Everyone agrees that the BBC Trust is bust, set to be swept away when a new royal charter arrives. But does anybody agree about what comes next? Director General Hall has abandoned any residual fight for another quasi-in-house bout of governance. Secretary of State Whittingdale would like to pass the parcel to Ofcom. Quite a few BBC trusties wouldn’t mind that, though the current Ofteam might need a spring clean of conflicted personnel. But do they want the job anyway?
Dame Colette Bowe, Ofcom’s last chair, tells a meeting that “there’s a quite separate job to be done, which is holding the BBC to account for the delivery of its purposes. I would say that is not a regulatory job.” Meanwhile, Rona Fairhead, chair of the doomed trust, sings from a different hymn sheet. She visualises “a robust, independent body with real teeth, with its own charter, powers and responsibilities. That kind of intelligent reform… is needed because the BBC is a broadcaster like no other and it will help build a better BBC, not tear it down.”
So Sir David Clementi, the City big cheese charged with finding a solution by Whittingdale, doesn’t lack options. Consensus, though, seems in rather shorter supply. Fairhead wants more charters, powers and presumably cash: a fresh, vibrant regulator to sit alongside Ofcom. Bowe doesn’t want a new regulator at all. The culture secretary can expect some choppy seas if he dumps this bumpy bundle on Ofcom. Hall risks getting what he wants – a unitary board for the BBC, with a respected non-executive chairman – at the cost of more extraneous baggage. And nobody, of course, can be sure that whatever solution emerges will last any longer than the trust itself (born 1 Jan 2007; died 31 Dec 2016).
The best outline answer thus far, by chance, has come from the source most likely to raise BBC hackles. David Elstein, ex-Thames TV, ex-BSkyB, ex-Channel 5, is not best beloved around Broadcasting House, not “one of us”. But the scenario he came up with at a City University seminar recently seems to square most circles.
Hall gets his proper governing board, bristling with non-execs and able to take decisions – on pay, on creative services or closing channels or extending news bulletins – without passing them back and forth to other bodies as months and years drip away. In short, he joins the real world of straightforward governance. Ofcom already has many responsibilities for regulating the BBC and works alongside the corporation on projects that measure services nationwide. It gradually takes over the rest of complaints handling in vexed areas like fairness and balance (probably as a backstop to BBC in-house complaints procedures, thus mirroring the current state of press regulation).
But there’s still a hole that needs filling: the one marked Quality. The trust has usefully developed expertise in testing the quality of programming, the fulfilment of charter promises and the use of public money. That isn’t “regulation” as Bowe defines it: more an influential running commentary. It doesn’t require that decisions be referred hither and yon for ratification. It tests arguments and charts trends. It reacts to developments and monitors public opinion.
A new quality monitor on these lines wouldn’t be some “robust” entrant requiring its own charters and baring the “real teeth” that Fairhead seeks. But it is also what she says she wants: intelligent reform, “evolution not revolution”. It’s a role for the viewer and listener – and one well capable of intelligent expansion if, say, Whittingdale is foolish or brave enough to try to sell off Channel 4 while keeping its public service obligations intact. One quality monitor covers both.
Are there snags? Of course: and the biggest, most insoluble one dogs every rejig. “Independence” is a lovely concept and an often baleful reality. Prime ministerial appointments don’t guarantee independence. The appointment of great and good Oxbridge dignitaries doesn’t bring independent expertise to television entertainment (or, for that matter, the tabloid press). If HMG, in one form or another, insists on choosing the chair of the BBC board, the chair of Ofcom and the first chair of quality monitoring, where’s the breath of fresh air that lets Hall add devolution to evolution?
