Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2200
- 2219)
WEDNESDAY 19 MARCH 2008
Mr Richard Hooper CBE
Q2200 Lord King of Bridgwater:
To follow on Lord Grocott's question, how many of those complaints
were actually against the BBC about accuracy and impartiality
where you had to write a letter back saying that it was nothing
to do with you?
Mr Hooper: We must have had some. I do not know
what the figures were. I do not think there were a lot.
Q2201 Lord King of Bridgwater:
What I am getting at is do you not think the public are thoroughly
confused?
Mr Hooper: No, I do not think so. We made it
clear that this was a matter for the BBC.
Q2202 Lord King of Bridgwater:
I thought you said you should cover accuracy and impartiality
of the BBC.
Mr Hooper: No, I was asked a very straight question
as a citizen today and I answered that as I did. That is not the
current governance position.
Q2203 Lord King of Bridgwater:
I am not trying to embarrass you. It just seems to me that in
this slightly confused situation I am amazed that the general
public would actually be able to distinguish between who was responsible
for what. In other words were there letters coming out from you
saying, "We can accept the complaint if it is about ITV but
we cannot accept it if it is about the BBC".
Mr Hooper: That is correct on accuracy and impartiality.
Q2204 Lord Maxton:
If you get a complaint post-broadcast—Jerry Springer, for
example,—if you found in favour of those complaining, what
actually could you have done about it?
Mr Hooper: The ultimate sanction was a fine
and that did happen.
Q2205 Lord Maxton:
How many people did that happen to?
Mr Hooper: I do not know what the latest statistic
is but a significant amount of fining has gone on. Sanctions are
monetary and real and can be sizeable.
Chairman: I would like to move onto Ofcom's
role in media mergers. Lord King?
Q2206 Lord King of Bridgwater:
This is this complicated situation about what powers Ofcom has
to initiate an investigation. They cannot do it initially off
their own bat, they have to wait and see if the secretary of state
has issued an intervention notice and then they can come in to
bat. Do you think that is right or do you think they should have
the power to initiate an investigation?
Mr Hooper: My view—again this is not an
Ofcom view necessarily, it is my view as an individual—is
that where it is at the moment as a secretary of state power is
entirely reasonable. One of the issues we have—which we
will perhaps come onto later on—is about whether the secretary
of state should be able to reject the advice of regulators on
mergers with public interest consideration. I think it is terribly
important that the system of independent regulation that we have
is sustained and clear and there does not develop too much proximity
between the independent regulator and the secretary of state.
I think there is a need for some blue water between them. Personally
I think the secretary of state's powers to initiate a media merger
on public interest grounds is entirely reasonable.
Q2207 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Should Ofcom have the power to anticipate that or should it have
to wait for the secretary of state?
Mr Hooper: I think it is perfectly sensible
to stay with the current structure; personally I would not change
it.
Q2208 Chairman:
You were going to answer the further question.
Mr Hooper: It is about whether the secretary
of state is able to reject the advice of regulators on whether
a merger raises public interest considerations. I think the answer
is that in the end the secretary of state can reject the advice
of the independent regulators. One of the things that in my ten
years of regulating I sometimes found most difficult to get across
was when people said, "Richard, how do you dare regulate
harm and offence when you are not elected?" and I would say,
"Absolutely correct. We are not elected, we are subject to
the public appointment process but we are not elected." We
are creatures of statute; we gain our powers from laws that are
democratically arrived at. In the end with things like cross-media
ownership and media ownership, I think the regulator should always
be wary about having too much opinion in that area. Clearly it
does have a view but in the end it is a political judgment and
I think when it is a political judgment politicians should make
those judgments. It is terribly easy for it to say that this is
a regulator's job; I do not believe it is. There are big politics
and policy issues where the politicians have to step up to the
plate and take those decisions.
Q2209 Chairman:
You say "step up to the plate", that assumes there is
some sort of consequence to the action they take. Do you not find
it rather curious that politicians—very senior politicians
and prime ministers—who spend a great deal of time trying
to persuade the media owners to do their wishes (we have had evidence
of that throughout this inquiry) should also be in charge of or
have the last say as far as media mergers are concerned? Is there
not a conflict?
Mr Hooper: Of course there is a conflict in
a democratic society, but I still think that there are some of
those issues which, in the end, are fundamentally political issues.
Whilst the regulator may have views on them, the regulator is
not the last voice on them, it is a political matter.
Q2210 Chairman:
What is the defence for the citizen? If one again looks back on
some of the mergers that have taken place they have been waved
through by ministers—ministers who happen to have a big
majority in the House of Commons—so what can the citizen
do about it?
Mr Hooper: If there is a public interest issue
the regulator is clearly asked for its views on it and does give
views on it and any sensible regulator would give, in the case
of media ownership, the issue of media plurality which is at the
heart of these issues. How many voices does a typical family in
Norwich have coming into their house owned by how many people?
That is a classic media plurality issue and I think when the regulator,
when asked for advice on these matters, will give it. However,
in the end, I believe those are political issues.
Q2211 Chairman:
You are talking not just about broadcasting but about the press
as well, are you?
Mr Hooper: I am basically talking about broadcasting
because we had no statutory remit over the press at all. We were
a broadcasting regulator in that sense.
Q2212 Lord Maxton:
You quite clearly said earlier that you regulated on-screen; you
could not regulate websites.
Mr Hooper: Yes.
Q2213 Lord Maxton:
Surely those two are becoming increasingly merged together.
Mr Hooper: I absolutely agree.
Q2214 Lord Maxton:
Do you think the laws should be changed in some way in relation
to the internet?
Mr Hooper: I think we have in our society a
fundamental difficulty in the famous convergence of the world.
It has happened. If you go onto YouTube now the moment
you call that page up, up comes not text but straight into moving
pictures and those are moving pictures from existing commercial
broadcasters and so on. I think that it is a difficult issue because
it is all about whether you roll out statutory regulation onto
the internet. I think there is great unwillingness to do this
in this country. Indeed, one of the big debates that we had in
my time was the European Directive which sought to significantly
roll out regulation onto the internet. I think the United Kingdom
was one of the voices that very much said that that was overdoing
it, so I think it is a big issue.
Q2215 Lord Maxton:
It is said that you will be able to control your on-screen content
through your computer wirelessly onto your television screen which
then, in a sense—because you are paying the licence fee
or whatever—brings you into a different field altogether.
Mr Hooper: I remember one of the earliest conversations
that Lord Currie and I had with mobile network operators—the
O2s and Vodafones of the world—was an agenda item (I was
there as chairman of the Content Board) which was content regulation.
I remember Lord Currie and I saying very clearly to the chief
executive in question, "This is not part of our statutory
remit; we are not seeking to extend it but now listen carefully.
If you do not get your act together, self-regulate your content
on mobile phones"—it is a very similar argument with
internet service providers (ISPs) and I said this at an ISP after-dinner
speech—"then sooner or later the combined forces of
public opinion and the political forces of our society, will combine
together and will come down the turnpike and will do things to
you that you may not like. So get your act together and regulate
the content on mobile phones yourselves. Be as careful as you
can about these issues because these are hot issues. There is
no statutory remit but you might be surprised what will happen
if you do not take these issues seriously." I think that
was a useful conversation and the same conversation is going on
currently in relation to internet service providers, copyright
and piracy issues. To what extent are internet service providers
responsible for the content that they carry? Those are big issues
and I think the message that we had was that we believe very strongly
in self-regulation at Ofcom. As you may remember, we moved the
regulation of broadcast advertising from ourselves to the Advertising
Standards Authority, an act actually of de-regulation in one sense
although the statutory backing is still there. We felt that he
Advertising Standards Authority was way better at doing that because
it was doing outdoor advertising, it does internet advertising,
it does print advertising and then it took on broadcast advertising.
I think that has worked extremely well.
Q2216 Chairman:
You issued that threat—if I can put it in these terms—albeit
in an after dinner speech, but is it a threat you can carry through?
Mr Hooper: No, I would not carry it through;
I said the combined forces of public opinion would do that.
Q2217 Chairman:
Are there weapons at your disposal to intervene in this way.
Mr Hooper: British society can choose, through
its political governance, to regulate frankly anything that moves
if it wishes to, assuming it is compliant with European directives.
The point about these issues is that they are the sort of Jerry
Springer type issues; these are very sensitive issues.
Q2218 Chairman:
One last question to finish on the merger point, is it necessary
to have both Ofcom and the Competition Commission investigating
the public interest implications of a media merger?
Mr Hooper: My answer to that is that "if
it ain't broke, don't fix it" and I do not think there is
any evidence of it being broken. What I mean by that is that I
think there is a positive advantage to Ofcom and the Competition
Authority, but of course you will know, because you gave Ofcom
the powers and Ofcom is itself a competition authority, that there
is positive benefit to having the sectoral regulator who knows
a huge amount about radio and television and telecoms and spectrum
alongside a competition authority which in this country is a very
generic competition authority (it covers everything from supermarkets
to broadcasting). I think there is a great advantage in having
them together. In Australia the competition authority interested
in the competition aspect of sectoral regulation has gone into
the competition authority and there are separate teams. That is
another way of doing it but I think, given that you need with
media mergers sectoral expertise and given that Ofcom has that
significantly, then I think the two should be kept together to
get the best of both worlds.
Q2219 Lord Grocott:
Turning to radio ownership, on the one hand there are pressures
from within the industry to consolidate and amalgamate and there
will be certain benefits to that, including maybe newsrooms being
pooled and journalists assisting one another in different specialisms
and so on. That is the argument for merger, but on the side of
the journalists the NUJ they say there is very little evidence
as to there being any benefits in terms of newsrooms being better
resourced from mergers. Do you have any views on that?
Mr Hooper: I suppose consolidation of the radio
industry has been the story of my last ten years when I was Chairman
of the Radio Authority. I was a member of the Radio Authority
under the wise leadership of Lord Chalfont in the early 1990s.
Consolidation has been the play of the commercial operators for
years. I would like to point out that there was significant consolidation
and liberalisation in the Communications Act and one of the results
of that was the merger between GWR and Capital Radio (GCap Media).
Those of you who are shareholders were not happy about that; it
was not a very successful merger and yet it was the net result
of that consolidation. Consolidation and business mergers are
quite sensitive areas. There has been a long history of it. They
require further consolidation to which I would say a number of
things. In my valedictory address to the industry when I left
Ofcom two years ago—there were broadcasters in the audience
and they probably were not necessarily interested in hearing me—I
said, "In my experience, after ten years in this business,
if you spend as much time managing the regulator as you did on
dealing with customers, products and marketing and so on, it might
be helpful". One of the problems of a regulated industry
is that the regulated parties end up spending a lot of not middle-management
time but senior management time managing the regulatory interface.
The danger is that commercial radio companies and other companies
spend too much time on the regulatory issues. The real competition
and the real problems hitting commercial radio are nothing to
do with regulation, it is to do with the internet, it is to do
with the new electronic world of media. That is where the real
attack is coming because the advertising is moving, although not
completely away obviously, towards the internet. Having said all
that, speaking as a citizen not representing anybody's views,
I am relatively relaxed about it because I think if Professor
Barnett did a definition today of the industry—the industry
we are talking about today, in 2008—it would not be the
radio industry, it would not be the television industry, I do
not think it would be the broadcasting industry. This is a world
where today the internet is such a significant player in this
world. The Competition Authority always wants to define the market
in order to find out whether you have a dominant market share
and I think if you draw that today you would draw it with the
internet and YouTube and My Space inside that circle
and therefore at that point I think consolidation of individual
components is more likely.
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