The head of the BBC Trust has warned that the will of licence fee payers is being “drowned out” in the charter renewal debate, with the prospect of the BBC becoming the “perpetual plaything of the political classes”.
Rona Fairhead said there must be “intelligent reform, not a total transformation” of the corporation as its next royal charter is hammered out.
Fairhead conceded that there was a need to build a better BBC – an area she has spoken on before including remit and regulation – but warned that views of licence fee payers are not being heard in the ongoing debate.
“We must make sure their views are heard loud and clear in the current debate over charter renewal, not drowned out by the press, politicians and the industry at large,” Fairhead said on Tuesdayat the autumn conference of the Voice of the Listener & Viewer.
“Of course [the public] want to see some changes, but people want tomorrow’s BBC to be protected but reformed. Yes to intelligent, targeted improvements. No to total transformation. They want evolution, not revolution. It is the licence fee payers who pay the bills and it should be them who call the shots.”
Fairhead said it was wrong to characterise the BBC, as its critics did, as a “series of problems that need fixing”.
On the topic of governance, she told the audience she was not going to embark on “five minutes of special pleading” – she said in March that the BBC Trust should be replaced by some form of external regulator.
But there had been good work done by the trust over the past 10 years in areas such as transparency, complaints and editorial standards, she said, and handing over to a new regulator should not be a case of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
She said regulation needed to be handled by a “robust, independent body with real teeth, with its own charter, powers and responsibilities”.
The BBC Trust has said it is relatively agnostic over what a new regulator might look like, although last month a trust director argued that Ofcom was not currently equipped to take on that role.
Fairhead also repeated her call for the rejection of any move towards replacing the licence fee with a subscription service. And she called an end to the government slicing funds, such as forcing the £750m cost of free licence fees for the over-75s onto the corporation, again criticising the shotgun deal struck with government in July as “unduly speedy and secretive”.
“In our view, [a subscription service] won’t build a better BBC, it would tear it apart,” she said. “When it comes to funding, stability is essential. That’s why the BBC must not be treated like a government piggy bank to be raided when times are tough. There can be no more top-slicing.”
She also reiterated the rejection of calls from some quarters for a shortening of the charter period to five years, arguing again that it should be extended to 11 years to free the BBC from political manipulation.
“A shorter charter period would massively erode the foundations of independence and leave the BBC as the perpetual plaything of the political classes,” Fairhead said. “Far better to have a one-off, 11-year charter to break the link with fixed-term parliaments before returning to the 10-year cycle that would give tomorrow’s BBC the stability and independence it needs to thrive.”
