Like financial regulation before the Great Crash, regulation of the BBC has traditionally relied on a gentleman’s agreement. If governments did not cross the unwritten line of interference, this was because of a tacit agreement on the value of the broadcaster’s independence. Gentlemen’s agreements are about as relevant as announcers in dinner jackets in this more open media age, and the BBC Charter needs to catch up.
It is time to acknowledge that the line has been crossed, and that the capture of the BBC is not a blip. In part the controversy over Robbie Gibb, and before that the controversy over Richard Sharp, continue previous tendencies of politicisation. In 2001, Labour funder Gavyn Davies was appointed BBC Chair under New Labour and governments for a century have been unable to break the pattern of sneaky influence through patronage.
Appointments are also now more sinister because they are part of a strategy to control the public broadcaster. This programme of illiberal democracy has been seen in recent years in Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders have sought to colonise institutions such as broadcasters and the courts, which check state power. Viktor Orbán, Hungarian prime minister and New Right darling, has used his huge majority in parliament to control appointments to both the state broadcaster and its regulator. (The EU has attempted to restrain him by passing a Media Freedom Act.)
Labour should also be seeking a long-term strategy to provide the Corporation with legitimacy for the next century. This means having a proper, public debate about the BBC’s future governance. The current BBC Charter places obligations on the broadcaster to be independent. But the obligations on the government to respect BBC independence are much less clear and there is no tradition of the BBC defending its independence in the courts.
These could be developed in two ways. First, the next Charter and Agreement could set out clear and justiciable obligations on the government to leave the BBC alone. Second, the BBC could set out policy guidance clarifying how and under what conditions it would go to court to protect its independence. There are plenty of historical precedents and international standards—such as those of the Council of Europe—to refer to.
By pursuing closed and party political “reviews” of the Corporation with no transparency, the Labour front bench are failing to address the issue. They need to set out a big tent in which a cross-party coalition and the proper range of civil society actors can reset trust in the institution. They should halt the pendulum of partisan capture of the BBC, which over time draws it closer to its end, and instead set out a serious programme of reform with cross-party input.
If an incoming government wanted to state its commitment to the defence of liberal democracy, it would grant the BBC independence on day one of its term in office, by giving the broadcaster the ability to defend itself. Like setting the Bank of England free in 1997, this will cost next to nothing and in the long term reap huge benefits in terms of repairing trust in our institutions. But this government also has to undo the damage of the creeping politicisation of both Ofcom and the BBC, by engaging with parliament and preparing the ground for a Centenary Charter. It would be fitting if, after just over a century of existence, real independence could be granted to the BBC, which would establish it as a permanent part of our democratic constitution rather than a contingent response to so-called “market failure”. This is what real commitment to democratic pluralism looks like.
As Donald Tusk has found in Poland, where the public broadcaster had been completely captured over the previous decade, undoing damage done by others can lead to accusations of meddling. Reform of BBC governance is going to take careful, longer-term strategy, with attention to discretion and transparency—not rabbits out of post-election hats.
