TUESDAY 22 MARCH 2005

LORD MCINTOSH OF HARINGEY AND MR JON ZEFF

  Q160  Bishop of Manchester: So you were not happy with the Ofcom model of a Public Service Publisher?

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think we say in the Green Paper it is an exciting model and it is one which we will certainly consider as part of that process. I have to say that it was raised in the summer of last year and in their phase three report last month they have not closed the debate on that, they have left us with a number of options about how that can operate. I have a lot of questions on how that could operate but I do not think it is the role of Government to respond to those options, it is for Ofcom to make up its mind more clearly what it wants and then we will respond.

  Q161  Bishop of Manchester: You said a moment ago, and I entirely agree with the point you made, that we would not want public service broadcasting to be the preserve of the BBC only. I wonder if you could just expand a little on your own views about how public service broadcasting can be enhanced in order to make sure that it is across the board and not simply left with the BBC.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The first thing to say is that public service broadcasting can happen without any Government intervention whatsoever by any definition of public service broadcasting such as that in the Communications Act. A lot of Sky output meets the standard of public service broadcasting although it is not obliged to and we have no editorial control whatsoever over Sky. Public service broadcasting in its broadest definition of being high quality broadcasting of all kinds, coming back to Lord Maxton's point about the area of entertainment, will continue but the question is under what financial and regulatory conditions it will flourish. Those are the issues for our second review.

  Q162  Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen: I want to return briefly to the question of the licence fee granting the BBC independence because there is a view that a grant-in-aid would compromise independence. Could you explain to us the difference, therefore, in relation to the World Service which is funded through grant-in-aid rather than the licence fee? What guarantees its political independence there? What are the characteristics, please?

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The World Service is funded by grant-in-aid because it cannot be funded by the licence fee because the people who benefit from the World Service are not the people who pay the licence fee. That is the starting point. We can hardly expect people paying the licence fee to pay for what people are watching in Japan or Brazil or Croatia, so we cannot have the licence fee in its classic sense as the funding for the World Service. This is an issue of what we call public diplomacy and the Government has asked Lord Carter of Coles to produce a report on that on which he will be reporting later this year and he will be able to give you more definitive answers than I am able to. I think it is accepted that one of the core purposes of the BBC is to represent the United Kingdom to the world as a whole and we consider that if it cannot be funded by the licence fee it has to be funded by Government. This has been so right since the very beginning and it works in the sense that the BBC World Service is widely accepted as being independent and authoritative. I do not know that you can justify it in theory but certainly it works in practice.

  Q163  Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen: Will the report cover the questions of political interference and editorial independence?

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, of course. Under the agreement with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office editorial independence is guaranteed but the Foreign Office has to agree the audiences served and the languages used, so they do have an input into the way that it operates but they do not have control over editorial policy.

  Q164  Lord Peston: Is it not the case that what really gives us this guarantee is what we might call the public service culture of the BBC? In other words, it does not require anybody outside in the case of the overseas service to tell them what to do. If you compare it with the appalling propaganda that comes from the American stations right across the world, this is a cultural thing. It has nothing to do with control as I see it, I think the BBC would simply refuse to become a propaganda agency for this country. Surely that is something immensely valuable to us.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I agree with that.

  Q165  Chairman: We are accustomed, although we are only in the second session, to hearing great praise being placed on the World Service, which I think quite a lot of us would echo, but what about television? It is all very well being foremost in radio but television is probably more important, or is getting to be more important, it must be.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It would cost a lot of money to have a publicly funded television equivalent of World Service radio. The way in which the BBC has approached it is through BBC World which is intended to be funded by advertising and other sources. I suppose the ideal situation would be that the Foreign Office would provide enough for a number of television channels—I can think particularly of the need for an Arab television channel to cover all of the Arab speaking countries—but if that is not possible it seems to me the way it has been approached through BBC World is the best that is available to us.

  Q166  Chairman: It must be possible, must it not, to do just what you have described at pretty low cost, frankly? As far as I read the Green Paper, basically what the Green Paper says is you think this might be a good idea but you will just keep it within the existing budget.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am not sure that is literally true in terms of spectrum. I think television spectrum is a good deal scarcer than shortwave spectrum, which is what we have at the moment. I am not sure technically whether it would be possible to get anything like the same coverage for television even if we could afford it.

  Q167  Chairman: You do not sound to me to be giving much hope that extra resources are going to be devoted on the television side.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am not answering for the Foreign Office. I will ask them.

  Q168  Lord Holme of Cheltenham: Is it not a fact that there are, in fact, some public resources devoted to world television in the sense of transfer prices of material made for the British licence payer broadcasting here? The transfer prices of those to BBC World television are such that there is, in fact—I would be interested to know whether you think this is desirable or not—an element of indirect subsidy of BBC World television from the British licence payer.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am not familiar enough with the finances of BBC World to say whether that is the case or not but I guess we, or the BBC, could write to you about that.

  Q169  Lord Holme of Cheltenham: In fact, the BBC has undertaken to give us some more information on that but I think the premise is right.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: They are better informers than I am on that.

  Q170  Lord Holme of Cheltenham: Is that something that would concern you or would you think that is desirable?

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, of course. As I said, we think it is in the interests of that public purpose of the BBC of our taking the UK to the world to be television as well as radio.

  Q171  Chairman: There is always going to be an element of cross-subsidy, is there not? You are using the same correspondents, the same bases, things of that kind.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Different regimes at the BBC have treated these matters differently. Some regimes at the BBC have had news and current affairs for both radio and television and some have kept them separate. I do not presume to judge on these operational issues. I do not know how it works in practice but the principle is that they have to be separately financed.

  Q172  Bishop of Manchester: Can I have some information which my colleagues may well already have. It is just to find out from you exactly what the role of the Foreign Office is in all this, what kind of control it is likely to continue to have in the World Service, what control it has over the available financing. I was very interested in your response about the Foreign Office and saying "Well, go and ask them".

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Jon, I think you know more about this than I do. Is there anything you would like to say?

  Mr Zeff: On the future role of the—

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The future relationship between the Foreign Office and the World Service.

  Mr Zeff: The future relationship and the future of the World Service is an issue that is raised broadly in the Green Paper. As the Minister said, it is an issue that comes within the scope of the Carter review of public diplomacy. I imagine those sorts of issues will be looked at there. The relationship between the Foreign Office and the World Service now is, as the Minister set out, one in which they fund the World Service through grant-in-aid and the World Service has editorial independence but the Foreign Office does set broad objectives in terms of the audiences and the numbers of languages that are provided, for example.

  Q173  Bishop of Manchester: Given the fact of the importance of the World Service it would be pertinent to explore that further with them.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes, it certainly would.

  Chairman: Obviously we are going to have to do some more work on this; we have already identified that area. Can we go on to regional broadcasting?

  Q174  Lord Maxton: At the present time, not in the regions but certainly in the nations of the United Kingdom—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—their positions in the BBC are protected by having a national governor to represent them and having a Broadcasting Council, of which he is normally the chairman, to get the views of those nations. Will that continue under the new structure?

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is the green bit of the paper. We have set out the role of the trust and of the executive board. As to how the trust should be composed, that is a matter on which we shall listen to what people say.

  Q175  Lord Maxton: Can I just go marginally greener then and ask if we are going to have national governors on the new trust, will the new devolved parliaments and assemblies have any say in who is appointed, even if it is just in making recommendations which will then be approved by the Secretary of State?

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not accept the premise that we will necessarily have regional or national governors so I cannot answer about the composition.

  Q176  Lord Maxton: In that case—

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: There could be, but that is something we are going to listen to people about.

  Q177  Lord Maxton: There would be a very considerable outcry in Scotland in particular if there was no national governor, no representation on the BBC trust to at least represent the views of the Scottish people on the BBC.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: They will have an opportunity to express that view. That is something on which the mechanics of how to achieve a proper reflection of the needs of the regions and nations of this country is something on which we recognise the need but we are open as to the way that it is achieved.

  Q178  Lord Maxton: How do you ensure productions are done by the nations and the regions? I know the BBC has made promises about this but if there is no representation on the trust how do you ensure that promise is carried out? To me, that would be the role of the national governors, to make sure that BBC Scotland gets its fair share in terms of the broadcasting done by the BBC.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is a legitimate point of view but we have not reached a conclusion on it.

  Lord Maxton: I think I will try to make sure it is in the report.

  Q179  Lord Peston: My Lord Chairman, can I join in because there is another model which is the model of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, which is the best example of an independent body, and they quite rightly rejected any such concept of regional representation or anything else. They said they had a set of criteria to stick to and that was how they were going to operate. It is not obvious it seems to me, and this Committee is a long way off coming to a conclusion, that you get regional interests represented by having people from the region.

  Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I hear that view too.

  Chairman: I think we can have that internal debate at some other stage. Anyone else on the regional side? Let us go on to the issue of the Royal Charter and perhaps the difference between Royal Charter and statute as well.