The Chairmanship of the
BBC
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
1. This is the first report of the Select Committee
on Communications. It deals with the selection, terms of employment
and role of the Chairman of the BBC. It follows the work of the
House of Lords Select Committee on BBC Charter Review which was
an ad hoc committee established in 2005 to scrutinise the Government's
plans for the future of the BBC. Since then the new BBC Royal
Charter has come into force, a new licence fee settlement has
been agreed and a new Chairman of the BBC has been appointed.
2. The process for appointing the Chairman of
the BBC was not subject to parliamentary oversight and has not
been debated in Parliament or considered by any Select Committee.
This is a particularly important appointment. The recent selection
process followed the surprise resignation of Michael Grade who
left to become chairman of ITV. At the same time the new Royal
Charter has altered the responsibilities of the job very considerably.
We therefore decided that we should carry out a short inquiry
in this area.
3. The BBC is one of the chief guardians of public
service broadcasting standards. It is an organisation that represents
the United Kingdom across the world. It receives over £3
billion of annual revenue from the public. The purpose of this
report is twofold. First to make sure that the selection of the
Chairman is protected from any chance of political interference
and has the confidence of the licence fee payers. Secondly, to
clarify how the roles and responsibilities of the Chairman have
been affected by the new governance arrangements at the BBC. During
our inquiry the new arrangements came up against their first significant
test as the BBC came under fire for having operated phone-ins
in a misleading manner and for a misleading trailer for a documentary
about The Queen.
4. The membership of the Committee is set out
at Appendix 1. This was a short inquiry for which we did not call
for written evidence. We received valuable oral evidence from
the witnesses listed in Appendix 2.
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