Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

My Lords, like all others, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for giving us the opportunity of today’s debate. It has proved to be a timely one, because it is the first opportunity that we have had to discuss the Government’s Green Paper on the BBC, published in the week before the Christmas Recess. When I saw the Motion mentioning recent developments in broadcasting, I wondered how far we might roam in your Lordships’ House—and, indeed, we have heard about the Second World War a few times, the Home Service and the Light Programme. But noble Lords have also talked about some of the more recent trends in broadcasting that we have seen. The noble Lords, Lord Razzall and Lord Hampton, and, very powerfully, my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington spoke about the declining connection between young people and our public service broadcasters. The noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, talked about the 30% reduction in the BBC’s income from the licence fee without accompanying public debate. My noble friend Lord Vaizey of Didcot, still sporting his very Santa-like beard, highlighted that YouTube is now the second most popular broadcaster in the United Kingdom. It is against the backdrop of recent changes such as this that we will soon be asked to consider the BBC’s royal charter for the next very uncertain decade. That is a vital moment not just for the corporation but for our other public service broadcasters and our nation as a whole. It comes hot on the heels of a recent litany of errors from the BBC that noble Lords have pointed out and which I shall not repeat—other than to say that those errors have profound consequences, whether that is multibillion-pound lawsuits or a decline in trust and connection between audiences and our broadcasters. We have seen that the proportion of people in the United Kingdom who say that they trust BBC News has fallen by 15 percentage points since 2018. That is something that should worry us, as I know it worries the BBC. As noble Lords know, I am sympathetic to the BBC and our public service broadcasters. In that sense, I am a Fowlerite Conservative: we ask a lot of the BBC and expect the high standards that it has come to be renowned for over the last century. We should remember that 94% of adults use some of the BBC’s services in some form each month. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Old Windsor, said, it is to the BBC and our other public broadcasters that we turn in our nation’s most important moments. However, the BBC faces some structural problems as we confront its next decade: a declining number of viewers, as the Christmas viewing figures prayed in aid by many noble Lords showed; increasing competition from other channels, as anyone who, like me, has tried to work out how to use the Christmas edition of the Radio Times in the modern age will be able to attest to; the declining number of licence fee payers, with 2.5 million fewer over the past decade, as the Government’s Green Paper points out; and the increasing evasion of the licence fee, the rate of which has doubled and now stands at 12.5%, which is one in eight people who should be paying for the service that we all enjoy and who is not. We need to ask some very big questions to set the BBC and broadcasting more generally on the right course for the next uncertain decade. I, for one, find it difficult to predict what the next 10 years might hold, so I think it is important that we have these regular opportunities. A forever charter would be even harder to try to set out. But, unfortunately, the Government’s Green Paper ducks so many of the big questions that confront us over the coming years. The Government chose to disband the expert panel that was formed to look into future funding for the BBC in 2023, wasting some time and independent insight, and have ruled out some of the most basic questions in their Green Paper. For instance, it dismisses certain funding models seen in other countries. A recent paper by the British Academy draws some interesting comparisons with Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain and others. The Government have already ruled those out in the Green Paper, yet they leave the door open to advertising—something that the BBC itself is so opposed to. Can the Minister explain a bit of the rationale there? The Green Paper rules out looking at the size and scope of the BBC. It says, “we do not believe a smaller BBC is in the UK’s interest”. However, I think we should at least ask the question whether the BBC ought to have so many television and radio channels. Do we really need four versions of Radio 1, with 1Xtra, Radio 1 Dance and Radio 1 Anthems—which, I was disappointed to learn, is not the place where one can find the much-missed Radio 4 “UK Theme”. My noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood is right to point out the impact of the BBC on other media, particularly local newspapers. The Government’s Green Paper does not say much about greater collaboration, or perhaps even mergers, between some of our public service broadcasters in the years to come. In the Government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan, which was published last June, they said that they would ask the Competition and Markets Authority, supported by Ofcom, to set out how changes in the sector “could be taken into account as part of any future assessment of television and advertising markets. This would include when considering any potential closer, strategic partnerships or possible consolidation between broadcasters”. Did the Government ask the CMA and Ofcom about this, and what progress have those two bodies made in the intervening months? However, as the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, says, the CMA does not have a good track record in this area. It rejected Project Kangaroo, the plan for a consolidated streaming service for all our public service broadcasters, which would have given them such an important head start on Netflix and the others that have now gained pace. The Green Paper contains some damaging ideas, such as the notion of free TV licences for people on benefits. That would only fuel division, resentment and some of the disconnect that audiences feel, and would add to the pressures on public spending that have led to many of the problems that noble Lords have identified in their remarks today. Perhaps the Minister can set out why the Government are looking at this. We need to ask these big questions so that the BBC and other public service broadcasters can compete. We saw in recent weeks the news that the BBC has been replaced by TNT Sports as the broadcaster for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games—a great shame for those who wish to follow them. This will lead to increased piracy, as people try to watch their favourite sports or TV programmes illegally. Noble Lords rightly point to the mergers and growth of already large international streamers and corporations, and to the way that they are pushing up production costs, making it more difficult for the BBC, Channel 4 and others to compete. I was glad to hear a number of noble Lords talking about the knock-on effect that this has on cinematic releases. Timothée Chalamet has been speaking very powerfully about trying to get people into cinemas to watch his latest film, “Marty Supreme”—something that would buck the trend.