Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
SIR MICHAEL
LYONS, MR
MARK THOMPSON
AND MS
ZARIN PATEL
8 JULY 2008
Q40 Paul Farrelly: Due in July this
year?
Sir Michael Lyons: It is indeed.
It would be much easier to have this discussion once that has
been made public and we have your reactions to it.
Q41 Paul Farrelly: Will you publicise
that?
Sir Michael Lyons: We will publish
it. It is the Trust's policy, as we have undertaken this body
of work, to publish what we find, not only so that people can
see us doing our work of holding the BBC to account, but also
to encourage debate both within and outside the BBC. In many ways
that is one of the biggest changes of the new governance arrangements.
Q42 Paul Farrelly: It is a question
I have asked a number of times in sessions such as this and in
the past. Is it fair to say that, pending receipt of that report,
in the past you have not asked for that level of detail as the
Trust or as the top level board and therefore have not received
it?
Sir Michael Lyons: What you related
was an extremely ambitious programme of information. There are
clearly limits both in terms of the BBC Trust focusing on the
most critical issues and also in terms of the demands that it
ends up making on the BBC Executive. There has been quite an active
debate this year to get the right balance about the requirements
of the Trust for information so that it can hold to account and
the cost and extra burden that imposes on the BBC. None of this
is straightforward. None of us wants to see inappropriate amounts
of licence fee payers' money driven into a wholesale collection
of data. What I can reassure you of is our interest in the issues
amongst which are those that you focussed on, of how the WOCC
is operating, what its implications are for the BBC, what its
implications are for the creative sector and you will see that
covered in the report. That seems to me the right way for the
Trust to work rather than to regard this as a weekly monitoring
task.
Q43 Paul Farrelly: I will take that
as a no as far as the past is concerned. When you agreed the strategy
"Delivering Creative Future", which releases some investment
and there will be a 10% fall in originated programmes, did you
explore with the BBC how that fall would be shared between the
BBC itself internally and the independent sector?
Sir Michael Lyons: You cannot
easily prescribe that with a guideline figure. As I think you
have anticipated in your earlier question, it is a function of
ideas that are generated outside and ideas that are generated
inside. The BBC's obligation is to get the best of both and one
of the things that we will be exploring in that review—and
I would like to underline our ongoing monitoring of the BBC—is
exactly whether the British public is getting the best out of
that arrangement and that we have sustainable arrangements.
Mr Thompson: I do not want you
to have the impression there is any kind of deep, dark secrets
here. Much of this does not need to be kept commercially confidential.
I am very happy either to write to you or brief you on the broad
shape or the size of indices, where they are based, the patterns
and the trends in the kinds of indices and so forth. As it happens,
it is not based here, but there is plenty of management information—
Q44 Paul Farrelly: It was more the
role of the Trust and seeing how you made those up. I was not
implying anything. If you have more statistics to show how the
BBC has achieved them then I think we would like to see that.
Mr Thompson: I am sure we could
do that.
Q45 Adam Price: Let us turn to the
King report on the network in the four nations. I think it is
fair to say that not since Brian Hutton put pen to paper has there
been such a scathing criticism of the quality of BBC journalism.
The report talked about a "metropolitan mindset", it
referred to "institutional inertia" and it said that
you had failed to get to grips with the newspaper reality of the
political geometry of the United Kingdom. It is almost a decade
since the advent of devolution. How could you get it so badly
wrong and what are you going to do about it?
Sir Michael Lyons: Let me begin
by underlining that the King report did not just emerge. This
was evidence of the new governance arrangements of the BBC working
effectively and responding to a clear message from audiences in
its headline terms that they do not always feel—and this
is particularly the case in Scotland, slightly less so in Wales,
Northern Ireland and some English regions—that life as they
live it and understand it is adequately reflected on the BBC.
We have touched upon that remaining a mission for the future,
to better respond to that, in earlier answers. The Trust decided
that the strength of view coming back to us was of sufficient
intensity that it should be the subject of our first impartiality
report. Rather than deal with the whole of the representation
of the nations and regions we focussed on this specific issue
of the extent to which the new devolved realities of Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland were adequately reflected in the network
production. It was the Trust that commissioned the report. It
is harsh. It is written in very strong terms. Different people
take different views on the colourful language that Anthony King
has sometimes chosen. I would have some problems in recognising
in King's report, important and challenging though it is, something
that I would want to compare with the Hutton report. It is a very
clear challenge to the BBC to do better. It is a clean bill of
health on impartiality but a very clear message that, in terms
of the breadth and accuracy of the reporting, there is more to
be done. I do not want to stand in the way of that conclusion,
but I do want to be clear that the Trust has led the inquiry and
do commission the work and it is something that we are now looking
for a clear response to. I personally have been heartened by the
fact that the Director General and, perhaps more importantly,
the Deputy Director General as Head of Journalism did not do what
it might have been easy for someone to do in these circumstances,
ie to point to the strong language that King had used, to point
to efforts that the BBC has made in recent years to deliver more
effectively in this area and to seek to push back the message.
Instead there was a very clear and public recognition that there
is a deficit to be filled here.
Q46 Adam Price: Full marks to the
Trust. You identified the problem. Mark, maybe you are the source
of the problem so we will come on to you in a second. You referred
to the colourful and strong language of the report but it is evidence
based. Virtually all the respondents were making the same point.
The Cardiff School of Journalism research pointed out that in
the period they were looking at 136 health and education reports
on Network News and all of them were exclusively in relation to
England. The report says that almost none that had been issued
since 2007 election coverage dealt with Wales in any way. That
is evidence based, not conjecture or subjective interpretation.
Sir Michael Lyons: It would hardly
be in the interests of the Trust, as the owners of this piece
of work, who commissioned exactly that evidence base so that Anthony
King would have it available to him --- It is hardly within my
responsibility for audiences to try to blunt the message. I only
want to underline that the process that we followed here was to
ask Tony King to produce effectively a personal commentary as
a result of his interviews and the work that we were able to make
available to him and, of course, that commentary selects from
the information. It is an issue of colour rather than whether
the message is the right one or not.
Mr Thompson: I think I had better
deal with this as the source of the problem!
Q47 Adam Price: And hopefully the
solution as well. I would be interested to hear about the action
plan. Is that ready to go?
Mr Thompson: You must recognise
that across quite a broad front, the new commitments on the network,
more investment in nations under the Ofcom definition, Salford
and so forth, we are really committed to getting this right. There
are two caveats. Firstly, audience approval for BBC news and its
coverage of the UK is pretty high across the UK and it is particularly
high in Wales. It is higher in Wales than it is in England even
when you ask questions about the way in which Wales is covered.
In some ways Welsh licence payers are pretty supportive. Secondly,
in the matter of impartiality and fairness and in accuracy narrowly
defined, again the King report was pretty complimentary. I would
certainly accept that we will have to do a lot better in reflecting,
comparing, contrasting and giving the public the right context
to understand the very different administrations around the UK.
To me this is potentially a source of interest and of value to
the public across the UK to understand how different experiments
in social policy and different approaches to the same issues are
being undertaken. We are coming back to the Trust in a week's
time with a comprehensive set of proposals about how we make sure
that the BBC gets this right.
Q48 Adam Price: How is it possible—and
this happened after the King report—when I was listening
to the World Service covering the UK press at 5 o'clock
in the morning it covered the Scottish press headlines whereas
two hours later when the Today programme did the same exercise
it was only the London papers? If the World Service can
reflect the Scottish press why cannot the Today programme?
Sir Michael Lyons: You might take
from this one positive message, which is that the BBC is not monolithic!
I do not want to detract from the finding or the importance of
setting this right. I do want to acknowledge that, even in the
few weeks since the King report was published, I and many people
who have spoken to me have seen greater precision in the labelling
of stories and indeed a really concerted effort by the BBC to
do rather more in covering the devolved administrations. This
is not the whole story. The Director General has been charged
with bringing an action plan forward. That will be in front of
the Trust at its next meeting. I just want to offer you one insight
which may or may not be helpful. I think there is just a danger
in this discussion that this is seen as wholly the BBC's problem.
Certainly the BBC must do better and more effectively cover the
reality of life across the United Kingdom, but they have had to
contend consistently with ministers and governments speaking as
if devolution has not taken place, offering messages as if they
applied. The right challenge here is, nonetheless, BBC journalists
have the job of challenging that, but I think we should not under-estimate
that they have had to contend with a sort of assumption that statements
made from Westminster continue to prevail across the whole of
the United Kingdom when that is no longer the reality.
Mr Thompson: The other assurance
we can give you is that once we have come up with our management
plans about training, about making sure we have got the right
level of seniority, of editors who are focusing on this and so
forth it will not be the end of the matter. The Trust will continue
to monitor this very closely. It will draw on the advice of the
audience councils across the UK. We will continue to listen to
outside critics as well. There will be plenty of opportunities
in the years to come to track our progress and to judge whether
the BBC has improved this or not. We are totally committed to
getting this right and we recognise we have got quite a lot to
do to get it right.
Q49 Adam Price: The one area where
the report does give you a clean bill of health is on the question
of impartiality. Were you surprised to read the comments of the
General Secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland in their submission
to the Broadcasting Commission in which the Labour Party criticised
BBC journalists in Scotland for their use of terminology, their
references to a London Government, et cetera, which they
said placed those journalists in the position of appearing to
be a partial contributor rather than a neutral observer and interpreter
of political events? Is that a legitimate criticism of the BBC
in Scotland by the Labour Party or is it paranoia on their behalf?
Mr Thompson: I would not want
to characterise it. It is for others to judge what it is. The
Tony King report is an objective expert assessment and that is
why we must take it so seriously. His objective expert assessment
is the BBC is impartial. As part of the hurly-burly of politics
there are rare occasions when politicians accuse the BBC of being
partial. The right thing when we are accused of that is for us
to take an honest look at what we are doing. The Trust is there
to do it independently anyway and work out whether that is true
or not. The fact that a particular politician at a particular
moment in time accuses us of being impartial is part of the rich
tapestry of what happens. I do not dismiss it out of hand. We
should look at it closely. In my watching and listening to the
journalism that comes out of BBC Scotland I do not see systematic
or serious bias of the kind that you quote at all. I think that
we try in Scotland, as we do across the whole UK, to reflect the
political scene as objectively and impartially as we can.
Sir Michael Lyons: I did speak
to Anthony King in some detail about his findings and pressed
him on the strength of his conclusion given that this was a report
that we commissioned into whether or not the BBC was truly impartial
and he said that throughout all of the interviews that he had
held across the parties nobody had suggested at any time—and
he pressed the matter—that the BBC could be accused of partiality.
I think we can have some confidence in what he said. There are
live debates taking place at the moment in which people have their
own interests.
Q50 Adam Price: And by-elections!
Sir Michael Lyons: Quite possibly.
Q51 Rosemary McKenna: I cannot say
that at the moment the BBC is ignoring Scottish issues! I want
to move on to your proposals to try and locate at least 50% of
BBC staff outside of London by 2016. That would mean more production
outside of London. How can you not do more production outside
of London because that would appear to me to be absolutely crucial
to developing the talent that is in the UK outside of London?
Sir Michael Lyons: It is, and
the BBC as a whole is committed to developing the creative industries
across the United Kingdom. The public commitments to moving towards
the Ofcom targets, both in terms of the 50% ambition for out of
London but also the network production targets that we have agreed
to, came out of intense discussions between the Trust and the
Executive about the right way to lay out our common commitment
to serving all audiences and making a stronger contribution still
to the economy of the nations and regions. I do not want to leave
you with the impression that we have a rather simple view and
Mark will say more about the first steps in this direction. I
think there is a legacy issue here. Even the decision to build
Pacific Quay is very important and, as we said at the time, it
is important not only to Scotland, but it is even more profoundly
important to changing the shape and responsiveness of the BBC.
The decision to move to Salford had not previously been fully
turned into plans to have both the impact on production locally
but also to ensure that we capture all of those audiences and
respond to those quite stark figures that show that as you move
away from London affection for the BBC does reduce. It is not
a consistent pattern, but by and large the further you move from
London the bigger the problem is in winning the affection of its
audiences. The important message to leave with you is that this
is very prominent in our current agenda. That is reflected in
the fact that we have set completely new targets and it reflects
detailed discussions between the Executive and the Trust. It is
not a question of it being imposed, it is a shared ambition. There
is no doubt at all that it is going to be tested.
Mr Thompson: What are the elements?
The elements are trying to build high quality, state of the art
broadcast centres.
Q52 Rosemary McKenna: Pacific Quay
has been there for a year and it has not increased its production.
Mr Thompson: We are increasing
network production in Scotland and over the coming years we expect
it to go on increasing. Secondly, partnerships are with the broadcasters.
Thirdly, stretching the targets of the commissioners is an absolute
determination that the commissioners should do to make sure that
we are commissioning production from across the whole UK and specifically
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Q53 Rosemary McKenna: We have some
excellent independent producers in Scotland, which is recognised
by everyone. I think there is a danger that we are going to lose
some of that talent if it is not used. I want to ask you a specific
question that was raised with this Committee by SMG about Scottish
Television. Why does the BBC not recognise them as an independent
producer?
Mr Thompson: The issue of whether
they qualify as an independent producer is a matter for the Ofcom
definitions under the statutory 25%, it is not a matter for the
BBC. We cannot declare people independents or not independents.
It is about whether they meet the criteria which are laid out
in the legislation and which effectively Ofcom gives a view on.
The nature of the beast is to try and create an independent productive
sector which is not over-influenced by the broadcasters.
Q54 Rosemary McKenna: I will explore
that with Ofcom.
Mr Thompson: That is not a matter
for the BBC. However, the fact they are non-qualifying does not
mean we cannot potentially commission something from them.
Q55 Rosemary McKenna: It is an excellent
facility.
Mr Thompson: Right from the start
we built up PQ by talking to SMG and with an expectation they
would share many of our facilities. It is very different from
the past. Around the country we are trying to work with SMG, ITV
and Channel 4 so that you deliver a critical mass which helps
the whole sector, not just the BBC.
Q56 Rosemary McKenna: You will know
that this Committee was instrumental in unraveling the whole issue
of quiz call television, et cetera. How do you feel that
you are managing to rebuild trust?
Sir Michael Lyons: Perhaps I ought
to give you the Trust's judgment on this. There is no doubt at
all that those lapses that were revealed last summer were serious
lapses. I think the BBC established some public credibility with
the fact that it recognised them as serious, it did not seek to
reduce them or diminish them and gave a very clear statement of
intention to set things right. The Director General brought forward
at that stage an action plan which was considered and agreed with
the Trust and we followed that up by asking Ron Neill, an established
figure in this industry, to go back in and to check in some detail
not just that the changes had been made, but that they had had
an impact and we then published his report. The Neill report makes
very interesting reading. It gives a very positive response in
terms of the fact that the BBC did exactly what it said it would
do and it had changed its practices and had increased arrangements
for proper compliance. You then come to those figures, which again
are in the public domain now, showing that public trust in the
BBC has gone back to levels before those incidents occurred. None
of us is complacent about this, absolutely not, but I think this
is a matter well handled and something of a case study that others
might follow.
Q57 Helen Southworth: Could you not
lift the milestones for Media City in Salford? What are you expecting
and how soon are you going to do it?
Sir Michael Lyons: I am sure you
will have seen how fast it is taking shape. We are still on course
for 2010 as the completion date. A very important issue for the
Trust is making sure that the Salford operation, BBC North, is
appropriately led. That is a very important issue for us. The
physical project is moving on in good time. I just want to take
the opportunity to underline that the BBC is a very important
part of this, but Media City is nine times larger than the BBC's
input. I only underline that because I want it to be clear that
here is the BBC working in partnership, it is doing its bit. It
cannot do this by itself.
Mr Thompson: We are currently
on time and on budget with the project. 2011 is the main year
for occupation and we will be broadcasting out of Salford by 2011.
I expect that by early autumn we will have had something to say
publicly about the leadership and how we are going to structure
this part of the BBC with the rest of the BBC and hopefully we
will get leadership in place by mid-autumn of this year.
Q58 Helen Southworth: In terms of
production within the region and the creative industries, what
is your vision for that?
Mr Thompson: What we hope we can
do is be an anchor tenant in this place. We have been talking
to ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, PACT and the NWDA and so forth.
What we hope is that the BBC's activity there, several thousand
people, hundreds of millions of pounds of investment, will form
the core of a growing creative industry and that Media City will
become a critical mass which more and more people join to create
opportunities for employment, for new businesses, for new independent
production businesses and other businesses, for some of the craft
skills we use, for partnerships with the academic institutions,
the universities, but also with schools and academies in the area
and with various local communities. We are thinking hard about
Salford, Greater Manchester, the North-West and the North.
Q59 Helen Southworth: Warrington?
Remember Warrington! There are very able and creative people in
Warrington.
Sir Michael Lyons: Each of my
regional or national visits has included a detailed discussion
with the independent sector. The meeting in the North-West was
quite distinctive in terms of the recognition of both the importance
of what the BBC is doing there and its willingness to put a hand
out and work much more closely.
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