The Freedom Association – written evidence (BBC0013)

 

This is a submission authored by Andrew Allison, Head of Campaigns at the Freedom Association on behalf of The Freedom Association. We are a non-partisan pressure group dedicated to fighting for individual liberty and personal freedom. Our website address is: www.tfa.net. One of our major campaigns is ‘Axe the TV Tax’. This campaign makes the positive case for the abolition of the television licence. The website address of the ‘Axe the TV Tax’ campaign is: www.axethetvtax.net.

 

Introduction

 

  1.      In an article I wrote for the Yorkshire Post published on 21 August 2015, I started with the following sentence:

 

“If you go down to your local high street and ask ordinary licence fee payers what the BBC’s public purposes are, you will be very lucky to find anyone who has heard of them.”

 

I decided to test this assumption by asking members of The Freedom Association to take part in an online survey.

 

Results of the survey

 

  1.      There were 243 responses. The first question I asked was, “Prior to receiving this survey, were you aware of the six public purposes that were incorporated into the BBC's 2006 Royal Charter?” The results were Yes: 16.4%, No: 68.3%, Unsure: 12.7%, Other: 1.2%. More than two-thirds of those who responded had not even heard of them. One respondent said that they had only just learnt about them after reading a Sunday newspaper article, and another who had not heard of them described them as banal and ill-defined, whilst another said that they were so widely drawn that they could be interpreted in any way the BBC sees fit.

 

  1.      In another question, I asked respondents to rate on a scale of one to ten, how much importance they put on each of the public purposes. “Promoting education and learning” came top at an average score of 6.4, with “Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK” second with an average score of 5.9. Trailing in last place was “In promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television” with an average score of 4.1.

 

  1.      Those results do not surprise me. I receive many emails from members of the public about the BBC, and a common theme running through them is one of wanting more educational programmes. Many feel that the BBC is very good at this, but there is also much praise for the documentaries on Channel 4.

 

  1.      What the majority of respondents to the survey were concerned about is the lack of a commitment to unbiased news reporting. One person said that “Insufficient political neutrality has affected all their output”, whilst another commented that “accurate reporting of events and representing traditional British values should be a part of the purposes.”

 

  1.      As a broadcaster funded through a compulsory licence fee, the BBC should not have an editorial position at all. If the public purposes are retained, unbiased new reporting should be included as one of the public purposes. I am not saying that the BBC is being deliberately biased (and some of the alleged bias is a matter of opinion), however, by including this as a public purpose, it shows a clear commitment to the highest standards of journalism.

 

  1.      Another question I asked in the survey was a question you asked on your consultation document: “Are public purposes the best way to judge/analyse the BBC's performance?” A majority of 53% said no, whilst only 20% said yes. The rest fell into the “don’t know” and “other” categories. One respondent said that “the idea of public purposes rather distracts from the question of whether the BBC provides a valuable service in relation to the massive resources from the TV tax. It clearly does not provide that value. In any other situation there is a choice of provider; in this case not so.” Another commented “no, quality is - this is a silly box ticking exercise”, whilst another said that “they are not objective but rather subjective. They lack specificity, do not have any particular time span over which they should be measured and there are no objective criteria set.”

 

  1.      That final comment sums it up for me. Anyone in business knows the importance of setting objectives, however, there has to be a way of measuring them. The public purposes of the BBC are set in such a vague way, there isn’t a way of effectively and objectively measuring them. For example, what does “sustaining citizenship and civil society” mean? It is vague, and ask a hundred people for a definition, and you will probably get a hundred different answers. The same goes for “stimulating creativity and cultural excellence”. You could never get a room full of people to agree on whether or not the BBC was adequately fulfilling this role.

 

Conclusion

  1.      I am inclined to agree with the majority of respondents to the survey who think the public purposes are not the best way to judge/analyse the BBC’s performance. I would also go further and say that they are pointless.  In many ways, Lord Reith’s mantra of “inform, educate and entertain” is far more specific. When looking at the television and radio schedules you can easily work out which category a programme falls into, and therefore measure the BBC’s performance in those areas. The BBC managed for many decades without these public purposes, and I am sure it can manage without them now. They really don’t serve any useful purpose and should be scrapped.

 

 

23 September 2015