REVIEW OF THE BBC CHARTER
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
1. In November 2005 we published our first report
on the review of the BBC's Royal Charter. That report focussed
on whether the Government's proposals in the Green Paper "Review
of the BBC's Royal Charter. A strong BBC, independent of government"
would really secure that aim. The purpose of that report was to
make sure Parliament's opinions on the Green Paper were heard
before the Government finalised their plans for the future of
the BBC and published the White Paper on the subject.
2. The Government had originally told us that
the White Paper would be published in November 2005. In order
to ensure that our first report came out in time to influence
the White Paper we were forced to constrain our inquiry. We were
therefore unable to fully explore all the areas we felt merited
scrutiny. As a consequence our inquiry was extended so that we
could produce this second report.
3. This report covers areas that we did not have
time to consider in our first report and it also returns to some
areas we referred to before but felt required further consideration.
We note that the Government's White Paper has been delayed several
times and is now expected in March 2006. We look forward to the
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport coming to give
oral evidence to us once the White Paper has been published.[1]
4. The membership of the Committee and the financial
interests of the members are set out in Appendix 1 and our Call
for Evidence in Appendix 3. We received valuable written and oral
evidence from the witnesses listed in Appendix 2. In the course
of our inquiry we travelled to the Greater Manchester area and
to Northern Ireland. We wish to thank all those who contributed
to this inquiry. As with our first inquiry we benefited from the
invaluable assistance of our Specialist Advisor Professor Richard
Collins, Professor of Media Studies at the Open University.
1 Q 1890 of the Secretary of State's evidence to the
Committee's first inquiry (HL Paper 50-I) Back
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