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Bbc Trust Meeting MINUTES OF THE BBC TRUST MEETING Held on Thursday 23 June 2011 at BBC Broadcasting House, Cardiff Present: Lord Patten Chairman Diane Coyle Vice Chairman Richard Ayre Trust member Alison Hastings Trust member for England Items 69 - 77 Rotha Johnston Trust member for Northern Ireland David Liddiment Trust member Bill Matthews Trust member for Scotland Mehmuda Mian Trust member Elan Closs Stephens Trust member for Wales Apologies: Anthony Fry Trust member In attendance Nicholas Kroll Director, BBC Trust from the Trust Alex Towers Deputy Director, BBC Trust Unit: Phil Harrold Head of Governance Kate Atkins Senior Adviser, Governance Mark Devane Head of Communications Fran O’Brien Head of Editorial Standards Items 69 – 75 Alison Bexfield Head of Finance and Compliance and 78 Items 69 – 72 Jon Cowdock Head of Business Strategy and 75 Items 69 – 72, 75 Alison Gold Head of Public Services Strategy and 78 Items 69 – 71 Stephen Callow Senior Strategy Adviser and 75 From the Executive: Items 73 – 80 Mark Thompson Director-General Items 73 – 80 Caroline Thomson Chief Operating Officer Items 73 – 80 Zarin Patel Chief Financial Officer Items 73 – 80 Helen Boaden Director, News Items 73 – 80 Mary Wilkinson Acting Head of Director-General’s Office Items 73 and 74 James Lancaster Head of Rights and Business Affairs Items 73 – 75 George Entwistle Director, Vision Items 73, 74 and Keith Jones Director, BBC Cymru Wales 79 Item 75 Jessica Cecil Director, Delivering Quality First Item 75 Gautam Rangarajan Controller, Public Service, Policy and Strategy Item 75 John Tate Director, Policy and Strategy Item 75 Charlie Villar Director, Corporate Finance Head of Corporate Performance and Item 78 Edward James Reporting Item 78 Scott Cormack KPMG Item 78 Karen Wightman KPMG AGENDA 69 Minutes and matters arising 70 Committees and Audience Councils 71 Director’s report 72 Impartiality reviews 73 Director-General’s monthly report 74 Talent strategy 75 Delivering Quality First 76 Science impartiality review 77 Complaints handling 78 Annual Report and Accounts 2010-11 79 BBC and S4C partnership – update 80 Executive items for noting 81 Other matters 82 Items for noting 83 Business handling and communications 69 MINUTES AND MATTERS ARISING 69.1 The Trust approved the minutes of its meeting on 19 May 2011 as an accurate record of proceedings. The Trust approved the publication of the minutes with no redactions. 69.2 The Trust noted the matters arising from previous meetings. 70 COMMITTEES AND AUDIENCE COUNCILS 70.1 The Vice Chairman reported that the Audiences and Performance Committee had discussed the findings of the BBC Global News performance review with the Executive and noted key developments affecting audiences, such as the growth of digital services, shortwave switch-off, and the impact of significant cuts in funding to BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring. 70.2 The Chairman of the Editorial Standards Committee reported that the committee had found that a Panorama programme, Primark: On the Rack, broadcast in 2008, had breached the BBC Editorial Guidelines on accuracy and fairness. The committee had published its finding on 16 June and had directed the BBC to make an on-air apology. 70.3 The Chairman of the Finance and Compliance Committee said the committee had considered a fair trading appeal concerning syndication and the BBC iPlayer which (at the request of the appellant) was treated in confidence. The committee had partially upheld the appeal. 70.4 The Chairman of the Finance and Compliance Committee said the committee had scrutinised Trust members’ expenses and noted that full year costs in 2010-11 were 30% lower than in the previous financial year. The expenses would be published by the Trust in July. 70.5 The Trust member for England noted that a series of events was being held to seek audiences’ views about BBC local radio stations as part of the Trust’s service review of local radio. 70.6 The Trust member for Wales noted that members had met a wide range of people as part of the Trust’s visit to Cardiff, many of whom had spoken about the valuable role played by the BBC in Wales. 71 DIRECTOR’S REPORT 71.1 The Director, BBC Trust presented his report, which provided an overview of activity undertaken by the Trust and previewed the key issues to be considered by the Trust at the meeting. He noted that members had broadly agreed the provisional conclusions of the Trust’s governance review the previous day; final conclusions would be considered by the Trust in July. Members were updated on the themes for the Chairman’s Royal Television Society Fleming Memorial Lecture in early July. 71.2 Trust members heard that discussions were continuing to finalise amendments to the Agreement between the BBC and the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, following the licence fee settlement. 71.3 The Trust’s Head of Governance noted the Foreign Secretary’s announcement the previous day that an additional £2.2m per year would be provided to the BBC World Service over the next three years. The Trust had previously approved the reallocation of £9 million of existing World Service funding to editorial investment over three years, to mitigate the impact of recent funding cuts, following lower than expected restructuring costs and pension contributions. This additional funding would help provide support to some priority frontline services, including sustaining the Hindi short wave service, the Somali service and services for the Arab world. It would also allow a small amount of investment in new activities, in particular on new platforms and in emerging markets. 71.4 The Director, BBC Trust noted that Dame Patricia Hodgson had stood down as a Trust member on 6 June in advance of joining the Ofcom Board on 1 July. She would become Deputy Chairman of Ofcom on 1 January 2012 on the retirement of Philip Graf. A new Trust member would be appointed by the Queen-in- Council in due course. 72 IMPARTIALITY REVIEWS 72.1 The Chairman of the Editorial Standards Committee introduced this item concerning Trust activity in 2011-12 to review the impartiality of areas of the BBC’s output. The Trust had previously carried out a number of impartiality reviews, including one into coverage of the devolved nations in network news output in 2008. The most recent review – into the impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science – was due to be considered by the Trust later in the meeting. 72.2 The Trust agreed that the subject of its next impartiality review should be how the BBC covered conflicts, in particular the “Arab Spring”. The Chairman would announce this in his forthcoming Royal Television Society lecture. The Trust also approved proposals for a series of impartiality seminars focussing on current issues. 73 DIRECTOR-GENERAL’S MONTHLY REPORT 73.1 The Director-General outlined recent highlights from BBC services, including The Duke at 90 and Terry Pratchett – Choosing To Die on television; The Reith Lectures delivered by Aung San Suu Kyi on Radio 4; and coverage of the Glastonbury Festival on TV and radio. He noted that Songs of Praise on BBC One would mark its 50th anniversary in the autumn with three special programmes culminating in a celebration from London's Alexandra Palace, where regular television broadcasting began. 73.2 The Director, News said the BBC Executive accepted the Trust’s finding that a Panorama programme, Primark: On the Rack, broadcast in 2008, had breached the BBC Editorial Guidelines on accuracy and fairness and had apologised for its failings. The BBC would ensure that all staff involved in the making of the programme – and more generally staff involved in investigative reporting – understood their responsibilities when it came to authenticating evidence. These additional safeguards should ensure that the BBC maintained the standards expected by audiences. 73.3 The Director-General informed the Trust that a World Service journalist Urunboy Usmonov was being held in custody in Tajikistan after being arrested by Tajik police on 13 June and subsequently charged with promoting the agenda of a banned group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The BBC had demanded the journalist’s release. 73.4 The Director-General noted that Chief Political Correspondent Laura Kuenssberg was leaving the BBC to join ITV as its Business Editor. 74 TALENT STRATEGY 74.1 The Chief Operating Officer provided an update on the Executive’s progress in addressing the recommendations of the Trust’s review of talent costs, including controlling overall talent spend. 74.2 Trust members heard that talent spend had fallen over the last two years by more than 4% and that the Executive was working to drive down costs further by reducing rates paid and developing new talent. This year the BBC Annual Report and Accounts would include more data on talent spend, in the narrower bands proposed by the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, demonstrating a further commitment to transparency and value for money. 74.3 The Trust noted the Executive’s progress in this area and the spend figures to be published in the Annual Report, approving the Executive’s approach to transparency around talent spend, including the aggregation of the numbers of individuals falling into the three bands at the very top, where the numbers were so small as to risk data protection issues around the “jigsaw identification” of individuals. The Trust also accepted the Executive’s recommendation not to publish the names of individuals at the top of the pay scale following discussions with PACT, the trade body for independent producers, which remained opposed. 75 DELIVERING QUALITY FIRST 75.1 The Executive presented its emerging thinking to the Trust on the implementation of the new BBC strategy, Delivering Quality First (DQF).
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