage given to us by the BBC.
Mr. Vaizey: Despite widespread pro-Liberal Democrats coverage on the BBC, they continue to slip in the polls, so perhaps we should not press the BBC too much on its news coverage, as it seems to be working in our favour and against the parties that it supports.
One of the most interesting things that MORI’s report for Ofcom explored was whether television should cater for the interests of the majority or for different audience interests. Opinion was mixed, and some participants were concerned solely with their own viewing enjoyment and believed that their personal needs would be better met by programmes that catered for the majority. Furthermore, many felt that that would make economic sense, as it would help guarantee higher viewer ratings. When people were asked whether they would prefer a wide variety of programme types or more popular entertainment programmes, 59 per cent. opted for a wide variety whereas just one third chose more popular programmes.
It is important not to be too prescriptive about the criteria for public service content. Many great and well-loved programmes on the BBC would not fall within the criteria set out in the Bill—one need only think of “Strictly Come Dancing” or “Top Gear”. I put on record my personal sadness that the BBC will obviously have to scrap another popular entertainment show, “The Apprentice”, which has been an enormous success in putting business at the heart of popular entertainment. Obviously the decision by Sir Alan Sugar to take up a Government position and advocate Government policy would preclude him from carrying on presenting “The Apprentice”, particularly since, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt), the shadow Secretary of State, has pointed out, the next series would almost certainly be broadcast during the next general election campaign. Of course, there is much time for “Suralan”, or “Lordalan”, as we are going to have to learn to call him, to change his mind and realise that his employment prospects are far more secure with the BBC than they would be with this outgoing Labour Government.
Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend will know that the Secretary of State has the power to authorise the BBC to enter into sponsorship agreements. Does he see that there might be a role for the Government to sponsor Sir Alan Sugar in the next edition of “The Apprentice” and make overt the way they are trying to manipulate public opinion?
Mr. Vaizey:
As my hon. Friend knows, the amount spent on advertising by this Government has risen exponentially, and everywhere one turns there is now
Government-sponsored advertising. We fully expect that advertising to increase as the election draws near. As he will be aware, the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), has made it absolutely clear that a Conservative Government would in no way manipulate taxpayers’ money to promote Government policy in the shameful way that this Government have in the past 10 or 11 years. If the Government do choose to sponsor “Suralan”, that sponsorship will end on day one of a Conservative Government. I can make that absolutely clear.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) made a valid point about what he thought was lacking from the criteria in the Bill. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made clear, the measure has been introduced almost to provoke a discussion, and not to be over-prescriptive. However, I add my concern that the criteria do not include drama—which covers the well loved “Dr. Who”, “Spooks”, one-offs such as the plays about the early life of Margaret Thatcher, and comedy such as “Gavin and Stacey”.
When the current charter settlement was agreed, the BBC was reminded that, above all, licence fee payers want entertainment. One of the clearest messages from the public consultation on the Green Paper was the importance of the BBC’s role in providing entertainment. Audiences do not want an overdose of worthiness. The BBC was told to continue to take fun seriously, with entertainment ingrained in all its services and made central to its mission.
During Ofcom’s second review of public service broadcasting last year, extensive and significant audience research was undertaken. There was audience support for accessible and effective delivery of the public purposes that underpin public service broadcasting. Most people still believe that such broadcasting delivers well-made and high-quality programmes.
It is also worth pointing out that our public service broadcasters still contribute 90 per cent. of UK-originated content—the BBC is in the lead there. For example, BBC 1 had nine out of the top 10 TV shows on Christmas day. They were all made in the United Kingdom and the top three were made outside London. More than half of all people watching television tuned in to watch “Wallace & Gromit—A Matter of Loaf and Death”, which was the Christmas day programme with the highest ratings, with an average audience of 14.3 million.
I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the future of children’s television, which is a live issue in broadcasting. The BBC provision for children is incredibly important, and the focus should be on what happens in some of our more commercial broadcasters’ children’s programming. They are finding it increasingly difficult to provide, partly because of Ofcom’s strictures on advertising during children’s television, which have rather backfired and made it harder to earn funds to make such programmes. That should be examined.
Although the licence fee has imperfections, it is probably the least worst mechanism for funding the BBC. However, we remain concerned that the BBC is set to exceed the total of private sector revenues by larger and larger margins. The free, plural media market needs a strong BBC, but it also needs strong competition. That will be
increasingly difficult as the BBC gets £1 billion more in TV revenue and £300 million more in radio revenue than all commercial broadcasters combined.
We have set out a range of options to try to keep the BBC within recognisable limits. First, the increase in the licence fee from £139.50 to £142.50 should be frozen—the Government and the Liberal Democrats oppose that. We have also said that the BBC should start to publish the salaries of some of its highest paid executives and broadcasters, as well as their expenses. Our licence fee payers, who pay for that, should be able to see the figures. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that it is high time the BBC was audited by the National Audit Office.
We are great supporters of the BBC, but that does not preclude our being its critical friends. We all have comments to make about the quality of the programmes that the BBC broadcasts—I am pleased that it is taking arts programming more seriously and appointing a senior arts editor to supervise it.
There is an important point at the Bill’s heart: the BBC has guaranteed revenues, unlike commercial broadcasters. It is therefore in a unique position to take risks or make programmes that will perhaps not draw in huge audiences but are worthy in themselves and plug the gaps that commercial broadcasters cannot fill. The director-general of the BBC should keep that at the forefront of his mind as he steers the BBC through the last few months of a Labour Government and into the next few years of a Conservative Administration.
2.15 pm
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey), who at least gives the impression that he has watched a television programme at some point. The most damning thing I heard from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) was his condemnation of programmes, only to add, “Of course, I didn’t watch them. I just know they were rubbish.” Interestingly, one of the programmes that he damned had an intimate connection with a programme that the hon. Member for Wantage commended as a valuable asset, because “Horne and Corden” stars one of the major players in “Gavin and Stacey”, which the hon. Member for Wantage recommended. I have seen “Horne and Corden” and it was absolutely dire, but that is a matter of personal taste, and has nothing to do with whether the BBC should be attempting to build on and repeat the success of a programme using another concept.
The difficulty with the Bill is that it gives the impression—which the hon. Member for Wantage was keen to dispel—that the Tory party has waged war on the BBC. That is a great shame, because the BBC is too important to be used as a political point-scoring machine by the political parties in this House. I want to state clearly and unequivocally that we have something very precious in the BBC. It is the fons et origo of public service broadcasting, on which much public service broadcasting elsewhere is based. We should be very proud of what it has achieved over the years.
Does that mean that I am uncritical of the BBC? No, of course it does not. Nor should anyone be uncritical of it. There are certain issues that we need to look at—or, perhaps more importantly, that the BBC needs
to look at. I am wary of politicians getting directly involved, particularly in the editorial content of the BBC. There are, however, expenditures at the BBC that are difficult to justify, and introducing more transparency into the funding of BBC programming and bureaucracy would be worth while. There is still evidence, for example, that the BBC uses several people to do a job that would be done by just one person in the commercial sector. I saw exactly the same thing when I was involved in medicine many years ago. I worked in the NHS and in the private sector when I was doing agency work, and I could see the difference between NHS operating theatres and those in the private sector. There were far fewer people involved in doing exactly the same job in the private sector. I actually think that the private sector went beyond the limits of safety in some cases, however, so there are arguments both ways.
The BBC needs critically to examine how it runs its business. An example is the number of duplications that we see all the time in news and current affairs. Different people appear to be doing the same job for different parts of the BBC, and we wonder whether that is really necessary. I would like the BBC to become better attuned to such issues. Some of the contracts awarded to what is called the top talent are difficult to justify in the context of broadcasting as a whole, certainly in the present economic climate, and I would like to see that question addressed as well. It is important, however, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We must not allow proper criticism of the BBC to be used as part of a campaign of attrition against the concept of the BBC itself.
The problem with the hon. Member for Christchurch’s Bill is that it does not provide a formula for public service broadcasting—not one bit of it. It provides for a desiccated, feeble imitation of public sector broadcasting that would be the equivalent of brown rice and cardboard as a diet to be put before the British public. The hon. Member for Wantage was right to say that entertainment is part of the mix, but it is not mentioned in the Bill.
Sport, as I said in my intervention, is an essential part of the mix, but it is not there in the hon. Gentleman’s Bill. Culture of any kind is not there, unless it is so unpopular as to be unable to achieve programming in any other way. Excellence in drama is not there and neither is comedy—an area where the BBC has been groundbreaking over many years and has achieved great results.
That is why the Bill is unacceptable—never mind the fact that it sets up the National Audit Office, for heaven’s sake, as some sort of arbiter of good taste, which is a function way beyond its normal parameters. I have a huge deal of respect for the NAO, but to ask it to decide whether programmes are in good taste defies any sensible definition of its present function and amounts to a most extraordinary suggestion by the hon. Member for Christchurch.
Philip Davies: The hon. Gentleman mentioned sport. Will he tell us where he and his party stand on the BBC’s proposed cuts to horse racing? Does he think it wrong when the BBC seems so determined to show only the races that any other commercial broadcaster would show, or does he think the BBC should use the licence fee to promote wider support for horse racing, particularly given that it cuts across every social divide in the country?
Mr. Heath: The hon. Gentleman knows that I am not averse to going to the race track myself, particularly at Wincanton, where some of the best jumping in the country takes place; I also love watching horse racing on television. I have to say, however, that the hon. Gentleman should not support his hon. Friend’s Bill because it would prevent that happening. Not only would it prevent that from happening, but it would prevent the grand national from being shown, and many people would be very disappointed at that. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Christchurch can shake his head as much as he likes, but such events are not covered in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) or (d) in clause 1(2)—and those are the criteria for public sector broadcasting.
If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the broadcasting of such events should be funded from elsewhere, where is elsewhere? Where is the BBC to get the funding in order to show these big-ticket sporting events? That is the problem with his Bill. The hon. Gentleman has not thought it through. He is so intent on providing the extremely narrow spectrum of things he considers to be the best of public service broadcasting that he will not allow anything else. He will not allow any of us to enjoy ourselves: we must only be educated; we must go only to church services; we must see things that nobody else wants to see. That is going to be the function of the BBC. What a miserable future for the BBC, as prescribed by the hon. Member for Christchurch and his Puritan friends. I am afraid that I do not and will not accept that. I will not support the Bill today.
2.23 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe): I am delighted to participate in what remains of today’s debate. The Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon), sends his apologies, as he had a pressing constituency engagement that was in his diary before he was promoted to his new post. Far from our losing our way on broadcasting, I believe that this Government’s record of support for broadcasting and where it is heading for the future has been welcomed by the majority of the serious players in the broadcasting world.
Mr. Sutcliffe: Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, let me point out that the Secretary of State for Health and former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was in the House this morning—he is not lost; he gave an important statement earlier on swine flu. The new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport furthermore was a noted distinguished journalist with the BBC and has a proud record on broadcasting issues.
Mr. Vaizey: Will the Minister explain why the Minister for Sport, but not the Minister for Broadcasting, gets a ministerial salary?
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