Culture, Media and Sport Committee

Oral evidence: BBC Royal Charter Review, HC 140

Tuesday 16 June 2026

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 16 June 2026.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Dame Caroline Dinenage (Chair); Mr Bayo Alaba; Vicky Foxcroft; Damian Hinds; Dr Rupa Huq; Liz Jarvis; Jeff Smith; Cameron Thomas.

Questions 255-354

Witnesses

I: Steven Knight CBE, Writer and Director.

II: Colin Browne, Chair, Voice of the Listener and Viewer; Philippa Childs, Deputy General Secretary, Bectu; and Hannah Perry, Interim Director, Demos Digital.

Examination of witness

Witness: Steven Knight CBE.

Q255   Chair: Welcome to the meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Today is the fourth oral evidence session in our BBC royal charter review inquiry. For our first panel, we are joined by Steven Knight CBE. He is an award-winning screenwriter, producer and director, probably best known as the creator of “Peaky Blinders”, but also of a range of other brilliant TV shows. Steven, a huge welcome to you from the Committee. Before we start, I remind Members to declare any interests before asking their questions.

I will kick off the questioning. Steven, do you think that you could have made “Peaky Blinders” in the same way outside the BBC?

Steven Knight: I don’t think I could have made “Peaky Blinders” at all outside the BBC—especially in 2012, and even now. It falls into the category of “curious” and it was not of the time or the fashion of the time. Often, not always, it is the BBC that tends to take a chance on things like that. It was commissioned, and what is great about the BBC is that a commission usually means a green light, so you are asked to write a script and then you are left to get on with it. It was on BBC Two at first and then it found its way—because it has to work; the experiment has to work. It became popular and went to BBC One and then became global. I honestly don’t think it would have been picked up elsewhere.

Q256   Chair: Do you think there is something particularly special about working for the BBC? Is there something different about working for the BBC that enables you to have more creative freedom to tell the stories that you want to tell in the way that you want to tell them?

Steven Knight: Totally. It feels to me as if that is an inherited sensibility at the BBC; it has been there for a long time. If someone comes along and the decision is made that they can do what they do and they know what they are doing—not just writers, directors or producers, but everybody—the BBC says, “Let them get on with it.” There is less of a sense that you will be involved in meetings or calls where lots of people feel that they must say something to justify being there. There is less of that, and more of what Stephen Frears said when I worked with him: “Get the best people and leave them alone.” It feels to me as if that is a tradition at the BBC that has not evolved in the last 10 or 20 years; it is has always been there, and that is why it is so solid.

Q257   Chair: We hear a lot about the cost pressures and financial pressures facing the BBC—the fact that the number of people paying the licence fee is going down, so the income is going down at a time when costs are going up. Do you get a sense that those cost pressures have in any way impacted that appetite to take risks and follow fantastic stories?

Steven Knight: I think there are two things. If anybody remembers Morecambe and Wise, they always used to do jokes about small cheques from the BBC. It has always been known that it is not the place you go to for the big bucks. It is where you go if you want to express something. In my experience of how it works—I am not suggesting this is a good thing—often when the budget is not as big as it might be elsewhere, instead of blowing up the car or having a car chase, you have to think of something else, because you cannot afford it. Sometimes that leads to creativity that works. The only reason that that is the case is that you do get the best people—the best creative people—at the BBC, so there are like minds.

There is a limit to that, however, even though it has been a tradition since world war two that the BBC is not known for spending lots of money. A point could be reached where the output would be compromised. If the quality of the BBC’s output is ever compromised, it loses everything, because that is what it is. It can be the BBC only if it has that credibility and quality.

Q258   Chair: Yes. Do you get the sense that the BBC is still as enthusiastic and ambitious about commissioning these showpiece British dramas that tell our stories?

Steven Knight: Yes.

Chair: So the ambition has not changed. But do you get the sense that if you were to pitch “Peaky Blinders” today, given everything that has transpired in the last 10 or 12 years since you did it, they would commission it?

Steven Knight: If it was me then—in other words, if I was in the middle of my career—I do believe they would commission it, because it actually ticks more boxes now. In this particular case with “Peaky”, it ticks more boxes now than it did then. It was much more of a risk then, because it was sort of the first. There are now quite a few confident regional British gangster dramas that people feel will actually sell abroad, whereas before it was like, “Who’s going to bother about that?” In that particular case, I think they would.

But I do think there are other considerations—for example, period drama is expensive, because you have to remove all the satellite dishes and all that practical stuff. That may mean that commissioners skew towards contemporary, because there is a certain cost that you are not going to have to pay. I think some of the best drama that has come out of this country has been period drama; it is what we are really good at. If Jane Austen was suddenly off the menu, that would be a shame.

Q259   Mr Alaba: Morning, Steven. I had to apologise to my wife because, to your point about curiosity, I watched “Peaky Blinders” without her and then, as the series went on, I had to carry on watching it without her. She keeps reminding me, so I thought I would bring it up.

On a more serious point, what are you trying to achieve with Digbeth Loc Studios?

Steven Knight: The genesis of it was that when “Peaky” became quite successful in the second or third series, we were shooting it in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. That was fine, because they have fantastic locations and great infrastructure, but I just felt that we should be shooting it in Birmingham. I naively thought it would be quite simple to set up a studio in Birmingham—well, 10 years later, we are pretty much there. It has been a struggle.

The idea of this studio is, first, that it is in Birmingham and that it will employ local people. That is not necessarily because we are such nice people or altruistic, but because if you are making something, it makes sense to use the local workforce rather than bring them in from Manchester or London. It is not going to be a place that makes programmes only about the west midlands. We want it to be internationally known. We want it to be world class. We want it to be bringing in sci-fi, American productions, big productions and small productions. A film studio is an opportunity. It is a space. It is a big waterproof box with some tech around it and, hopefully, the best people around it, so that people can come in and make whatever they want or build whatever they want.

The other thought for me is that, unlike some studios, we should not land it like a spaceship, put barbed wire around it and ship people in to do the work. It is possible now for a film studio to be a bit more porous than it used to be, because of tech, so the screening room can also be a theatre where members of the public can go and watch things. Local people can feel that whatever comes out of Digbeth Loc belongs to them, and it is part of their effort to make this thing work.

It is working—that’s the thing. When I first went there, it was 20 acres of derelict, beautiful canal architecture warehouses. As they were built by the Victorians, they were not falling down; they were just standing there. Those things are great big spaces with a roof. It is usually a leaky roof, so the roof has to be mended, but it is a big space with a roof, usually with a lot of flat concrete around it. No one wants that except us—film and TV makers. That is exactly what we want. We have taken some of those big warehouses and repurposed them. We have made them fit for purpose for making high-end film and television.

We hit the ground running. There is a warehouse called the Banana Warehouse, which stands next to where the Grand Union canal begins. Obviously, it used to be where they kept bananas for the canal traffic. It is within sight of the Rotunda, so it is walkable to the city centre, surrounded by 10th-generation blackberry bushes. It had been left, basically, even though it was so lovely.

When the “MasterChef” team were looking for a new home, we hosted them. Without telling them, I got Glynn Purnell, a local Birmingham Michelin-starred chef, to put white tablecloths on tables. So we scraped open this door, walked over the barbed wire, walked in, and it was like a restaurant. They saw the potential, and that is now where “MasterChef” is. They produce 65 hours of television a year from that space. They are making the most of where they are. They are integrating the urban elements into the show. Across the canal, we made the “Peaky Blinders” movie, which was hugely successful across the globe. We are currently making the new “Peaky Blinders” series. Next door, we have “Silent Witness” in production.

The idea was, first, just to find a space to do a show that I was doing, but now it is much more than that. It is offering up the opportunity to take a part of the city where people used to make things—in Digbeth, there are lots of little workshops and engineering, lots of stuff going on—and use the same space to make something different. What we are making is film and television.

This may be pre-empting the question, but as a consequence of making it work there, we now are in a happy position. It is chicken and egg, but the BBC became involved in what we were doing, because “Peaky” was a BBC show, and then we made “This Town”, which was a BBC show as well. The fact that we could have those three letters on the gate, and that it had that provenance as a BBC show, encouraged people to believe that this development was long term and sustainable—that it was not a private company coming in, doing something and leaving again.

Then there is the fact that the BBC is moving into the Tea Factory across the road as a regional headquarters. Again, anyone looking at a brand-new studio in a city that does not have a reputation for making stuff sees that the BBC is investing in it. Suddenly, that becomes a game changer.

Q260   Mr Alaba: Thank you. I will come back to the BBC in a second, but I want to talk a little more about your studios. Thank you for articulating what you are trying to achieve. You are generating an ecosystem, and I am assuming that complementary organisations all come in and tell that local story in their own way. Do you see that scenario increasing? Do you see the footprint of the work that you have started increasing?

Steven Knight: Yes. One of the interesting things about the film and TV business is that if you set up production in a place, naturally you will attract post-production. That will have to come. You will get catering, security, drivers and all kinds of related industries. You will get props, hair and make-up, and all the things that come with production. What is interesting about film and TV is that, unlike a lot of industries, the sector requires a really wide range of skills to make it happen. You need carpenters, electricians, drivers and all kinds of people, not just tech people, writers and actors.

You need all kinds of people to take part, so once you start making something—that is the crucial thing, making something, not necessarily discussing the making of something—and it begins and becomes real, suddenly those empty warehouses and workshops become valuable, because the workshop is next to “MasterChef”, for example. It is a workshop where you can set up your post-production place, next to “MasterChef” or next to “Peaky”. That is not a consequence of anyone being clever; it is a consequence of the basic nature of what this industry is, where once you start making something, people will come to be close to you, because that is a no-brainer—that is what you do.

Q261   Mr Alaba: When you mentioned people seeing the three letters on the gate, you were referring to the BBC. How would you talk about what you have done and the BBC investment in the region?

Steven Knight: I think the two are intimately related. I was making the point about durability and sustainability in the sense of, “This is going to be here for a long time.” You get the feeling or impression from an organisation like the BBC that this investment in the area will not go away tomorrow—the BBC is not going to pull the plug. Do you know what I mean? That gives a lot more credibility to the work we are doing, and it means that an area like Digbeth—which has huge challenges, and always has had—can benefit from the arrival of an industry that is not knocking everything down. It is not radically changing the environment; it is making the most of the things that are already there, and it is adding value to pretty much everything in that area.

Q262   Mr Alaba: This is my last question. Will you be as concise as possible—although I could listen to you all day, by the way—

Chair: It is me—I am the bossy one.

Mr Alaba: On Government incentives, what more could the Government do? I say the Government, but I assume that local government is also important to planning and stuff.

Steven Knight: I could talk about this forever, but I will try to be concise. Local government, through the mayoral system, has really helped—Richard Parker is doing great work. It means we can have local incentives, and a mayor and a combined authority that state clearly, “We want you to be here. If you want us to close a road, we’ll close a road”—obviously temporarily—“for your filming project.” There is that goodwill. The combined authority has set up a new screen body that is a one-stop shop for anybody who wants to come and shoot in that area. Someone will take the call and liaise with everybody who needs to be liaised with, which is great.

On national Government, there are lots of things, but to be concise, my thought, which I have been banging on about for quite a while, is that there is a national tax break for international film and TV makers who come to Britain and do “Star Wars” and all of the big things—and the smaller things—so 20% of everything they spend in this country is returned to them as a tax break.

I wonder, if you are saying, “We want to set this industry up in this particular area,” why you do not have a regional variation on the tax break. Perhaps you would say it is 21.5%—I would say for the west midlands, but somebody else would say it should be for somewhere else. That would help because the west midlands has not benefited at all from national Government help in the way that other regions have. This would be a way to do that where you are not giving money from the public purse, but saying that there is a tax break. Trust me: a producer in LA who sees 20%, 20%, 20% and then 21.5% is going to go for the 21.5%.

Q263   Vicky Foxcroft: Digbeth’s development as a production hub is really exciting, but what more is being done to make sure that under-represented groups can get into it?

Steven Knight: With Kudos, which is one of the biggest production companies in this country and does fantastic stuff, we have set up a company called Kudos Knight, with its headquarters in an office in Digbeth. Again, this is not because we are nice; it is because it makes much more sense to have local people working in our industry and walking or getting the bus to work rather than paying for them to stay in hotels after coming from London or Manchester. We have done bootcamps where we have invited local people from the area, which, as I said, is a very challenged area. We have looked at postcodes rather than identifying communities or groups who may not be represented. The postcode does the work by doing two things: it means that it is very local and that this is from an area that may be quite challenged.

We have set up bootcamps with the BBC and Kudos, which has put proper actual money into this. We have taken people who would have probably never thought of working in the industry and they have gone through—well, you can imagine what a bootcamp is. More than 50% of those people have gone on to work. That has happened not because we sit them down in a lecture hall and somebody tells them how to do it, but because they have been working on real things and meeting real producers. As a consequence, on the “Peaky” series happening at the moment, I think we have 14 crew members from the bootcamps.

Q264   Vicky Foxcroft: Fantastic. I know you said that we can imagine how a bootcamp works, but I think there are different kinds, so can you expand on that a little bit?

Steven Knight: What we have tried to do is go across all the disciplines, the crafts and the arts. We have tried to put people through their paces and see what they are good at and what they can do. For the next series of “Peaky”, we want to develop a thing called a second unit. We will offer any production coming to Digbeth a free second unit, which is normally a unit that goes off and shoots the sun setting or a train going into a tunnel, that is probably made up of young—I will come back to that later—people from the area who we have trained to be in a place where they can go and shoot the train going into the tunnel or the sunrise. They then present that to the real production and say, “This is your second unit shot, is it okay?” Maybe 95% of the time it is not good enough or it is not right, but they are meeting the real people, finding out what is right and what is wrong and doing that hands-on, rather than theoretically.

Q265   Vicky Foxcroft: How long does the bootcamp last?

Steven Knight: It depends, and I am not an expert on them, but it takes as long as it takes to find out what you think that person could actually be good at.

Q266   Vicky Foxcroft: Why is this important to you?

Steven Knight: I am from Birmingham—bizarrely, my dad used to work as a blacksmith in the place where we now have one of the studios—so it is an area that I am interested in. As well as that, it has so much to offer. Also, when HS2 is completed, it is basically in zone 5 of the London underground in terms of time.

Q267   Vicky Foxcroft: Brilliant. Do you think that making sure that we get more diverse workforces—and in particular, for me, people from working-class backgrounds—is important and can lead people to have more trust, and place more value, in the BBC?

Steven Knight: Yes. The BBC has always led the way in that, but I think that the way we need to look at these things is: if you have 100 people available to you to be your workforce, why not consider all 100? Why pre-select 20 of them? If you discount people from certain backgrounds—if you discount them before you even start looking—where is the advantage of that? Whereas the advantage of choosing from everybody is self-evident: you are going to get the best people. The idea that somebody from a working-class background essentially, fundamentally, will not be able to do this just is not true. Again, it is not a question of altruism; it is a question of common sense.

Q268   Vicky Foxcroft: Do you think people will value the BBC more when they see that increase, particularly from their local communities?

Steven Knight: I think people value the BBC when they like the programme, to be honest—when they watch “Strictly” and they love it. All of that is incredibly essential, but I think it does dawn on people, if they are directly affected, that the BBC not only is a place that produces programmes that people watch, but can also actually be an element in changing the nature of particular regional areas in Britain. It actually can make that difference, where a lot of other organisations could not.

Q269   Dr Huq: “Peaky Blinders” really is a phenomenon, and there is a whole strand of tourism from it, but not in the “Harry Potter” way, where they made a whole facility for it. I think the BBC even did a “Doctor Who” world in Cardiff. You see the fashion, don’t you, with boys—my son, even—wearing the peaked caps and the waistcoats. There is also the music you have rebooted—thank you for that, because it is 20th-century music, but it is a brilliant mix.

Do you think that the BBC is doing enough to promote phenomena like this in a soft power way? We always hear about that in relation to the World Service, but it could be generating revenue, could it not?

Steven Knight: Totally. The soft power of the creative industries in general, but particularly television and film, is so undervalued in this country. We sort of take it for granted how good we are, and how world-beating we are, when there is no logical reason why we should be. If you listen to pop music anywhere in the world, probably 50% of it will be from here, and if you watch high-end television, for probably half of it or some of it will be from here. If you are watching a great actor, they will probably be British—Spider-Man, Batman, or whoever, is probably going to be played by somebody English.

Q270   Dr Huq: Do you think the BBC could monetise it more, rather like ITV’s “Granada Studios”? We all went on a trip there.

Steven Knight: Yes. From a selfish point of view, we could certainly do more with “Peaky”. I know people come to Birmingham and are looking for stuff, so I am trying to get murals painted, and things like that, that people can see. We can certainly do more with that.

What we have to understand as a country is that when people think about the UK—forget what they may think about the latest news story, what is going wrong, what is going right, all of that stuff—they are probably thinking about a Jane Austen show, about the music they listen to, or about “Peaky”, maybe. Their view of what the UK is often comes from stuff that is consumed on screens around the world.

I think the fact that we are so good at it means we should do more. The monetisation is happening already; it could be increased, but people are coming and doing the tourism thing, and there is a more favourable view of Britain because of these things. Look at the Olympic committee: they invest in the winners and things we are really good at, such as cycling. As a consequence, we get lots more gold medals because they invested in what we are good at. We are really good at this and, as a Government, if we invest in what we are really good at, it will have huge financial benefits.

Q271   Dr Huq: What do you make of the argument that out-of-London makes up a big percentage of licence payers, but there is not enough investment? You mentioned Digbeth and the Tea Factory, but that is not on a par with “Pebble Mill” or “Doctors”, which were daily productions. You mentioned “MasterChef”, and there is the Asian Network and some local radio, but it is a bit tokenistic considering the figures show the west midlands contributes £942 million a year in licence fee revenue—these are quite old figures I am looking at. Spending is growing; it was £80 million in the year that this article came out in The Birmingham Mail. The figures show it is creeping up, but it is a bit slow considering that big chunk—3.5% of spend up from 2.7%.

Steven Knight: The creeping up is the thing.

Q272   Dr Huq: Is it fast enough? Is it ambitious enough to have a creative strategy to get the skills in?

Steven Knight: It is never fast enough, but it is creeping up anyway and if it were to be helped, supercharged and invested in to a greater degree, it would grow exponentially.

Q273   Chair: Would it help if the BBC had more commissioning people from outside London based outside London?

Steven Knight: It would help. At the moment I believe there is one commissioner for all of the north. People may say, “This is more bureaucracy,” but it may be an interesting idea to break that up a bit.

Q274   Chair: On Rupa’s interesting point about soft power and the visitor attractions, have you ever had any feedback from the Black Country Living Museum about the number of people who go to see the canal site?

Steven Knight: Their attendance has increased hugely as a consequence of it being used as a set. Across the board, we are talking about intangible, free things. They are free. The idea that that building was used to shoot something is true, but it gives it an added value. It has a halo effect and if we can take advantage of that through more investment, it is common sense that we should.

Q275   Liz Jarvis: Good morning. I would like to start by asking why “The Immortal Man” premiered on Netflix when you have talked about the importance of making “Peaky Blinders” for the BBC and said that it could not have been made anywhere else. Why did the film premiere on Netflix?

Steven Knight: It premiered in Birmingham. The first ever screening of “The Immortal Man” was in a cinema in Birmingham.

Q276   Liz Jarvis: But its first TV premiere was on Netflix.

Steven Knight: It was a BBC-Netflix production in order to make a film with that budget. Netflix are great; I work with them all the time. The person who runs Netflix Europe is the one who first commissioned “Peaky Blinders” in 2012. They are great people, they are people from here and they want to make good stuff. This is not dissing Netflix at all.

You will not get the budget to make something like the “Peaky” movie from the BBC—if only that were possible. To make something of that magnitude we work with Netflix and, as a consequence, Netflix will naturally put the movie on the streamer. I am not afraid of things that are made in Birmingham being aired globally first. The fact that we are making something in Birmingham and it is being aired globally is the thing.

Q277   Liz Jarvis: I suppose the difference is that if you have a BBC licence, you can watch “Peaky Blinders” as part of that. But if the film is being shown on Netflix, you have to be a subscriber to Netflix.

Steven Knight: Yes. This is the world we are in at the moment and, hopefully, the reason we are all sitting here is because we think that there may be a way that the licence could reflect ownership of the production of the stuff that we are making. I have tonnes of ideas on that. It is really important that we understand the value of the BBC. The show exists only because it began on the BBC, and it was also a BBC film, but the hard economics of the way that films, more so than television, are made is that we get budget from other places.

Q278   Liz Jarvis: You have called for global streamers to leave behind a small percentage of their profits in the UK to maintain the British film and television industry. If that happened, where would the money be invested?

Steven Knight: Only in training—nowhere else. The argument is that people come here because the crews, infrastructure and all those things are so great; the acting talent are great as well, but they can travel. It seems natural that the biggest Hollywood productions get made here. The reason the crews are so great—not always, but mostly—is that the BBC is like the media university of Europe. Most people you meet working on a production will have gone through the BBC at some point.

I am not talking about streamers leaving money behind for the BBC. The streamers I have spoken to believe in training and skills; Netflix believes in skills and does good work in the UK to skill up people to work in our industry. But I think that, although it is fantastic that the streamers come and make their films here—it is work; no one is ever going to argue with that or try to scare that away because it is really important—there might be an argument to make to already empathetic streamers that this country is so great for them because of the training that is done, so what about setting something up to financially help maintain what we already have and make it better? It could even have the streamer’s name on it. That would be a sensible proposition, and I think that the streamers are sensible people.

Q279   Liz Jarvis: How would you respond to the argument that the levy might disincentivise streamers from using production studios here?

Steven Knight: If it did, stop it. If it did, don’t do it. It is as simple as that. It would have to be organised in such a way that it is acceptable to everybody. It would be important to make the common-sense argument self-evident and make it unarguable that this is for the benefit of everybody. If more great people are trained to be cinematographers, directors and all the things the streamers need, it will be in everybody’s interest to do that.

Q280   Liz Jarvis: The Government consultation on the future of the BBC said that it would not include consideration of “introducing a levy on the revenues of streaming services to fund the BBC.” Do you think a streamer levy should be part of the conversation?

Steven Knight: I absolutely know the wording of that conclusion, and I sometimes think that it is about nuance; maybe the word “levy” suggests compulsion. Is there not a way to make it apparent that this is a good idea for everybody concerned, and that the consequence of that would be the same?

Q281   Chair: Do you have other thoughts on how the BBC should fund itself? Do you agree with the licence fee, or do you think—

Steven Knight: I do agree with the licence fee, 100%, because the exceptional nature of the BBC is a consequence of the exceptional way it is funded. That is the reason it is what it is. The BBC is the only broadcaster on the planet that had a good second world war. The BBC has been around and has done good stuff over the years, and it has done it as a consequence of being funded in an old-fashioned way, which is great, and old-fashioned is becoming new-fashioned now, I think.

Q282   Chair: If you were them, how would you address the competing challenges of dwindling numbers of people paying the licence fee and dwindling income alongside increased costs?

Steven Knight: This is just me and my opinion, but I think that iPlayer is a hugely underused resource. You have Attenborough, “Blue Planet” and all the fantastic shows that the BBC makes. Even the word licence feels old-fashioned, but I love it—I think that is good about it. However, I would suggest that the licence could be something like a password that gives you access to all the stuff that the BBC have made in the past however many years. It could give you access, possibly, even to the news.

I am not only talking about in this country. Could you buy a BBC television licence if you are living in the United States—just be given a code to say that you have paid an amount of money, just as you do with a streamer? It is not an alien concept: you pay a certain amount of money, you get a passcode—a number or whatever, like any other gadget—and that gives you access to everything the BBC has.

Q283   Mr Alaba: You mean leveraging its back catalogue more than it currently is?

Steven Knight: Yes, its back catalogue, and in future maybe its news coverage as well. Who knows? Maybe that would be in demand. But the idea—and not just America, either; I am talking about around the world—is that you have your BBC citizenship, you pay an amount of money, whatever amount that is, and that gives you access to the archive.

Q284   Chair: At the moment, you cannot really access the BBC iPlayer from outside the UK, so that would be a really good way to do that.

Steven Knight: Exactly. But I really want to emphasise that this is not instead of; I think the BBC has to belong to people. It is no good saying that people have to do something, but I think we should be making the point that the BBC is one of Britain’s most important brands around the world, as are the World Service—they are as important as anything else. We should be doing what we can. In a world where the money is tight, we obviously have to find new ways, and I think the idea of an international BBC licence is a strong one.

Q285   Cameron Thomas: Morning, Steven. Have you considered whether the next James Bond could be bald?

Steven Knight: I was waiting—I should have had a sweep on it.

Cameron Thomas: He is in his mid-40s and not all that sophisticated.

Steven Knight: Exactly. I think that hair gets in the way for a Bond.

Chair: It is more aerodynamic through the water.

Q286   Cameron Thomas: If only I could swim. Going back to the streaming, you have previously said that the BBC has never competed financially with streamers, of course, but it does compete through excellence. To what degree are you concerned that sustained cuts to BBC services could ultimately undermine quality?

Steven Knight: Inevitably, it depends on the depth of the cut. Any cut is going to affect quality, but the unique thing about the BBC is the quality of what it produces. Once that goes—if that goes—it would have much more of an effect on the BBC than it would on anywhere else, because the BBC’s USP is its quality. Cuts will inevitably affect quality.

Q287   Cameron Thomas: The new director general is reported to have said that the BBC has “funded content at the expense of the platform”. That would include iPlayer, which you have already referenced. What is your response to the idea that having smaller budgets for drama might improve iPlayer?

Steven Knight: I know that quote; I am not sure that that is what was specifically meant. My opinion on the question in general, rather than on the quote, is that it is essential that the quality of the material is good so that people will even access the means of acquiring it. The two things are important. It has to be good to make people want to acquire it.

Cameron Thomas: Right—you cannot have one without the other.

Steven Knight: The two things have to go together. I have met the new DG and I think he is great, and his tech background is probably what we need.

Q288   Cameron Thomas: Taking a moment to consider those great British institutions, where would you rank the BBC among them? How much importance should the UK put on ensuring the BBC stays where it is?

Steven Knight: It is right up there; I cannot think of anything that would go above it, not least because it is becoming more and more relevant. I know that the kids are all on their screens and all that, but a lot of the stuff they watch is sourced from TV. Now that the streamers are taking material that the BBC initiated and spreading it all over the world, they are, in a sense, making the BBC even more relevant than it was. Now, it is not only people in this country who see BBC shows—it is everybody around the world. Suddenly, the BBC has this role in the PR and marketing of the country, because so many more people now see BBC shows.

Twenty years ago, there was no way for those people to see BBC shows unless the BBC sold them to a distributor in the States. That was happening, but companies in the States would buy only certain sorts of show. Now, it is like Spotify: people go in and find all sorts of stuff. That is why “Peaky”, which started as a BBC Two drama, did what it did: without there being any marketing budget, people from all over the world found it, and when they found it, they liked it. The BBC has never been more important, influential and worthy of investment than it is now.

Q289   Cameron Thomas: If I post anything in support of the BBC, to any degree, on my social media, I am inundated by people telling me that it is a waste of money or that it needs to be cancelled. Where is that coming from?

Steven Knight: I would not know where it is coming from. Everyone has their opinion—if they do not rate the channel, or channels, that is a matter of opinion. There is an idea that your opinion about the BBC is necessarily a political thing, but it does not have to be. We are talking about something on your screen that shows you shows, which you either watch or you do not.

The hit rate of the BBC is incredible for the budget that it has. It is not as if the BBC is an elitist arts channel—it produces the biggest and most popular TV shows in the country. It is not a class thing. It has always provided mass entertainment. It is almost like there is the perception of the BBC and what it is, and then there is the actual BBC that is what people sit and watch. If you want to watch the news, you will watch the BBC.

Q290   Chair: Finally, we have talked about the pressures facing the BBC; given your experience, is there any way that the BBC could find more efficiencies or operate more efficiently? I am thinking particularly of your experience of how the BBC commissioning process works: does that, or any other areas that you have seen along your journey with the BBC, work as well as it could?

Steven Knight: I am not just saying this, but I cannot think of a way in which my element of it, which is the only bit that I know about, could be done any more efficiently. Within the industry, there is a shorthand: “It’s BBC”. You know it will not be lavish or elaborate, and there will not be loads of money spent. That is not just in terms of production but in terms of simple things like green rooms. There will not be a lot of money spent on peripheral stuff around a show, because it is BBC, and the BBC is funded differently, so people are aware that it has to cut its cloth accordingly. I would struggle to find someone who would give you examples of extravagance.

Q291   Chair: Those were all the questions we had for you. Did you want us to ask you anything else? Is there anything you wanted to explain before we let you go?

Steven Knight: The only thing I would say is that you do not know what you have lost until it is gone. We have—partly by accident, and partly because of the history of the country and the quite dotty way we used to set things up—this thing on our hands that is so valuable. People around the world value it and it is so important to the idea of what it is to be British. If we ever lost it, we would never get it back, because no one would set it up in the way it is set up right now; that is why it is quirky and maybe we have to update it, but it is an absolutely essential part of our independence.

Chair: Thank you so much for your time this morning.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Colin Browne, Philippa Childs and Hannah Perry.

Q292   Chair: Welcome to our second panel. We will now hear from Colin Browne, chair of Voice of the Listener and Viewer, from Philippa Childs, deputy general secretary at Bectu, and from Hannah Perry, interim director of Demos Digital. You are all very welcome; thank you so much for joining us today. I will kick off the questions with you, Colin. How do you think the BBC can maintain reach and engagement among younger audiences? We have heard so much about how younger people now are heading to YouTube and other online video-sharing platforms and not engaging with the BBC at all. How can we get those young viewers without compromising the public service obligations that the BBC has?

Colin Browne: You have summed up the big challenge. The BBC is trying very hard to do that at the moment, and with some success. It is interesting that this discussion is happening when we had, yesterday, the announcement about the social media ban for under-16s; potentially, that might provide an opportunity for the BBC to concentrate even more on that kind of activity. Part of the problem here is that the specific requirements for providing children’s programming by the BBC were relaxed; we think there are a number of areas where they need to be tightened up again in terms of what the BBC should be required to do about the “at risk” genres and that kind of thing. Also, thinking off the top of my head, it could work with some of the new media like YouTube, which the BBC already has an agreement with, to make its content available where children turn to. But do not sacrifice the quality of the content.

Q293   Chair: Do not sacrifice the quality of the content. Philippa, what do you think is the appropriate balance between distributing content on third-party platforms such as YouTube and retaining that direct relationship that audiences have with BBC-owned platforms?

Philippa Childs: It is critical. The BBC needs to adapt to the times we live in; this partnership with YouTube is important, but the BBC brand is also hugely important. We have heard this morning how important it is in the independent production sector. It is a careful balance, but one that the BBC has taken on board.

Q294   Chair: Hannah, what do you think a public service model of algorithmic curation could look like in real life?

Hannah Perry: I think it is important to approach this question in a few different ways, not purely through the BBC’s own actions. We need to start by considering how the Government can regulate for statutory prominence on video-sharing platforms. That is something that I know this Committee has called for before, and at Demos we thoroughly support that. We published a paper yesterday called “Fairer Feeds”, which documents why we think it is so important. That should also be paired with prominence of public interest news on social media platforms, as well as a levy on video-sharing platforms to fund content. Those are things that the Government should do to regulate and introduce greater fairness in the existing ways in which algorithms are working in these environments of video-sharing platforms and social media platforms.

Q295   Chair: Talk us through your levy. How would that work in real life?

Hannah Perry: Our 5% levy would be on video-sharing platforms specifically—so not VoD platforms but video-sharing platforms, including YouTube. We would look at organisations or platforms that earn £25 million or more in revenue. It would be a 5% levy on that revenue and it would go towards an independent public interest content fund, hosted by an independent party, much like the similar fund the BFI used to have. That would contribute funds towards the kind of content production that is so thoroughly imbalanced in our market at the moment.

Chair: And collected by the Treasury?

Hannah Perry: Yes.

Q296   Chair: Then distributed via an organisation like the BFI?

Hannah Perry: Sorry—it would be collected by an independent body that was collecting it via the fund. Let me come back to you on whether or not it would be collected via the Treasury. I assume it would be.

Chair: Yes—please send us a note on how that would work.

Q297   Damian Hinds: Hannah, this question is to you again. We have a marketplace now where you have the BBC and a few other public service broadcasters, who all have their own content on a platform—in the BBC’s case, iPlayer. Then you have another set of players who host their own content and some other content, including content from the BBC and others. Then, at the far end, you have YouTube, which has everything. Is that a stable equilibrium?

Hannah Perry: I think that where you are doing content production and where the BBC are navigating all those different channels, if you think about it from the audience’s perspective, they get content from all those channels. If you work your way back, the BBC need to think about their strategy for each of those channels in slightly different ways.

Going back to the point I was making about statutory prominence on video-sharing platforms, that would facilitate a legal relationship between the BBC and YouTube that is transparent and that has oversight, and it would be very clear what that relationship is—

Q298   Damian Hinds: I am asking a simpler question. I am trying to understand if, in a world where on Netflix and on other platforms there is plenty of BBC content, and on YouTube there is more and more BBC content, why would iPlayer survive? Sorry—I have just put in very straightforward terms.

Hannah Perry: Okay. I think that it would survive as a really important part of the pathway. I think that it is a false binary to present them almost as options or choices. I think users work through an audience journey and many will end up—

Q299   Damian Hinds: If you can get everything over here, and some things over there, and you are looking for something, what is the motivation to start over here rather than over there? By the way, in the long term it may not be YouTube—there could be a thing on your telly whereby you can just access anybody’s programme on absolutely anything. Why would owned channels of distribution survive?

Hannah Perry: I think that it is about the value of the brand, and understanding that catalogue and the interconnection between the different content that has met those standards, and where you can discover and find them.

If you are also working on the way that content is recommended within that owned environment, you are also facilitating and enabling more audiences to be discovering, moving from David Attenborough to “Traitors” to “Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg”. You are facilitating those journeys within that environment. I think that continues to be important.

However, given that younger audiences in particular are discovering content for the first time elsewhere, you capture audiences in one place but you are feeding them through into your owned environment.

Q300   Damian Hinds: If you are. Do we have evidence that audiences are being acquired on YouTube and then converting to iPlayer?

Hannah Perry: One of the challenges that we have is that—this is the case for social media platforms or video-sharing platforms—it is very difficult for news publishers or news producers such as the BBC to get access into how the content prioritisation is working. It is very difficult for us to understand and measure what kind of visibility there is of public service broadcaster content, say on YouTube, which makes it really hard to evaluate the way that those algorithms are working and what kind of value you should be working back to the BBC—

Q301   Damian Hinds: Forgive me, I was asking something different. I understand that point. Again, the answer might be the same that we just do not know because we do not have the data, but is there any evidence to suggest that people who discover BBC content through YouTube—let’s call them younger people—then become people who consume BBC content through iPlayer? Let’s call them the same young people when they get slightly older. Or if you start on YouTube, do you just stay on YouTube and/or other multi-brand platforms?

Hannah Perry: If I were to commission that research, I imagine it would be very expensive. I have not seen evidence of that, but it is very difficult to get that evidence unless you have data access.

Q302   Damian Hinds: Finally, to Colin, do you think there is consumer appetite in the free category world for a halfway house? Rather than the BBC having its own content on iPlayer, ITV having ITVX and Channel 4 having All 4 and so on, you could have, either instead of or possibly as well as those separate platforms, a common PSB-type platform where you know that everything on it is high quality.

Colin Browne: I think that is a potentially interesting development. It is happening to an extent, and I believe there have been discussions between the BBC and ITV about providing that kind of thing.

Q303   Damian Hinds: It did not work with BritBox, did it?

Colin Browne: Indeed, it did not work with BritBox, for a variety of reasons. BritBox was designed as a commercial activity, which did not really work. I think they are talking about a PSB—a public service kind of initiative—and working together. I can see that having some prospect of actually working. My big point is that all of this is down to content. The content has to be there. That goes back to what Steven said: the BBC has to be able to make the content and it has to have the money to make it.

Q304   Chair: Would that be more or less likely to happen now? Before BritBox, there was a suggestion of something called Kangaroo, which would have delivered what we are talking about. For various reasons, it did not come to fruition. In the modern world, would something like that be less likely to succeed now that ITV is being taken over by Sky?

Colin Browne: We will just have to wait and see. Of course, Sky is owned by Comcast as well. It is difficult to forecast that, but the principle of the public service broadcasters working together, if they can, is an important one. We are entering a new world where most of this media will be foreign owned. The BBC and Channel 4 are not, but all the rest are, and I am not sure whether we have had enough debate about that. I think that is an issue to be considered in that context as well, but in principle, provided they remain public service broadcasters that produce the kind of content we expect from PSBs, there is big scope for them to work together.

Q305   Jeff Smith: I always preface my questions by declaring my interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the BBC. The Government have said that they would consider requiring the BBC to use deliberative forums such as citizens assemblies to improve accountability and engagement. Hannah, I know that Demos has put forward a couple of proposals for a citizens panel and a citizens assembly. How would you see those forums or assemblies working?

Hannah Perry: Thank you for delineating the two, because we see them as functioning for very different purposes. First, the citizens assembly would be used on very rare occasions. We proposed that idea in combination with a number of other recommendations, including a move to a permanent charter. If we are moving to a permanent charter where objects, missions and public purposes are included in the charter document and other operational details move to the operational agreement, you need a mechanism to facilitate changes to your charter.

Our recommendation was to ensure that, if you are making changes, those mechanisms come with an element of a public lock. You do not want that to be worked through Parliament very quickly without the public being able to have a say. The citizens assembly would be drawn upon if the charter were facing an existential risk moment or if significant changes needed to be made to the purpose. We would use it as a means of getting an understanding of the parameters and the importance for the public. That is our citizens assembly idea—the public lock.

The other proposal was our standing citizens panel, which is another component that we think would be important as a mechanism for strengthening the independence and accountability of the BBC. We see it as a reform of the governance structure that would go to the heart of improving the relationship between the public and the BBC, and how it is perceived.

The citizens panel would be constituted in the charter and would have a relationship with the supervising board, because we have also recommended that we split the unitary board so that we have a supervisory board that just overseas governance as opposed to the executive. It would make recommendations to that supervisory board.

As a standing panel, it would represent a representative group of the public. It is not audience councils and it is not BBC-led. It is an independent group that is constituted by and representative of the public and built up by sortition and stratification. It is very deliberately a representative mini-public that is given scope to advise on strategy and governance but is clearly distinguished from operations or editorial.

It would have a say on things of major importance to the BBC’s direction—the strategy, funding amount and so on—and would advise on the parameters, the principles and the direction. It would give a board empowerment and accountability when making these sorts of decisions, recognising the really polarised environment we live in in the UK, and the risks around accusations of bias and diminishing trust in both news and institutions more broadly.

Q306   Jeff Smith: So it would be advisory? It would not be able to compel the BBC to do anything.

Hannah Perry: It would be a comply and explain function, but depending on different components. In our paper, we have laid out a table of the different aspects that we think could be referred to the citizens panel. In most cases, it would be comply and explain, which means it is not mandated, but if you go against the panel you explain and give a rationale for why.

That feedback loop is really critical to the functioning of that citizens panel being effective. You need to be building that trust, that reliability and that relationship with the board. Ideally, it is also made public, so you are making documentaries and sharing the stories from the citizens panel with the wider public.

Q307   Jeff Smith: Colin, I know the VLV has proposed other ways of doing that. Can you say a bit about how you think the BBC should be held to account and engage with the public?

Colin Browne: Absolutely. We believe there need to be two new bodies. We believe that there needs to be a public media commission. Looking at funding, that would have the role of considering and making recommendations and decisions on the public funding of the BBC.

We also, incidentally, think there should be something called the appointments panel. We do not believe that appointments to the BBC board should be made by Government. We believe that they need to be made by an independent body, and that would be the appointments panel. It would non-political and non-partisan.

We are very much in favour of stakeholder engagement, public engagement and transparency. Certainly, like Demos, we believe in some form of permanent, continuing charter. In that case, you would obviously need to have the BBC’s performance reviewed on a regular basis, and we share the view that some form of citizens panel could play an important role in maintaining the scrutiny of the BBC and holding the BBC to account.

Q308   Jeff Smith: Philippa, do you have any thoughts on how these reforms might work?

Philippa Childs: I am more in Colin’s arena than the idea of democratisation of the BBC, not least because governance is the key issue in relation to the BBC. Political appointments, I agree, are detrimental to its success and how it is perceived by the public. We are very much of the view that we need to look at who constitutes the BBC board. We want to see more diversity on the BBC board, more regional representation and, indeed, some form of worker representation. I agree about a permanent charter, and I certainly agree that the BBC needs to engage more with its audiences, but I am a bit concerned that that becomes overly bureaucratic.

Q309   Jeff Smith: To all the panel, how do we ensure that whatever forum you have it avoids being taken over by the loudest voices and the most opinionated groups, and avoids being influenced by noise from social media and other media?

Hannah Perry: It is exciting that this Government have adopted such methodologies for a number of different, polarised issues. You can look to Dame Louise Casey’s social care review or to the recent adoption of digital ID. Even the Home Affairs Committee has recently used those methodologies, in partnership with Demos and King’s, on the issue of work-based immigration. The way that you protect the forum, drawing on those examples, is first in the way that you design it, with an independent facilitator who is experience in putting such things together. You ensure that you select people through sortition: there is a randomness. It is a privilege and something that is exciting to be part of, but you also create a feeling in that space that you are doing something that has real meaning and importance. There is a clear stage of informing and advising that group with the experts that we have. Those things are well practised and we have strong evidence for them. Typically, people who participate in the forums enjoy them and shift their opinion throughout the process, because it is not an hour or two; it is matter of weekends, so people can be participating for up to three days.

Colin Browne: We broadly agree with a lot of that. I think it is important that the recommendations from the citizens panel are clear, in the open and transparent. If they are not to be accepted by the BBC, there needs to be a reason given for that.

Q310   Jeff Smith: I would like to ask about funding. How will one of these panels be funded? Under Hannah’s proposal, I think, the participants would be paid. Is that going to come out of the licence fee—or whatever funding mechanism the BBC gets—or funded by the Government?

Hannah Perry: I would argue that it should be funded by the BBC. It is a governance cost, so it would be part of that. This would not be research—it is not extractive or one-way—but the cost of it would be very comparable to that. The workshops that we recently ran with the Home Affairs Committee were around £100,000, and you would not be doing this every weekend; it would be two or three times a year, so we are not talking huge amounts of money. Given that it would be a standing citizens panel, there would be efficiencies in creating the infrastructure and then running it over time.

Q311   Dr Huq: I declare an interest as an ex-member of BBC staff, from a very long time ago. There used to be regional level advisory councils; they have disappeared into the ether. Should they come back?

Colin Browne: Certainly over the last 10 to 15 years there has been a downward spiral in the extent to which the BBC goes out and talks to people around the country. Those regional panels were a part of that and they had real value. I hope that the kind of thing that we are talking about will fill in and once again provide the same kind of feedback to the BBC as those panels previously provided. Although I am not particularly in favour of two-tier boards, the BBC Trust was really good at going out, consulting around the country and talking to people. That has gradually eroded and eroded. Fewer people respond to consultations because Ofcom—and indeed the BBC—does not publicise them. Over the recent period there has been a diminution in the extent to which advice is coming in of the kind that the regional advisory panels used to give.

Q312   Dr Huq: To be fair, there was criticism of those councils. They were seen as a glorified coffee morning, and it is always the same old person who turns up to those. We have 39 local radio stations and this Committee is lobbied by them a lot. They have a listenership. So there is value in reinstituting some version of those councils.

Colin Browne: Absolutely.

Philippa Childs: I am old enough to remember those panels. I think they played a useful role. Some version of them would probably be useful. It is important that there is a regional and national dimension.

Hannah Perry: I agree that regional and local representation is really important, but we need to really distinguish this idea by moving away from self-selecting loudest voices. It needs to actively bring in people who do not currently feel represented by the BBC, or from where there are risks. You need to look for a diversity of representation, which will include local and regional representation; that should be a part of it.

The risk you have with moving back to a self-selecting model is you are then being guided by the loudest voices again and not by those to which you actually need to be listening to ensure you are giving the BBC that universal rooting, which it absolutely should have. The principle of universality comes to ensuring that you are hearing even from people who currently don’t feel it is for them. Those are the most important people we should be listening to.

Q313   Dr Huq: Every week I ask people about workers on boards—trade unionists through NUJ, Bectu, whatever—good or bad? Everyone else seems to say no, it is impossible.

Philippa Childs: There should definitely be a worker voice on the board, whether that is somebody who works there or somebody who is representative of the people who work there. There should most definitely be. Particularly at somewhere like the BBC, there should be a worker voice. I have been involved in boards in Government Departments elsewhere where it does work.

Q314   Damian Hinds: Why does this thing have to be legislated for and enforced? If you are the director general of the BBC, if you are the board, you have an interest in trying to have the best product with the broadest reach possible. You are accountable for how you spend the licence fee. You make creative and commercial judgments based on all the different things. What makes us believe we can design a better “citizens jury” system to do that than the BBC management could today, should they wish to? They did all sorts of market research over time. Why would we believe we can design something better?

Colin Browne: I think what you say is absolutely right in theory, but in practice it does not always work that way. We think there is an underlying problem that in the end so many of the key decisions are taken behind closed doors, in secret, without a proper public discussion of the issues in hand.

Q315   Damian Hinds: Really—there isn’t public discussion of the output of the BBC? I know we don’t have Barry Took any more, but come on! There are weekly programmes on the BBC about this; newspapers fill acres of newsprint with it. We are talking about it now! We have this whole Select Committee talking about it. Come on, the idea that it is not talked about—and I forgot social media, God help us.

Colin Browne: It’s not the kind of talk that is going to help the BBC take sensible decisions. It is not the kind of informed, balanced discussion to get advice back in again.

Chair: In the interests of time, I am going to move us on.

Jeff Smith: Good question, though.

Chair: Good question.

Q316   Mr Alaba: This section is on the skills pipeline. In his evidence, James Graham reminded us about the variety of jobs within the film and television industry—grips, electricians, make-up. How vital is the BBC to providing the skills and talent pipeline into the creative industries?

Philippa Childs: It is absolutely crucial. We represent not only people who work at the BBC but also lots of freelancers who work on productions. As Steven said, the vast majority of people you meet learnt their skills while working on a BBC production or while working directly for the BBC, so it plays an absolutely crucial role. Everyone across the industry would probably recognise that. It works in partnership with other organisations to deliver those skills. Inevitably, as the BBC has faced a decade of cuts, it is not able to do as much of that as it perhaps did previously, but it still remains a key player. It has recruited thousands of apprentices and is really important to the health of our wider creative industries.

Q317   Mr Alaba: On that point, is the BBC doing enough on under-represented communities?

Philippa Childs: They can always do more. Going back to the funding challenges, unfortunately we are quite in a difficult time for production at the moment and lots of our members have faced long periods out of work. Inevitably, under-represented groups are more impacted than others in times of low production. Yes, I think that the BBC can do more, but there is and has been a commitment to ensuring that diversity. If you are a freelancer and come from a lower socioeconomic background, it is inevitably difficult to sustain yourself in a quite precarious industry.

Q318   Mr Alaba: In that scenario, sometimes you have the bank of mum and dad or a supportive partner, and that enables you to transition from being in work to being out of work—I fully understand that. Do you have any suggestions about what they can do to improve the representation of under-represented groups?

Philippa Childs: The BBC has its own internal diversity targets. It has also played quite a pivotal role in things like Action for Freelancers, which is a coalition that includes broadcasters, production companies and us. It is looking at conditions across the industry and trying to make things better for freelancers so that they can sustain themselves working in the industry.

Q319   Mr Alaba: Finally, you have alluded to the budget cuts. How are they affecting the wellbeing of BBC staff? We hear from them regularly on this.

Philippa Childs: Yes, absolutely. There are some announcements upcoming, and we already know that there are going to be 10% more savings, which equates to something like 2,000 jobs. That comes on top of a decade of cuts, so morale is very low at the moment and people are very anxious about what the future holds for them, but that does not diminish their commitment to the BBC or their belief in the BBC. They want to see a long-term funding mechanism that means that they are not facing wave after wave of cuts.

Q320   Chair: The BBC has been a leader in supporting the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority. It has also said that it expects all its partners to meet the CIISA industry standards. How important is that to you, and how important is CIISA?

Philippa Childs: It is hugely important. We know that the BBC and other broadcasters have been hit with various scandals about behaviour on productions. For freelancers it is very difficult to complain, because they are worrying about where their next job is coming from and getting a reputation for being someone who complains. Somewhere trusted and independent where people can go and feel that they can tell their stories is really important. As you say, the BBC has been a huge supporter of that and an early adopter.

Q321   Chair: Can anything be done by way of the charter review process to make sure that the debate around standards of behaviour in the creative industries does not go away?

Philippa Childs: Yes, an ongoing commitment to things like CIISA is really important. It has now moved to a registration model, so the BBC can commit to supporting CIISA going forward.

Q322   Vicky Foxcroft: What more does the BBC need to do to improve access to its content and services for deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people?

Philippa Childs: It absolutely needs to do more, although I think it is very alive to those challenges. It has shown its commitment through being involved in things like the TV Access Project. But yes, the BBC does need to do more. It should be the exemplar for access to services, most definitely.

Colin Browne: The issue, once again, comes back to funding. At a meeting of this Committee two or three years ago, someone came up with a phrase like “We are always asking the BBC to do more, but we are not providing the BBC with the means to do it.” That remains an issue.

With everything happening in the media world—the kind of thing we have talked about, with the streamers, platforms and so on—we really need to better understand how important the BBC is to the UK. For the BBC to fulfil its potential in that respect, it is about some of the things that Steven was talking about earlier. There needs to be more sustainable and, in some way, enhanced funding. The BBC could be so much a force for good, and it is a force for good. It is very much part of a public good, and we need to see it that way, but we need to crack the long-term issue.

We are at a fork in the road. We can come up with another five to 10-year charter renewal that patches over the gaps a bit, but there needs to be a more fundamental approach. As I said earlier, to a large extent the rest of the media is being taken over by foreign investors. We really have to get the BBC right and make sure that it has the opportunity to do what it can for the country.

Q323   Vicky Foxcroft: Quite often people say that these things come down to funding, but they don’t always. Sometimes it is really about pushing the will. On the importance of representation, what more could the BBC be doing to ensure that it has a more diverse workforce and particularly more deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people?

Philippa Childs: It really is about looking at all their processes and facilities and so on and actively making sure that there are ways in for those people. I think that is the answer to that question. I do not think that just open recruitment does the job; you have to have schemes and opportunities for people to access and get the necessary support to be able to do that.

Q324   Vicky Foxcroft: Brilliant. That is identifying a problem of what they are not doing.

I will follow up on Rupa’s question about worker representation on the board. We have asked this question quite a few times. The answer from quite a few is, “This can’t be done; this can’t be achieved.” How could this be achieved, and what would the numbers look like? We are asking about one person, but does it need to be one or could it be more? How might the process for that take place?

Philippa Childs: It could be an appointment, in the same way that other board members are appointed. I suppose if you went down the route of having an employee on the board, they currently elect pension trustees, so you could look at that model. I have some reservations about just having one token worker on the board. I think it probably needs to be a worker voice of someone who has some experience and understanding and a perspective on the wider industry.

Vicky Foxcroft: Like a trade union rep.

Philippa Childs: It could be a union rep, or a retired union rep or whatever—most definitely.

Vicky Foxcroft: Would anybody else like to come in on the point about more worker representation on boards?

Colin Browne: More viewers’ and listeners’ representation, we would say.

Dr Huq: They are not mutually exclusive.

Q325   Cameron Thomas: Good morning, all. You have all said that you support a continuation of the licence fee as the main way to fund the BBC, but the licence fee is a relic of the time when viewers had five channels to choose from. Now, the choice is seemingly infinite, so why should citizens pay for the BBC?

Hannah Perry: I would start from the premise of the universality principle of the BBC—something that means it belongs to all of us. We need to think about how people can access and use—but also govern, ideally—the BBC. We need to be thinking about where people are seeing the BBC, not just in its owned environments, but also where that content is having an impact on the public good. We have to recognise the greater threats that we face as a society, whether that is foreign interference in the geopolitical environment, and also the polarised environment we are in, especially when you look at our information environment in particular.

When we are thinking about the technological threats and the extent to which our information environment is currently a hostile environment for public service media, we need to think about how we invest in an information environment that really reflects or includes information infrastructure that reflects our values and our needs. We need information infrastructure that provides a critical backstop in these very polarised and technologically undermined times. If you recognise that it is therefore contributing to a public good in providing an informed citizenry—something that is facilitating and upgrading our democratic health—you see it as something that you contribute to in the same way that you do with our education system or our NHS.

I will just draw out a particular detail. One thing we have not talked enough about yet is investment in technological infrastructure. Rather than just seeing the BBC as something that you benefit from only if you yourself are receiving content or if somebody else is consuming that content, it is also the infrastructure that underpins our information environment. If the funding can also be spent on building up our technological infrastructure that is in the public interest, that benefits not just the BBC but the public service media ecosystem overall, and people are also getting benefits from it. It is about seeing it in that holistic sense of it being a public good, a critical information backstop and something that contributes to our information environment in a number of ways.

Q326   Cameron Thomas: You said that it belongs to all of us, and you spoke of threats within the polarised society that we live in, but not everybody wants to own the BBC. How do you convince them?

Hannah Perry: That they should own the BBC?

Cameron Thomas: That they should have a stake in the BBC—that it is worth saving.

Hannah Perry: A key route to demonstrating that they should have a stake is, first, by demonstrating its independence and its separation from the kind of politics—

Q327   Cameron Thomas: What about the value of its independence?

Hannah Perry: You demonstrate the value of it, first, through all the different ways in which it is contributing right now. There is a combination of education, awareness and media literacy that helps people to understand what the role of public service media is, and particularly the contribution that the BBC is making. I do not think we do enough at all to help people understand the role that it plays, the way it is funded and why it is funded in that way.

At the moment, we have a knowledge gap over how it works and how it is operated, but that is combined with the fact that people do not perceive it to be sufficiently independent. You therefore need to combine it with significant steps to reinforce that independence through all the things we have talked about, including constitutional and governance reform, and that citizens panel. It is that combination of factors that I think people need to be reassured by to understand its independence and therefore see that it does serve them.

Colin Browne: I would agree with just about all of that. Some recent research showed that when people were asked what was important and what they would like to see from the BBC, independence was top of the list. Something like 94% of people said that, but a much smaller number—only about 30% to 40%—actually thought that it was independent. They assumed that it was broadly told by Government what to do.

Q328   Cameron Thomas: How do you bridge that gap?

Colin Browne: By doing the kind of thing that we have been talking about. We need much more stakeholder engagement and transparency in the way decisions are taken, and particularly the stuff I talked about right at the beginning: the Government should no longer make appointments to the BBC board; there needs to be an independent panel going through a transparent process that makes those recommendations; and there has to be an extremely good reason for its recommendations not to be accepted. That would really underline the importance of independence.

There is another thing that I want to pick up on. You said that we all believed in the licence fee, but we are not sure that the licence fee, as it is currently constituted, is correct. We would favour going to some form of universal licence fee, like a kind of levy, although I hate to use that word. It would be like the kind of household levy that you have in Germany and other European countries. At the moment, we know that a lot of people are accessing and using BBC services and are not paying for them. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the licensing people to follow up on that. If you had a more universal payment—if you got it up to, say, 94% or 95% of households paying—you could probably reduce the licence fee a little, as a kind of incentive. The extra revenue you would get by moving from the current figure—it is about 80%, I think, with 20% avoidance—to 94% or 95% would bring in quite a bit more revenue. To reward people, you could have a commitment to hold the licence fee at the same level for a while, or perhaps have some kind of reduction.

Philippa Childs: I pretty much agree with what Colin is saying. We have to bridge the gap between the number of people who pay the licence fee and those who consume BBC content. Maybe the TV licence name needs to be updated. My kids, certainly, would argue about having to pay for a TV licence.

Cameron Thomas: The licence fee brand is toxic.

Philippa Childs: Yes. I pretty much agree about the idea of a household levy so that we can extend it.

Q329   Chair: When you say “household levy”, do you mean a universal licence fee or rolling the BBC licence fee into general taxation?

Philippa Childs: No.

Q330   Chair: You mean an actual universal levy. Would you call it the licence fee or not?

Philippa Childs: I would not necessarily call it a licence fee—

Colin Browne: I agree. One could perhaps come up with a different word, but what you do is more important than what it is called.

Mr Alaba: Sorry, could you finish your point, Philippa?

Philippa Childs: I was going to say that the name “TV licence fee” is not realistic in 2026. As I said, my kids would not necessarily recognise the need to buy a TV licence fee because they probably do not consume their content on a TV.

Q331   Cameron Thomas: Philippa, you stated in response to my colleague that in times of diminishing productivity, under-represented groups are inevitably affected. If the BBC were to shrink owing to financial pressure, what other risks would that present to the universal service? What are the other so whats?

Philippa Childs: It is absolutely massive. I suspect that the 10% cuts that the BBC is about to face will have real and significant consequences. We have certainly said that it cannot afford any more salami-slicing—just cutting roles out without stopping doing things. It is hugely problematic. Sustainable funding is the most important challenge facing the BBC going forward. As others have said, it is important for all sorts of reasons—for our democracy and for the creative industries more generally.

Cameron Thomas: Colin, the same question to you.

Colin Browne: There are two things. First, I agree with what Philippa was saying. There will be more salami-slicing. Secondly, it means that the opportunity to do the kind of stuff that we have been talking about and that Steven was talking about will be missed. As I think I said, we need to recognise how important the BBC can be for the UK and recognise that soft power is not just about the World Service. Soft power is spreading the UK’s culture, spreading the things that we are good at and making that known around the world and to ourselves. There is a lot that can be done. At the moment the BBC is constantly having to grapple with the questions “What can’t we do?” and “What can we stop?”, rather than being given the opportunity to ask, “What we could do for the UK going forward?”

Q332   Cameron Thomas: Hannah, we have heard from Philippa and Colin about the so whats. Who suffers, ultimately? Who loses out?

Hannah Perry: We all lose out collectively, as a society, on the benefits to our societal values, our societal norms and the level of quality of our debate as a democracy. It affects us collectively in that way.

In terms of who is losing out, we also have to think about what I describe as information inequality in this country. So much good-quality information is moving behind the paywall. People are accessing their information through social media or through video-sharing platforms. We know that the quality of that information is significantly lower. These platforms have reduced their referrals to news publishers and public service broadcasting systematically over the last five years. If we know that people are increasingly using these platforms to constitute their information diet, and we know that that is where misinformation is significant and the quality of the information is poorer, we are making our country and our society informationally poorer. We are increasing information inequality.

Q333   Cameron Thomas: That is a really interesting point. People share The Times articles with me, but they are behind a paywall so I cannot see them. With the BBC, it is not a problem.

Hannah Perry: Exactly. It is an information equality issue. There is significant data that shows that over 80% of people will not click through to stuff that is behind a paywall. Why are we making information that should be a public good and is so important to our democracy prohibitively expensive? Unfortunately, it harms the most impoverished.

Q334   Chair: Philippa and Colin, we are really interested that you have both highlighted the fact that your preferred method of funding the BBC would be a universal household levy, because that is one of the suggestions that the Government immediately took off the table when they published their Green Paper. If it is compelling to both of you, and you both come at this from slightly different angles, why do you think the Government have immediately discounted it from their inquiries?

Colin Browne: I think perhaps because it looked too much like a tax—from the way things appear, that may have worried the Government. They may also have been concerned at the prospect of it potentially being something that is collected locally, but we do not think it has to be; we think there is a way of doing it on a national basis. Although the Government ruled it out at that stage, they have since said one or two things that suggest to me that they might be having second thoughts.

Q335   Chair: Like what? What have they said since?

Colin Browne: Just stuff that has been said about the importance of universal payment, and the importance of making sure that everybody actually comes up with the licence fee. I am not sure whether they have completely ruled it out, but a lot of this will be presentational.

Q336   Chair: Philippa, do you have anything to add?

Philippa Childs: No, other than to say that if it were a household levy, in time and depending on policy, it could also be made more progressive, so that households that can less afford it pay a lower fee.

Q337   Chair: Hannah, have you done any research on what would be a more popular way of funding the BBC?

Hannah Perry: We have not, actually, but there are others who have that I can recommend.

Q338   Chair: Colin, the BBC has this target of saving £700 million by March 2028. If it cannot make more money, the other option is to save money. Is there anything you would accept the BBC not doing that it does now?

Colin Browne: It’s really difficult to come up with any fundamental slug of work. As we were saying earlier, you are always driven back to salami-slicing—cutting off a little bit here and a little bit there. It is difficult to see that it is doing things now that it should not be doing at all. If you look at news, for example, the Reuters Institute published its annual report today, which shows that overall trust in news across the world is declining hugely. The one difference from that is the fact that trust in the public service broadcasters remains “resilient”. It is so important from that point of view, but the BBC is having to trim back news as part of the cuts, which is very unsatisfactory.

Chair: It is very unsatisfactory—thank you very much.

Q339   Liz Jarvis: Going back to the issue of protecting the BBC from political interference, Colin and Hannah, you have both mentioned the importance of the independence of the board, and we have seen a lot of controversy, such as the appointment of Robbie Gibb. What further steps would you take to increase the independence of the BBC?

Hannah Perry: I think the point has already been made about an independent appointments commission. I think that would be really important for appointments to the board, including the chair, and for replacing existing political appointments. The Secretary of State would still have a veto on those appointments, but the decision and the recommendation would be made by that independent appointments commission. It would have transparent criteria and a number of different methods for recruitment, and it would essentially enable and facilitate greater transparency on that whole process.

We would also recommend a conduct panel, which would be a specific panel that is there to evaluate the performance of board members. Where there are accusations relating to integrity, they could then be independently evaluated. That performance could be thoroughly investigated, and it could then either be put to bed or lead to a response, which recognises the standards we have for trustees. People should be meeting certain levels of integrity, and where there is an act of self-harm against the organisation that you are responsible for having oversight of, there is a response.

The final aspect I would include is the independent funding commission. I think that is really important, because we recognise the kind of political leverage that can be extended over the amount of funding that the BBC is afforded, and the regularity with which the funding amount is reviewed. That would still be the case if we were to move to a permanent charter, because the funding settlement would presumably still be reviewed regularly. We have seen evidence of how that is essentially used to reduce the funding package for the BBC, which of course has a knock-on impact on its ability to function. We would recommend an independent funding commission, much in the way of the KEF—the German model—that we think is a really good example.

The final recommendation we would make is to include a reference to adequate funding in the charter. It is really important that the BBC is given the amount of funding needed to be able to serve its purposes. If it is not being given adequate funding, that can be reviewed through an evidence-based process via the independent funding commission, and then there is recognition of why it is not able to fulfil its mission and purposes.

We think that independence, from a funding standpoint and an appointments standpoint, is important, and then there would be the conduct panel.

Q340   Liz Jarvis: Colin, do you agree with all that?

Colin Browne: I agree. We have not actually looked at the concept of a conduct panel, but it is certainly an interesting thought. Fundamentally, we agree with that approach.

Q341   Liz Jarvis: You have both advocated for a permanent charter. Why do you think this is necessary, and what exactly should a permanent charter cover?

Colin Browne: The reason why you need some kind of continuing or permanent charter is quite simply to avoid falling off a cliff in two years’ time. As we sit here today, there is no guarantee that the BBC will continue to exist in two years, because the charter expires. There is no other organisation, I think, that faces that kind of issue. And the amount of time and effort that is wasted on doing those charter discussions, getting ready for what the charter might be and so on takes its eye off the ball a bit. You need some kind of continuing or permanent charter. Obviously there would have to be a regular review of performance, both by Parliament and by some of the independent committees that we have talked about. There needs to be appraisal of whether the BBC is fulfilling the charter, but I think there needs to be a continuing charter.

Hannah Perry: I agree. The way we put it in our paper is that it creates a sword of Damocles. Charter review is a real moment of vulnerability. If you think about the fact that it is happening at this particular moment, at this time, the risk created for our country should the BBC not function is really significant. We have recommended a permanent charter in which you have the missions, the public purposes, the reference to universality and adequate funding. Other matters, relating to the more operational details, would move into an operational agreement, which would still get, say, a seven or eight-year review.

Q342   Liz Jarvis: Do you think a permanent charter would materially strengthen the BBC’s independence?

Hannah Perry: I really do, yes.

Q343   Liz Jarvis: Would you agree with that, Philippa?

Philippa Childs: Yes.

Chair: Last but not least, Rupa.

Dr Huq: I just have some questions about—

Chair: This is entirely my fault. I’m so sorry, Rupa. I forgot to bring in Damian.

Q344   Damian Hinds: I wanted to follow up on this. We keep hearing about a permanent charter—it’s the phrase of the year. Everybody says all the things that you have just said. You were talking about a sword of Damocles moment and saying you shouldn’t have that. Of course, you would still need to review performance, as Colin said, and of course you would still need to review the finances and look again at the scope of the BBC every few years. The media landscape is changing more rapidly than ever, so what is permanent about a permanent charter?

Hannah Perry: Its mission, its purposes, its function in our society. It is about having a backstop so that we have critical information infrastructure for our democracy and that it is not at risk—it is not something that can be taken away. That is what needs to be made permanent.

Q345   Damian Hinds: All those things—the mission and so on—are very important, but in terms of IRL, crunchy stuff, what is permanent?

Hannah Perry: I think I’ve just said it—the missions, the objects, the public purposes.

Q346   Damian Hinds: Forgive me. All those are important, but none of them is a tangible thing, like an amount of money, a physical location, the scope of which channels you appear on, the media that you cover or the geographical extent of what you do.

Colin Browne: What it shouldn’t be is a defined, limited charter that would definitely end at some stage in the future unless there was a review, and that creates—

Q347   Damian Hinds: So you are saying a permanent charter is not temporary.

Colin Browne: I used the words “continuing charter”.

Q348   Damian Hinds: Permanent is continuing—thank you. Hannah, can I come back to what you said in response to Cameron’s questions? You said something about how—I cannot remember the exact phrase—the licence fee should cover not just the BBC. You said something about how critical infrastructure underpins information and democracy, and so on. It would be helpful to understand a little more of what you were driving at.

Hannah Perry: At the moment, the BBC already provides much of the communication technology infrastructure that underpins it. I have probably confused things by using the word “infrastructure” too many times. The whole BBC is information infrastructure. To drill into technology and the technological component that the BBC delivers right now, in previous years, up until 2016 I believe, it had a purpose specifically focused on investing in emerging technologies for the public good. That is something that we think should be reinstated. I think the loss of that investment in technology has been to our detriment. If the BBC is able to continue that, which is not to say that it isn’t already to an extent—

Q349   Damian Hinds: Are you talking about the BBC Micro?

Hannah Perry: BBC Micro? I don’t know what that is.

Damian Hinds: I am showing my age. Hands up who remembers the BBC Micro.

Dr Huq: And Amstrad and the ZX Spectrum.

Damian Hinds: You are obviously not talking about the BBC Micro, so what do you mean? Give us a couple of “for instances” of these emerging technologies.

Hannah Perry: Should the BBC choose to explore a number of AI-based or other types of technology—different types of open-source, public interest algorithms that could be developed—these are things that could be built on existing products. It does not need to build an entirely new frontier model, but different technology-based products could facilitate different audience journeys and different experiences within the BBC environment. Those technologies could also be co-developed and gifted to the wider ecosystem so that if you are a local news provider in Wolverhampton, you are able to deploy that open-source technology in a way that also enriches and engages audiences with that news. You would be creating types of technology that can be deployed to strengthen the entire ecosystem because it has been created and built in the public interest. It is something that others can benefit from.

Chair: Now we are going to Rupa Huq.

Q350   Dr Huq: This might be an anticlimax after all that. I have a couple of questions on the changeover from digital terrestrial to internet TV. Colin Browne, you had an interesting quote in your evidence: the transition to online has transformed production and distribution, shifted power to global platforms and streamers, and impacted public service broadcasting’s funds and costs. Interesting quote. Do you think, editorially as well, the BBC is looking more like the algorithmic internet?

Colin Browne: I don’t think I meant that in an editorial context. The debate at the moment is whether we move from the current DTT distribution to IPTV. As you know, the Government is looking at this. I and others sat on a forum that gave some advice on that. We wait to hear what the Government intends. I think it is inevitable that, over time, we will move off current distribution on to IPTV, but the key thing there is timing. It can only be done when a number of things are in place, and those things include a proper broadband system that is genuinely widely available and that people can access without paying extra money. There needs to be media literacy work undertaken by the Government, I think, for the older people who find it difficult to cope with things like iPlayer. You used to be able to just turn on the television set, so it’s a pretty big change. I am sure it will come, but we need to be very careful on the timing so that it is not done too quickly. I am not going to hazard at this stage exactly what the right timing is, but we need to monitor that as we go through the process.

Q351   Dr Huq: On the editorial news point, Philippa, you mentioned it has been in the FT that big cuts are coming next week, and news will be the casualty of those, with huge numbers being slashed.

I wonder whether anyone saw “Newswatch” this week. We have said that viewers and listeners should be involved—like a modern version of Barry Took, if people remember him. I wonder whether this is internet-driven, because the internet thrives so much on algorithms and hate. The Belfast riots got a lot of coverage—they were a very big news story and the stabbing that led to them was very prominent. A viewer made the point that a Sudanese refugee was the perpetrator of the original stabbing that led to those riots, but there was also a stabbing of a middle eastern student in Cambridge that was not covered. The viewer pointed out that equal prominence was not given compared with when a foreign person did the same crime. Your quote made me think of that.

Colin Browne: It was not looking at that kind of issue.

Hannah Perry: The reason that certain stories like that are given so much prominence on our platforms, and this goes back to the point that I was making before, is because we know that engagement-based algorithms drive—

Dr Huq: Eyeballs.

Hannah Perry: Yes, eyeballs, but also because of the way that these platforms work, we are seeing mobilised networks using particular stories to advocate for a particular position on, for example, immigration and asylum, and that is working for the political arguments that they are looking to make in their own countries. When you have a scenario like that, which evidences a particular political view, then citizens, ideologically motivated networks, political figures and platform owners will jump on it. That is why those sorts of stories get such significant prominence.

Dr Huq: It is an editorial decision at BBC level. However, the point was made in the programme that it was the same crime, but one led to riots in the end.

Hannah Perry: Just to clarify, I was talking about what was covered on social media platforms, not the BBC. Sorry, I missed that context.

Dr Huq: The person on the programme was saying that the BBC gave it a lot of coverage, whereas other equal—

Hannah Perry: It is important to provide a counter-narrative. If you know that lots of misinformation is being shared about a particular incident or something that is inciting riots, it is important to provide trustworthy information. I understand why you would gravitate towards something that is causing so much hate and violence and want to provide accurate information.

Q352   Dr Huq: It must be covered, but arguably it is a difficult time to be an ethnic minority in this country, so the BBC stoking stuff up is not great. Lastly, do you expect the Government to intervene to help households to be ready for the switchover?

Colin Browne: Be ready for the switchover?

Dr Huq: Yes, because it is a big deal.

Colin Browne: Yes, potentially in some of the ways that I just mentioned: in the area of media literacy, for example; in making sure that it can be done as seamlessly and easily as possible; and in providing support and help for some, but not all, of the older generation who find these things difficult. There will definitely be a need for Government support.

Q353   Dr Huq: And that should be embedded in the charter as well?

Colin Browne: It is not really a charter issue. It should happen, but I do not think it is a charter issue.

Q354   Dr Huq: Anyone else on switchover?

Philippa Childs: I agree, pretty much.

Chair: In that case, thank you so much for your time today. It has been great to speak to you, and it has been really valuable to hear your evidence.