Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 23 MAY 2007
MR MICHAEL
GRADE
Q1 Chairman:
Welcome. Let me explain, if I may, what we are trying to do. The
Committee has, as you know, because you were here last when you
were Chairman of the BBC, been looking at the BBC Charter. This
is a wider committee now, the Communications Committee, and we
are looking at issues surrounding communications and the media.
We thought we would have a fairly short inquiry to begin with,
which really followed on from our work on the BBC Charter, looking
at the position of the BBC Chairman, to examine the process by
which the BBC Chairman is appointed and whether that appointment
should be scrutinised by Parliament—which has now become
suddenly very topical. We want to look at the terms of service
contract of the new Chairman and we also want to ask a fundamental
question, whether the Chairman sees his role as a regulator or
as head of a broadcasting organisation. In general terms, that
is where we are going to. As I say, when we last saw you, you
were Chairman of the BBC. Could I ask, first, how did that appointment
at the BBC come about?
Mr Grade: I answered an advertisement.
Q2 Chairman:
You applied yourself.
Mr Grade: I applied.
Q3 Chairman:
Then what happened?
Mr Grade: I applied; I was asked to make myself
available for an interview; I wrote a short paper, which I circulated
to the interview panel before I got there; I was then grilled
for an hour by a panel that was chaired, as I recall, by the senior
civil servant at the DCMS and there were three independent members
of that panel. That followed, pretty well, the same procedure
as the first time I applied, unsuccessfully, when Gavyn Davies,
quite correctly, was appointed ahead of me.
Q4 Chairman:
That was your second application.
Mr Grade: Yes.
Q5 Chairman:
That was it, was it? Just one meeting.
Mr Grade: I had one meeting, then I heard nothing.
Then, eventually, I was engaged in a conversation with the permanent
secretary of the DCMS to discuss what arrangements I would make
about conflicts—I had a sort of plural existence in those
days: I held a number of appointments—and how I would reorganise
my life if—if—I were to be appointed. We got to the
end of that process and eventually my appointment was confirmed.
Q6 Chairman:
You knew by this stage it was getting warm.
Mr Grade: You wait until you get it in writing.
Q7 Chairman:
Were you ever interviewed by the Secretary of State?
Mr Grade: No.
Q8 Chairman:
The Secretary of State never contacted you at all?
Mr Grade: The first conversation I had with
the Secretary of State was after my appointment. I had an informal
chat with her—this was Tessa Jowell—in her office,
just talking generally about how we were going to work.
Q9 Chairman:
In effect, this was an appointment made, or at least recommended,
by a panel headed not by the permanent secretary but by another
senior—
Mr Grade: The Chair of the interview panel was
the permanent secretary but I would say that 99 per cent of the
interview was conducted by the independent members. I knew, obviously,
that the process was that they would get to the end of their interviews
and they would send a report making a single recommendation or
some system whereby "Of the six candidates"—I
am sorry, I do not know how many they saw, but let us say it was
six—"three we think are appointable, three are not,"
or whatever their report said. That, presumably, went to the Secretary
of State, who would make a recommendation to the Prime Minister,
and then it would go through the constitutional niceties.
Q10 Chairman:
The Prime Minister made the appointment, did he, in the end or
was it the Secretary of State?
Mr Grade: It is made by the Queen in Council.
The appointment is confirmed on recommendation from the Prime
Minister.
Q11 Chairman:
What kind of questions were you asked at the interview? I do not
know if you have any political allegiances at all, but were you
asked that?
Mr Grade: I was not asked but I thought it important
at that moment in the BBC's history to make it clear that I was
not politically active in any sense; that nobody knew how I voted.
My wife does not know how I vote. I have always made it my business
to keep my politics to myself in the sphere of being in public
service broadcasting, handling news, current affairs and so on,
but I was able to confirm that I was not a member of any political
party, that I had never been politically active. I had political
views but these were my own views and nobody knew what they were.
I thought that was important at that moment in the BBC's history,
post Hutton and the tragedy of Kelly and so on. I think it was
very important that a non-political individual was appointed at
that particular time.
Q12 Chairman:
Would it be fair to say that, apart from your self-evident broadcasting
experience, the other thing they were interested in would be any
conflict of interest.
Mr Grade: Yes, of course.
Q13 Chairman:
At that stage, did you have things you had to give up?
Mr Grade: Yes, I did. I was Chairman of Camelot,
the National Lottery operator. I gave up a number of other things.
I cannot remember what they were but Camelot was the main one.
Q14 Chairman:
Then you were appointed to the BBC as BBC Chairman. You were welcomed,
I think, by the staff very much. This was a welcome appointment
inside the BBC.
Mr Grade: Honeymoons do not normally last very
long. Yes, I was very touched by the reception. The BBC was in
a very low state of morale. It had been much battered and bruised.
There had never been a moment in the BBC's history where it had
lost a Chairman and a Director-General in the course of 24 hours.
It was a very, very serious position it was in and my job was
to go in and stabilise things and plan for the future.
Q15 Chairman:
So it needed a period of stability.
Mr Grade: Very much so, yes.
Q16 Chairman:
You were appointed for four years and then you left after ...
?
Mr Grade: Whatever it was: two years, two and
a bit years.
Q17 Chairman:
Did you feel at that stage you were letting the BBC down?
Mr Grade: No, I do not think I have ever left
a job without having completed the task I was initially set or
I had initially set myself. The job that I perceived when I arrived
at the BBC was to stabilise the place, to appoint a Director-General,
to secure the next Charter and to address successfully the serious
governance shortfalls that had emerged in the BBC. Through the
Charter Review process, it was agreed that we would have the Operating
Board. The Trust had participated in every single one of the appointments
to the two boards and I had really completed that task. The question
was whether I wanted to go on and be the first Chairman of the
Trust, which I would have enjoyed doing, unquestionably, but the
opportunity that I was offered at ITV to become the Executive
Chairman was irresistible.
Q18 Chairman:
You saw it as a natural break in the process, did you?
Mr Grade: Yes.
Q19 Chairman:
Surely the Charter process was still in being.
Mr Grade: No, the Charter process was done.
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