The Chairmanship of the BBC
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HOUSE OF LORDS Select Committee on Communications 1st Report of Session 2006–07 The Chairmanship of the BBC Report with Evidence Ordered to be printed 25 July 2007 and published 3 August 2007 Published by the Authority of the House of Lords London : The Stationery Office Limited £14.50 HL Paper 171 The Select Committee on Communications The Select Committee on Communications was appointed by the House of Lords on 23 April 2007 with the orders of reference “to consider communications”. Current Membership Baroness Bonham Carter of Yarnbury Lord Corbett of Castle Vale Baroness Eccles of Moulton Lord Fowler (Chairman) Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Baroness Howe of Idlicote Lord Inglewood Lord King of Bridgwater Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Bishop of Manchester Lord Maxton Baroness Scott of Needham Market Baroness Thornton Publications The report and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee are available on the intranet at: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/communications.cfm General Information General information about the House of Lords and its Committees, including guidance to witnesses, details of current inquiries and forthcoming meetings is on the internet at: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/ parliamentary_committees26.cfm Contact details All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Select Committee on Communications, Committee Office, House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 8662. The Committee’s email address is [email protected] CONTENTS Paragraph Page Chapter 1: Introduction 1 5 Chapter 2: The Role of the Chairman 5 6 Chapter 3: The Process of Appointment 17 9 The selection process 19 9 Ministerial influence 27 10 Should Parliament have a greater role? 35 12 Chapter 4: Conditions of Service 45 15 Chapter 5: The Chairman of the Executive Board 56 17 Appendix 1: Select Committee on Communications 18 Appendix 2: List of Witnesses 23 Oral Evidence Mr Michael Grade Oral Evidence, 23 May 2007 1 Don Foster MP Oral Evidence, 23 May 2007 13 Department for Culture, Media and Sport Oral Evidence, 6 June 2007 21 Supplementary Written Evidence 40 Mr Gavyn Davies Oral Evidence, 13 June 2007 41 Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust Oral Evidence, 13 June 2007 46 Supplementary Written Evidence 57 Mr Mark Thompson, Director-General, BBC Oral Evidence, 13 June 2007 57 Hugo Swire MP Oral Evidence, 13 June 2007 64 NOTE: References in the text of the report are as follows: (Q) refers to a question in oral evidence (p) refers to a page of written evidence The Chairmanship of the BBC CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. This is the first report of the Select Committee on Communications. It deals with the selection, terms of employment and role of the Chairman of the BBC. It follows the work of the House of Lords Select Committee on BBC Charter Review which was an ad hoc committee established in 2005 to scrutinise the Government’s plans for the future of the BBC. Since then the new BBC Royal Charter has come into force, a new licence fee settlement has been agreed and a new Chairman of the BBC has been appointed. 2. The process for appointing the Chairman of the BBC was not subject to parliamentary oversight and has not been debated in Parliament or considered by any Select Committee. This is a particularly important appointment. The recent selection process followed the surprise resignation of Michael Grade who left to become chairman of ITV. At the same time the new Royal Charter has altered the responsibilities of the job very considerably. We therefore decided that we should carry out a short inquiry in this area. 3. The BBC is one of the chief guardians of public service broadcasting standards. It is an organisation that represents the United Kingdom across the world. It receives over £3 billion of annual revenue from the public. The purpose of this report is twofold. First to make sure that the selection of the Chairman is protected from any chance of political interference and has the confidence of the licence fee payers. Secondly, to clarify how the roles and responsibilities of the Chairman have been affected by the new governance arrangements at the BBC. During our inquiry the new arrangements came up against their first significant test as the BBC came under fire for having operated phone-ins in a misleading manner and for a misleading trailer for a documentary about The Queen. 4. The membership of the Committee is set out at Appendix 1. This was a short inquiry for which we did not call for written evidence. We received valuable oral evidence from the witnesses listed in Appendix 2. 6 THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE BBC CHAPTER 2: THE ROLE OF THE CHAIRMAN 5. The Chairman of the BBC is a very different job from what is was before the inception of the BBC Trust at the start of this year. Before the Trust was established the BBC was governed by a Board of Governors who were in very close contact with the mangers of the BBC. The Chairman of the Governors was the Chairman of the Corporation. The BBC Trust has been given new roles and responsibilities and its separation from the Executive Board has been emphasised. 6. Article 10 of the new Royal Charter states that there is no longer a formal Chairman of the BBC “The Chairman of the Trust may also be known as the Chairman of the BBC. In view of article 8, this is an honorary title, as the members of the BBC will never act as a single corporate body, but only as members of the Trust or Board to which they belong.” 7. The fact that the BBC will never “act as a single corporate body” means that the Chairman and Director-General will no longer stand together representing one organisation (despite the seemingly contradictory statement in article 8 that “the Corporation that is the BBC shall comprise all the members of the BBC Trust and the Executive Board”). This is a radical change and one that concerns us. 8. When he gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on BBC Charter Review in 2005, the former Chairman of the BBC Gavyn Davies, said that in order to protect the independence of the BBC “The people in the trenches need to know that when they get into trouble from the Government and its press officers their Directors of News, the Director-General and Chairman will support them as long as they are broadly in the right and will give them cover for their actions”.1 He also said that “the strength of the system was that we [the Chairman and the Director-General] could stand together at a time like we saw in 2003 against Government pressure”.2 We note that the new Royal Charter has been drafted in such a way as to prevent the Chairman of the BBC acting in the way that Gavyn Davies saw as vital to protecting the independence of the BBC. 9. The Chairman of the BBC Trust now has regulatory responsibilities and is much further removed from broadcasting decisions than his predecessors. These changes took shape under Michael Grade who felt they were necessary to protect the Corporation from becoming subject to outside regulation. However, it seems it was the changes he made to his own job that helped persuade Michael Grade to leave before his contract expired. In the e-mail he sent to BBC employees on the day of his resignation Mr Grade said “I was faced with the choice of getting back into programming or ‘governing’ the BBC from a distance. Those of you who know me will understand just what an effort of will it has taken for me, as Chairman of the Governors, not to look at the overnight ratings every day, not to engage in idle programming chit chat with the brilliant creatives who are currently taking BBC television, radio and on line to new heights of quality—and so on.”3 Michael Grade’s 1 First Report of Session 2005–2006, House of Lords Select Committee on the BBC Charter Review: The Review of the BBC ‘s Royal Charter, Volume II: Evidence, HL Paper 50–II, page84. 2 Ibid, page 88. 3 BBC press release, 28/11/2006, Michael Grade resigns as BBC Chairman. THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE BBC 7 own words suggested that the new job would attract a different type of applicant and it did. The new Chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, is not a journalist or a broadcaster. His experience is in local government administration and public sector reform. 10. The new governance arrangements and the wording of article 10 of the Royal Charter bring into question who is ultimately responsible for the BBC’s programming decisions. Sir Michael Lyons told us that it was not his job “to defend the BBC in all circumstances” (Q 322); and that he could not envisage a situation when he would ever ask to view any BBC output before it was transmitted (p 57). However he also stated that he was “unequivocally the Chairman of the BBC.” We agree with Sir Michael’s own assessment that “there is no doubt that this is a complex arrangement” (Q 322). 11. The Chairman of the BBC Trust has a specific remit to represent the licence fee payer. We wonder whose remit it is to represent the BBC’s own interests when they differ from those of the licence fee payer? Would Sir Michael be able to defend the BBC as robustly as Gavyn Davies did if similar events were to occur under his watch? 12.