Award-winning journalist Nick Davies broke the story of phone hacking by UK newspapers back in 2009 and now lays out the startling implications of News Group Newspapers’ major settlement with former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, which adds a significant extra dimension to the affair.
Plus, Alan and Lionel discuss the issue of BBC funding with the former BBC executive Pat Younge, as the government look set to renege on its agreement with the corporation over the amount of the licence fee.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lionel Barber:
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Alan Rusbridger:
Hello, and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect magazine’s weekly exploration of the fascinating and contested world of media. I'm Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel:
And I'm Lionel Barber. And on this week's episode, we have an extraordinary interview with award-winning journalist Nick Davies, who originally broke the phone hacking scandal. He talks about an important new development, which takes the story beyond celebrity phone hacking into corporate espionage.
Alan:
And with the government looking set to renege on its agreement with the corporation over the size of the next licence fee rise, on the day when the breaking news is that the new BBC chairman is to be Samir Shah, former BBC executive Pat Younge discusses what's fair and what is the road ahead for BBC funding.
Lionel:
Listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And Media Confidential is on X/Twitter. We are @MediaConfPod.
So Alan, let's do our inbox chat, as we have so much to talk about.
Alan:
Yeah, well, look, we've got Nick Davies, who did the original phone hacking stories, who's going to be talking about the latest settlements, which add to the 1.2 billion that News International/News Corp have already paid. We've got the latest twist in the Telegraph, my latest setback in my campaign to get the story of Robbie Gibb-gate out in relation to the BBC, and there's this breaking news of Samir Shah. What's your take on that, Lionel?
Lionel:
Well, he's a very experienced broadcaster. Started in London Weekend many years ago, actually around the same time I went into journalism in 1978, '9. So, he's not a BBC lifer, because he did that stint at London Weekend. He's run his own production company, so he knows television, and production, and broadcasting, perhaps more familiar than Tim Davie, the director general. So in that sense, it's a sort of complimentary ticket. I don't believe he's chaired a big board. The second big question, of course, is how's he going to cope with this hostile government renegotiation of the licence fee, future funding of the BBC? These are very big questions, and he's going to be in the limelight all the time, and we'll have to see whether he melts or not.
Alan:
I think that's the big question mark. I think you need the skin of a rhino to do this job nowadays, and I don't know if he's been tested to that extent. He's clearly got a good broadcasting lineage. That generation of LWT people included Greg Dyke and John Birt, who were very, very smart people. That's a tick. And if you've got a director general who is, himself, not a very experienced journalist or broadcaster, he's more come from the commercial background, I think having someone to balance him who has got that editorial background. But he's going to be stress-tested in this job almost from day one. And I think the truth is we don't know enough about Samir Shah, and whether he's had that kind of bruising experience, and how he's going to stand up to it.
Lionel:
What we do know is perhaps the selection process was a little less tilted than it was when they thought of getting Paul Dacre into Ofcom and former-
Alan:
Glad you mentioned that.
Lionel:
And former Telegraph editor, Sunday Telegraph editor, Spectator editor too, Charles, Lord Moore, in as chairman of the BBC. That was under the Johnson reign.
Alan:
That segues nicely to the latest knock-back in my campaign to get the BBC to acknowledge that Theresa May's former press secretary and BBC director did try to interfere in the process to get the chair of the BBC's regulator, Ofcom, fixed. And I had a very dismissive letter the end of last week from Dame Elan Closs Stephens, who's the acting chair of the BBC, which basically said, "Look, I've asked Robbie Gibb about this, and he's told me everything is fine, so can we please move on?" And I don't think that's a very satisfactory answer. We now have to move on to the next phase of the campaign.
Lionel:
Well, Alan, I read that letter, and it was pretty dismissive, very short. And if I could stretch the metaphor, and you are the terrier with some trousers in your mouth, bits of trousers, because you're not going to let go. Basically, Dame Elan gave you a pat on the head and said, "Now, now, don't get too excited, and please go back to your kennel."
Alan:
The reason I'm keeping going with this is that the BBC swears by the Nolan Principles, which are all about openness and accountability, and they explicitly say, "We shall be open about everything, unless there's an overriding reason not to be." It's clear that nobody has now denied that Robbie Gibb tried to fix this appointment, and I just think the BBC's got itself into a terrible position of covering up for whatever Robbie Gibb did. And it would be much better to just come out and explain what Robbie Gibb did. If there's a good reason, then we should hear about it. Anyway, I'm now approaching various media shows, various BBC shows, and I started with The Media Show, and I tweeted Katie Razzall yesterday on Twitter, so I'm waiting, bated breath, to see if the BBC will allow me to go onto the BBC to talk about that. But moving on from that, Lionel, is the latest twist in the Telegraph story. Explain it.
Lionel:
Yeah. I'll try, very briefly, but the good news, if you're a banker and work for Lloyds Bank, is that you've actually got your billion pounds back, which you basically never thought you were going to get the whole money back, half of which was lent to the Barclay twins back in 2004 when they bought The Telegraph Group. And, of course, as I've said it before on this distinguished show, we are talking about walking bankrupts. They may have owned The Ritz, but they got massively extended, and they couldn't pay back this debt. And that, now, thanks to the Gulf investors, notably from Abu Dhabi, that's where this IMA media investment group, they basically teamed up with the Americans, Jeff Zucker, ex-CNN, called RedBird, and they put the money up to pay off the loan, the delinquent loan to Lloyds, and then they will convert that loan, which they're essentially giving to the Barclays to pay it back, into equity so they can buy the Telegraph. So you've understood that, haven't you? I'm not going to give you an exam paper.
Alan:
Just about.
Lionel:
So, debt for equity spot, Barclay twins bailed out, essentially, by Gulf investors and Jeff Zucker, who then want to buy the Telegraph. But the government has intervened to say, "Well actually, we need to look at this bid, because A, Abu Dhabi investment group is essentially part of a state agency, and what's the record of the Abu Dhabi government towards a free press?" And on those grounds, they're going to refer it under a Public Interest Notice. The culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, wants a recommendation or a ruling, an opinion, by January. Now, then it could go to a deeper investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. So, to sum up, I think good news if you're a banker; bit disappointing if you're the Barclay family, because you've lost your newspaper group; and slightly frustrating if you're Jeff Zucker and the Abu Dhabi people, because the government's ordered a review.
Alan:
That was clear as crystal, Lionel.
Lionel:
Well, thank you.
Alan:
Your lineage as a great editor shows by that explanation. So, the overall timeline is going to be how long before we know? Assuming the CMA do take a deeper dive into this, how long is it going to be before this is decided?
Lionel:
Yeah, I think it's till the end of the year, maybe even after the election. The way I read it, I'm interested what you think, Alan, but the current state of the ruling Conservative Party is such that even though they will be worried, the government will be worried about offending the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, which is Abu Dhabi, they're big investors in the UK, I just think that the campaign waged by, we were mentioning earlier, Lord Moore, Charles Moore, you've got Iain Duncan Smith, a regular contributor now in the Telegraph; they've got their readers all whipped up to write in, saying, "You can't possibly hand over The Telegraph Group to a foreign state entity that doesn't believe in press freedom." It's a strong argument, and that's why I think the government will refer, and there's going to be a longer investigation.
Alan:
Don't forget the special one-month trial offer, which means you can enjoy Prospect's journalism for a full month absolutely free. You can read all the magazine's best long reads, commentary, and cultural criticism with new writing added daily to our website, as well as the entire 28-year archive. Sign up now at subscription.prospectmagazine.co.uk/mediaconfpod
So we're now joined from Mexico City by Nick Davies, an old colleague from the Guardian who broke the original phone hacking revelations beginning in 2009. Nick, yesterday in the High Court in London, there was a settlement with Chris Huhne, a former Lib Dem MP, and other politicians and people. What caught your eye in this case involving Chris Huhne?
Nick Davies:
I thought there were two big headlines. First, that the Murdoch people carried on hacking voicemails for many years longer than we have previously understood, and did so in a way which was so reckless, if the evidence is reliable, as to suggest they're just mad. It's just bonkers what they were doing, if indeed we can rely on the evidence. And there's a second headline in there, which is that whereas all of the hacking we knew about already was about trying to get stories about people's personal lives, this, or at least a significant part of it, appears to have been devoted to advancing Rupert Murdoch's commercial interests, specifically his attempt to take over all of BSkyB. And the implication of that is that if there were senior people organising it, it wouldn't be the familiar names from the News of the World newsroom, it would be somebody high up in the hierarchy on the other side of the company. And somewhere up there, there's not only Rupert Murdoch, but more immediately on the scene, of course, his son James.
So, in all of this, we need to keep a health warning in mind that we can talk about the evidence, but the bottom line is I would describe it as a strong case of circumstantial evidence, which falls short of anything like a smoking gun. There isn't an email from A to B saying, "Guess what, I just hacked Chris Huhne's email, and discovered the following info." So, as circumstantial cases go, it's strong, but I think it's not without doubt.
Alan:
So, just to remind people of the chronology, 2009, you published the revelations that it was not just one rotten apple. That phone hacking was widespread and, indeed, the board of News International, if I've got the right entity, agreed, really, a million pound payoff to keep this secret. So, at that point, it became known that this was a more widespread problem. 2010, coalition government comes in, and that's the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. So that's the significance of people like Vince Cable and Chris Huhne swimming into view.
Nick:
Can I, at the risk of interrupting like an unruly dog, can I take you down a slightly different route?
Alan:
Yeah.
Nick:
In order to make sense of this, you're going to have to understand two things about the circumstantial evidence, and we need to get that in place before we can make sense of the timeline.
Alan:
Go on, okay.
Nick:
So, when we talk about the circumstantial evidence here, some of it is kind of familiar stuff, where people say, "Oh yeah, I remember my mobile phone would go, and when I picked it up, there was nobody there." And if you're going to hack someone's voicemail, you have to get through when they're not answering the phone. So, there's stuff like that and people saying, "I would show up for some meeting, and there would be a photographer there. How the hell did they know I was going to be there?" And they're publishing stories, "How on earth did they get this information?" So, there's that kind of foundation layer of circumstantial evidence.
And then there are two things which they've extracted, two types of evidence, which they've extracted from the Murdoch company on the orders of the judge hearing the case. Now, the first of that is records of payments to private investigators. And the second, which is the most important, is the records of phone calls made from Murdoch HQ in Wapping to the three senior Lib Dem MPs we're talking about here, Chris Huhne, Vince Cable, and Norman Lamb.
Now, the key thing is the private investigators and the calls, because what you see over a period of time is dozens and dozens of calls, there's nearly 900 calls come from the Wapping Murdoch building to these three MPs. And the three MPs say, "But we weren't getting calls from The Sun or the News of the World," which are the people involved here. "What are these calls for?" And some of them are suspiciously short. A reporter calls a politician, it's going to be a complicated conversation, at least 10 minutes, maybe longer. This is a minute or two, over and over again.
And the key thing is these two interesting bits of evidence, the private investigator invoices and the calls from Wapping, happen in clusters, okay? So, if we apply that circumstantial evidence to a timeline, you see a very interesting picture developing. So first of all, come to late 2005, early '06, Charles Kennedy is the leader of the Liberals. There's a problem with alcohol, and he loses the leadership, and there's an election with four candidates. And there is tremendous activity by the News of the World and The Sun hiring private investigators, we can see the payments going through, and these calls, these short mysterious calls.
And there's a particular feature of these calls. If you're making a call from the Wapping building out, you can use your direct line, but that means that number's going to show up on your target's phone. What you can also do, though, is to phone through what they call the hub number. And that means that all that's going to show up is the main switchboard number, which is risky, but at least it doesn't come to you. The overwhelming majority of these nearly 900 mysterious calls are coming through the hub number. So, it's short hub number calls suddenly in a cluster around the Charles Kennedy story and the election bid.
Now, that's important to us because we know for sure they were voicemail hacking at that time, and two of the targets of that hacking, Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten, have separately settled, and it's been accepted that they were being hacked. So, that means that we know what hacking looks like, in terms of those two kinds of key evidence. Now, later that year, everything goes wrong when the police bust the News of the World's royal correspondent Clive Goodman in August 2006, seven months after the election hacking. And we understood that at that point they were so traumatised by Inspector Knacker coming through the door, that they stopped doing this.
Lionel:
But we need to just focus on the politics here because, as you say, this is an intervention in order to, I'm using Chris Huhne's very lively word here, kompromat. This-
Nick:
I think he's probably wrong, actually. But I think that-
Lionel:
Ah. Well, you could correct me, but the point is these tentacles, they're trying to influence the political process by withholding damaging information against key people.
Nick:
Yes. The difficulty here is that, you understand, the evidence is only circumstantial, and the Murdoch company are paying out a settlement, but, as ever, denying liability. They're saying, "This didn't happen, but we'll pay Chris Huhne to go away." If you see the evidence in the way I'm laying it out, you can see how powerful it is, albeit it's not quite 100 per cent. So the point is, come to the spring of 2009, as far as the official version of events is concerned, all of the phone hacking has stopped. And suddenly, the News of the World and The Sun pick up on Chris Huhne as a target. He's seeing somebody he's not married to. And suddenly, you've got this cluster of PI activity and mysterious, short phone calls from the Wapping hub number. And so that suggests, amazingly to me, that they were still doing it, even though they knew the trouble it caused.
So then what suggests to me that they really do think, the Murdoch company really does think, it's above the law and it can do what the hell it likes, is that they carry on doing that at various moments when you have these clusters after the Guardian starts publishing these stories that cause them such trouble. Within days of the Milly Dowler story in July 2011, there are clusters of PI activity, and mysterious hub calls going in to Vince Cable.
It continues. There's a phase in December 2011, when Lord Justice Leveson is sitting, hearing evidence, and based on the material that's come out here, they're still hacking phones while that's going on. Do you see? This is reckless to the point of madness. What do you think you're doing? Okay, on the way through that phase of this evidence suggesting that hacking continued, there's a really, really interesting phase around Murdoch's attempt to take over BSkyB. So what happens here is that we have the election in May 2010; the coalition is now in government. On June 10th, the Murdochs' very smooth French lobbyist, Fred Michel, do you remember him from the Leveson Inquiry?
Lionel:
Yeah, yeah, know him well.
Nick:
Yeah, okay, so he calls in-
Lionel:
He's now spokesman for President Macron.
Nick:
I understand. So, he goes in to see Norman Lamb, senior Lib Dem MP, and at this point, he is the parliamentary private secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. And if you're Fred Michel, Nick Clegg is your target, you've got to stop him getting in the way of this bid. So five days before the bid is announced, Fred Michel goes to see Norman Lamb. And guess what? There are six short hub calls to Norman Lamb's phone on and around that day, June 10th, and there are six others to Vince Cable. And Vince Cable is important because he's the business secretary, he's the guy who's going to decide whether to issue an Intervention Notice and start investigating the competition implications of the bid. And they don't want that to happen. So, that cluster of phone calls at that moment looks very much like somebody on the commercial side, not looking for blackmail stuff and kompromat, but just trying to find out which way the ball is bouncing so that Fred can do better than perhaps he might be able to at the meeting with Norman Lamb.
Okay, so then an interesting thing happens. Courtesy of Alan's initiative, the New York Times, at the beginning of September, publish a big story. And everybody in Murdoch towers is running around yelling, because it makes them frightened. And Rebekah Brooks writes to Fred Michel an email saying, "What can we do?" Fred Michel writes back in terms, this is slightly chilling, as you will see. He says, "The key will be for prominent Lib Dems, like Clegg and Huhne, to stay silent on it, and I think they will. Matthew," that's Matthew Anderson, head of PR at Murdoch Company. "Matthew and I are meeting with Colin Myler," that's the News of the World editor, "to talk about it this afternoon." Now, that meeting itself provokes a burst of short calls from the NGN hub to our Lib Dem targets.
What then happens is a few weeks later, Vince Cable says, "Okay, I'm issuing an Intervention Notice. We're going to investigate this bid." And two things happen. One, we get lots of hub calls coming in. There's lots and lots of apparent evidence of espionage on the business secretary handling this huge deal and on Norman Lamb, Nick Clegg's right hand. And it ends with the threat that is implicit in that email coming real because, do you remember, Will Lewis, senior executive in the Murdoch company, persuaded his old pals at the Daily Telegraph to send two young freelance journalists to Vince Cable's constituency meeting, where they secretly recorded him saying, essentially, "I'm going to stop Murdoch doing this." And that recording meant that Vince Cable lost his job. Go back to that email that said, "We'll keep them quiet." And Vince Cable didn't go quiet, so he lost his job. And all of this is surrounded by these hub calls and PI invoices.
So, granted, there's an element of doubt. I think we are entitled to say that the Murdoch company, A, used the News of the World as a weapon to try to attack the people who were causing a political obstruction, and to appear to have engaged in illegal criminal activity in order to gather evidence which would assist them in doing that. And when people criticise Rupert Murdoch, they often think it's all about him intervening in the editorial line of his papers. That's actually the secondary issue. The primary one is Murdoch undermines, and occasionally overthrows, democratically elected governments. And never before, in all the research that I was doing, have we been able to see it happening in such fine detail, if we can accept that these hub calls mean what we think they mean.
Alan:
That's an astonishingly clear explanation. Nick, to that we should add that two further targets appear to have been Charlotte Harris, who was one of the lawyers, and also Tom Watson, who was on the DCMS committee.
Nick:
Yes, but A, we already knew about that. And B, the targeting of those two is about this sad little character called Derek Webb, who specialises in following people without being seen and he calls himself, I think it's Silver Shadow, which is very dramatic and groovy. But we haven't got the mysterious hub calls with those two.
Alan:
No, no, we haven't.
Nick:
There's no evidence of hacking.
Alan:
No.
Nick:
And this is what is so shocking. Do you know, because you and I were in the middle of all this, and I don't think it ever occurred to us that they would be so bold, so reckless, so bonkers, as to carry on doing it while they were lying to the world about the fact that they had been doing it, and we were snapping at their heels.
Lionel:
Well, reckless, but not bonkers, Nick, because what you've described, very clearly, is corporate espionage on an extraordinary scale, but with a view to completing, they wanted that deal. I know that because we went through this covering this bid, we know the amount of pressure that Ed Richards was under as head of Ofcom at the time. This was a high, high stakes deal. So, what you've described is a completely new dimension, if it's all true and can be pinned down, but a completely new dimension of the phone hacking scandal.
Nick:
Yeah, that is exactly how I see it. And you might build in some evidence, of course, that came out at the Leveson Inquiry, that once Vince Cable was ousted from his position, with the assistance of this surveillance, he was replaced by Jeremy Hunt. Fred Michel then constructed a secret-
Alan:
He did.
Nick:
... backchannel to Jeremy Hunt's special advisor, who was called Adam Smith. At the Leveson Inquiry, we were able to see Fred Michel's messages back to HQ. He knew everything that Jeremy Hunt was up to and thinking, and it was extremely tempting to consider that Hunt knew that backchannel was there. He clearly, clearly, this is not a libel, this is clear in the evidence, he wanted that deal to go through. And there's another thing here. We haven't quite got to the end of this saga; in fact, we're only just beginning this aspect of it. Were they also hacking Jeremy Hunt and Adam Smith? Why wouldn't they? If they're, in my language, mad enough to do this, why wouldn't they complete the picture, and try and find out what Jeremy Hunt is saying?
Alan:
We know it was systemic, because the previous culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, was also being hacked.
Nick:
But back along, that's all pre [inaudible 00:26:10].
Alan:
Yeah, I know, but it's part of a pattern in which the Murdoch organisations just decides they will hack anybody who might be-
Nick:
Yeah.
Alan:
Apparently, apparently.
Nick:
But you catch my assumption. I don't have the kind of Murdoch magnate megalomania, I reckon if your main man gets busted and locked up, you're inclined to walk away from committing the crime. Wrong again.
Alan:
Final question, Nick. Prince Harry has got the go ahead to continue his actions. Do you think that any of this, at the moment, as you say, the Murdoch organisation is just paying out huge sums to keep this from getting into court; do you think the truth will ever be revealed?
Nick:
Oh, I think that the litigation is being remarkably effective at dragging bits of the truth out, because although each time a case is stopped, we lose the fine detail and the opportunity to cross-examine people, we're getting evidence in open court. Apparently, Murdoch has now paid out 1.2 billion pounds in dealing with the phone hacking saga. My worry about it all is that this litigation, while fascinating, will never develop the political clout we need if we're to set up an independent regulator who might stop the feral newspapers spraying the public domain with falsehood and distortion, because it's too easy for the bad guys at the dark end of Fleet Street to say, "Well, okay, these bad things went on, but it was all a long time ago, before we set up our lovely new regulator IPSO." Which I don't trust at all. Do you see? So, I think we can get quite a lot of truth out in this way, but I don't think we're going to get the political change we so desperately need.
Lionel:
Well, Alan, I know that you worked with Nick for years on the phone hacking story. I was following it from a slight distance, but I have to say I was just blown away by what Nick was saying, because this is not celebrity phone hacking, this is not the News of the World working with underground PRs. This is operating at the heart of politics and business, and showing how, it appears, got to be a bit careful here, but News International employing private detectives to listen in or contact politicians who were involved, or could be useful, when it came to the bid to take over full control at BSkyB. And this was a deal, I know, that News International and Mr. Murdoch's company, Rupert Murdoch's company, were desperate to complete, and they put tremendous pressure on the government. But what we didn't know is this level of, what? Frankly, corporate espionage.
Alan:
I think it's confirmed what we have always known about Rupert Murdoch, that he's interested in the power of being a publisher, he's interested in the power he has over politicians when it comes to the deals that he wants. So, his business interests are crucial there. But this is, I think, the curtain being drawn back on how the relationship between the newspapers, how he can use his tabloids, he can involve private investigators and criminal methods in order to get the dirt on people, in order, as you say, to spy on people who are involved in the deals. And it's a bit like the Fox dominion story, it's a very ugly picture of what the Murdoch organisation does, and how they really don't care what people do, in terms of the law, in terms of policing, in terms of scrutiny from other media. They feel they're above it all, and they feel that they're above it all even after the revelations that led to the Leveson Inquiry.
Lionel:
And indeed, Alan, again, took my breath away, the phone hacking was going on during the Leveson Inquiry.
Alan:
Going on during the Leveson Inquiry. They were bugging the lawyers who were suing them, they were bugging the politicians who were sitting in on the select committees that were interrogating them. They didn't care. It's a very stark picture of the monopoly power of Rupert Murdoch, and the way that he uses it. And when we come to talk about the Telegraph and why plurality in the media matters, you can't allow the buildup of these huge forms of power, these huge blocks of power in the media, because you can see what happens, everyone just gets frightened. They get frightened, they're too frightened. I saw it when we were reporting that story, the police were too frightened to do a proper investigation, the rest of the media were too frightened to report it, the politicians were too frightened to intervene, and the regulator was too frightened to do anything about it. If that's not the biggest threat to democracy that you can have, I don't know what is.
Lionel:
The good news is, though, slowly but surely, the full truth is coming out through these court cases. The claims are being settled out of court, but the details are seeping out, and now we are seeing the bigger picture. The full picture.
Alan:
Yeah, it's an alliance between the reporting and the court cases. It was Nick's reporting that set this all off, which was one of the most remarkable pieces of reporting. It was my privilege to be associated with. And then the law takes over. I'm slightly disappointed, I have to say, in the reporting of the ongoing cases in [inaudible 00:31:39]. It's like the media's got bored of phone hacking and things, "Oh, we're bored with that." And they can't see the importance of the developments this week.
Lionel:
Next on Media Confidential, we'll hear from Pat Younge on the future funding of the BBC.
Alan:
Check out the current edition of the magazine and the Prospect Podcast that's out now. Samuel Moyn is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. And in the podcast, he discusses the article he wrote for the cover of Prospect magazine this month, focusing on the way that Joe Biden's foreign policy in the Middle East is flawed.
Samuel Moyn:
Our leaders, Joseph Biden, in my case, leading all the leaders, tried, if you like, to get a kind of Cold War band back together again. They framed the conflict in the Middle East around the defence of freedom in the face of barbarity and evil. And the point of the piece is to say actually, that manoeuvre worked in Ukraine, at least for a while, maybe because the framework fit the facts better. But as the events in Israel-Palestine unfolded, very quickly, it became hard for Biden and others to sort of sustain the idea that just moral clarity is all that's required to think through the situation. And the results, I think, have involved a lot of pushback to these leaders, because ordinary people, especially young people, reject the idea that the defence of freedom is what's really at stake in our policy towards this new bloodshed.
Alan:
To hear the full interview, download this week's episode of the Prospect Podcast, and subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts, so that you don't miss an episode.
Lionel:
This is Media Confidential, with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber.
Alan:
The issue of funding the BBC is back in the headlines, with the culture secretary saying that the projected licence fee rise of 14.30 pounds is too high. Lucy Frazer says she's concerned about cost of living pressures on people.
Lionel:
The licence fee has been frozen at 159 pounds for two years, but is due to increase in April in line with inflation. That is what had been agreed between the government and the BBC.
Alan:
But Ms. Frazer says she's considering using a different measure of inflation to calculate any increase, perhaps September's consumer price index, CPI, rate instead, which was 6.7 percent, which will see the licence fee rise by 10.65 pounds to 169.65 per year. So now we welcome Pat Younge, a TV executive consultant, non-executive director for ITV Studios, formerly Chief Creative Officer for BBC television production. Welcome to Media Confidential.
Pat Younge:
Thank you for having me.
Alan:
We're going to talk about future funding models and cuts to Newsnight in a moment. But first, on this issue of the licence fee rise, what was your reaction when you heard this, and were you expecting it?
Pat:
I'd heard scuttle, but I was hoping that it was untrue, because the government signed a deal. Nadine Dorries made a great deal about the deal.
Alan:
Just to remind us what the deal was?
Pat:
So, the deal that Nadine Dorries announced was a two-year licence fee freeze, followed by inflation for the next four years. It's not a great deal for the BBC, because two years at zero increase was not great, but at least they had certainty, they could plan. And also, the reason we have these long-term deals is it takes the licence fee negotiation out of the day-to-day battle of politics. It's a long-term deal. So, the BBC have gone through the two years of pain, and coming out of that we have regional radio, I don't think you can call it local radio anymore. We've just seen the cuts to Newsnight, we know there are more cuts to come. They've cut the number of hours of television that they're commissioning. And they're also dealing with a war in the Middle East, which certainly wasn't in the business plan. So, the BBC have gone through the pain, and now they're meant to get inflation.
And suddenly, the government want to reopen the deal. Well, not even reopen the deal, they just don't want to honour the deal that they've entered into. And I just think it's not great for British politics that we have a government that freely enters into a deal, and then unilaterally tries to step out of it. It's also not great for the independence of the BBC, and whilst 9 per cent increase in the licence fee may sound like a very significant number, the licence fee is so low, relatively speaking, we're talking about 15 pounds over the course of a year. 1.50 pound per month is the increase, which I think... I come from working class, single parent, free school meals household. 1.50 pound a month, I think most families can manage. But compared to the damage that cumulatively does to the BBC, it's significant. So, I'd like to say I was surprised, but I'm more disappointed than I am surprised, because I thought a deal was a deal, and I think they should honour it.
Alan:
Pat, when you read the right wing editorials, they give a very different impression. They give the impression of a BBC that is bloated, that is out of control, that has forgotten what it's like to be competitive. Why do you think they're wrong on that?
Pat:
They're wrong on that because, first of all, if I look at the price of the Daily Telegraph, for example, one of the BBC's most trenching critics, price of the Daily Telegraph has gone up 200 per cent since 2010. It was 1 pound, I think it's now 3 pounds. The licence fee has gone up from 145 pounds to 159 pounds. If the licence fee had just kept pace with inflation, today, it would be worth 230 pounds. So, the BBC has already had significant cash and real-term cuts to its budget.
And despite that, not only is it continuing to deliver quality content, we've also moved into an era where we have tech platforms owned by American billionaires, which are also seeing themselves as news platforms. We have a British press, which is almost now entirely owned by people who don't live in the UK. News International is owned by an American Australian, the FT is owned by the Japanese, and the Telegraph's about to be owned by the Qataris. None of our major... The non-BBC broadcasters; Sky is owned by Comcast, ITV's biggest shareholder's an American, Channel 5 is owned by the Americans. So, who actually owns the platforms that give us the news that we rely on, in an age when I think we can all see that news and information is the new frontline of how war is conducted? The war for information, misinformation, disinformation is really real.
So, to have a BBC that's so enfeebled that it can't deliver on that front is not just an issue of broadcasting policy, it's almost an issue of national infrastructure. Do we want to live in a world where we're reliant on everybody else for where we get our news and current affairs from?
Lionel:
Pat, I just want to say, although I don't work for the FT anymore, the Japanese may own the FT, but they have no influence over what is actually reported on. So, I wouldn't put us totally in a separate camp. But I wanted to ask you about value for money. The BBC's budget is several billion pounds, and yet, many people feel, and we'll talk about news in a minute, but overall, the creativity, and the range of drama and more, is not what it was 20 years ago. Do you agree with that?
Pat:
No, I would disagree. Look, those people come from many different perspectives. You just had Happy Valley on the BBC. Look at the programmes which win the awards. I actually was at the BBC when the BBC was the co-production partner for Game of Thrones. It was going to be a BBC/HBO co-production. But when the cost per hour went above, I think, 3 or 4 million pounds an hour, Jana Bennett said, "I can no longer justify spending public money at this scale on this sort of content." So, the BBC has always had to work within the confines of its funding model, even though these big, signature dramas, the Successions or whatever, cost many millions of pounds now, more than the BBC's ever going to be able to pay.
But I think the BBC stands for quality, still, in current affairs. I think it stands for quality in drama. Beyond Strictly, I think the entertainment slate has got some questions to ask. I, for one, am not happy that the BBC has put money to buy a format like Survivor or Gladiators. I'd much rather see the BBC taking a chance on new, fresh, UK formats with UK producers, and try to do something different, as opposed to just picking up a format that works.
So, I'm not saying that they don't make mistakes and missteps. Look how little live sport we have on the BBC now, because it's all disappeared behind the paywall. And then everybody says, "Oh, why does nobody play cricket? Why are the numbers playing rugby dropped off?" Well, people can't see it. And if people can't see it, then it falls out of their... And look what's happened to women's football since it's been on the BBC. Taken off, exploded. Sure, the success of the team, but it's also about visibility. So, when I read that the Six Nations may disappear entirely from the BBC, that's all about funding, because there's no other reason than the BBC not doing that than they don't have the money. So, if you want a good BBC, you have to pay for it.
Lionel:
Pat, I miss Bill McLaren too. But you make a very serious point about big sporting occasions, national occasions, which have disappeared from the BBC screen. I want to talk to you about this, the licence fee in general, and it's become increasingly fraught, the negotiation, and, as you say, there isn't any other way to look at it, that the government has actually walked away from the deal it struck. So, it seems to me, if you were in Tim Davie's shoes and Samir Shah, the new chair, you'd surely be thinking hard about an alternative approach which, perhaps, involves subscriptions. What do you think?
Pat:
So, I just want to pick up on the previous point you talked about, big sporting events and national conversations and national moments, because I think it extends beyond sport, and the Jubilee, and the royal funeral. I spend a lot of time in America, and what's clear about America is where you have fragmented broadcasting, where you have fragmented news in particular, you do get alternative facts and alternative truths, and you do get a breakdown in social cohesion. And the BBC, along with the broader public service ecosystem we have here, we had many issues with Brexit and whatever, we don't have the collapse in social cohesion that you're seeing in some of these other countries. And I do attribute that to the BBC and the PSBs creating a common, shared space, with at least some guardrails and some common values about the information that we're getting.
When it comes to the question about the future of the licence fee, when Nadine Dorries announced this deal, the thing that she said is we will also start a review of what the mechanisms are for, in her view, replacing the licence fee. But let's say alternatives to the licence fee. Now, I haven't seen anything about that review. Unlike Peacock and others, there've been no public hearings that I've been aware of. The way this government works, I wouldn't be surprised if we're just going to get something announced, a bit like the Rwanda deal, that somebody's worked out on the back of an envelope, and it's just going to be presented to the House.
But where has the public consultation, discussion been about what do we replace the licence fee with? Because we all know the other models, the German household model, or some form of subscription, or even, as Alan did at the Guardian, you have a licence fee and you invite people to just donate. But there's been no discussion. I haven't been invited to a single... I don't think any of you have been invited to a single session on "How should we fund?"
Alan:
We do know that Oliver Dowden, when he was culture secretary, set up a group of grandees to advise him.
Pat:
He had a secret panel.
Alan:
And I tried to FOI that, and I was knocked back and told that it was none of my business.
Pat:
Yeah, we tried to FOI it as well. But all I'm saying is that the licence fee may have had its day, may have. And the reason I say may have is that income inequality in this country is now so great that a universal fee may not hold. But you have to think about what you put in its place, because the one thing about the licence fee is it was universal, and everybody paid, and everybody got something, and everybody owns it. One of the reasons debates about the BBC are all so hot is because everybody feels they own the BBC, and they do, if they're a UK licence fee payer.
So, I would like to see a system which is progressive, but which remained universal. Personally, I wouldn't like to see it tied to the tax system, because it gives the chancellor too much sway in the system. So I don't know what the alternative is, but I'm more than happy to join in the conversation. But I do think, going forward, the principle has to be more universal. But as regards to this deal now, when Dorries announced the two-year freeze and the four years with inflation, it was alongside a review of the licence fee. So, they can't use the future of the licence fee to justify breaking the deal that they struck two years ago. That doesn't work. This was all part of one deal.
Lionel:
But Pat, to be clear, you don't think that it's a good idea for Tim Davie, as director general, or the new chair to put something themselves on the table?
Pat:
No, I don't. Because you need time to work through what these things are. I think what the new chair, and let's hope it's Samir, should say is honour the deal, because this is going to be a fundamental challenge to the independence of the BBC. And he's never more powerful than on day one. So on day one, he should say honour the deal, and then let's use the time that was in the deal to talk about the alternatives. That's what he should do, in my humble opinion.
Alan:
You must know Samir, Pat. Is he tough enough for this job? We don't know that he's been tested in this kind of brutal role that he's taking over.
Pat:
Well, he was the head of BBC Current Affairs, which normally means you take quite a lot of incoming flack. So, he's probably quite battle-hardened. I actually met Richard Sharp, and personally I found him engaged, and I found him supportive, and actually I thought that he wanted to do the right thing. Unfortunately for him, all this other stuff got in the way. And if he'd only declared it, he'd probably still be there. As for Samir, look, he's a journalist, right? So the one thing that Tim doesn't have is journalism. So it means somewhere at the top of the BBC, we do actually have, now, a journalistic instinct as part of those decisions. He's a nonpartisan, he's been a producer, he's been on the board of the BBC before, he's run an independent production company, he's a proper journalist. So, he's got a good rounded sense of everything. He's also been very involved in the diversity debate.
So I think it is bizarre, I've seen Andrew Neil welcome it, and I've seen people on the left welcome it. And in an age of very politicised appointments to these public roles, I think this is potentially a breath of fresh air, so I wish him well. But, a bit like Obama really, you have to judge him on what he does. And this is going to be the first thing in his inbox, and my personal advice to him would be honour the deal. That was the deal they entered into: honour the deal.
Alan:
You've warned that the effects, if this deal is not honoured, the effects would be catastrophic. What do you think that could look like, in terms of, particularly, of news and current affairs?
Pat:
I think we're seeing it already. I am really disappointed about the changes made to local radio and local services, because Netflix isn't going to provide them, nor is Amazon, nor is Apple. And especially for older audiences, they're a key part of staying in touch with what's going on, and it's an area where local newspapers are failing. So, I'm disappointed. But when you've got the level of cuts that BBC's had to make, I think in real terms its income is down now 37 to 40 per cent since 2010, then you're not cutting flesh, you're cutting bone.
Newsnight is going to be turned into late-night discussion programmes. On the one hand, the space that Newsnight used to occupy, 10:30, immediately after a parliamentary vote, first place to unpick what happened at the Commons or whatever, it was well positioned. Now, not only does Parliament not seem to sit all that often, and when it does, it doesn't seem to vote very often, but also we're getting the news instantaneously, we're getting it on various other platforms as other... So, do we need more talk, even BBC talk? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that it's the answer to the question. What we actually need is more original journalism. What we actually need is more people trying to find out stuff that other people don't want us to know. What we need is people following up on Nadine Dorries' exclusive that you've been following up on that someone tried to cook the head of Ofcom.
Alan:
I'm not getting very far with that.
Lionel:
Attaboy, Pat, attaboy!
Pat:
No, no!
Lionel:
Keep him encouraged!
Pat:
But this is really important stuff!
Lionel:
It is.
Pat:
I was in a meeting yesterday, I won't say where it was, but it was a meeting about mental health. And somebody saying, "Look, here are all the issues that are feeding into the mental health crisis we got today. We have warfare, we've got mis- and disinformation, we've got a cost of living crisis, we've got pandemics, we've got high levels of unemployment, we've got concerns about immigration. And it's leading into two things. One is a lack of trust in institutions, and the second one is a feeling of hopelessness." And I think one of the things that's happened over the last 10 years, and in the last five years especially, is our institutions have been hollowed out. The appointments to them, the people that run them, they've been treated like campaign objects, rather than institutions that actually have value in their own right. And I think we're seeing some of the effects of that.
The BBC is one of the last great institutions that we have. If you look at the cesspit that is now Twitter or X or whatever it calls itself, and you look how that is so easy to manipulate with misinformation and disinformation, the only organisation in the UK that has any chance of providing a real alternative to that is the BBC, with all its faults. And so, like most things, you don't realise what you've got until it's gone. And I think this decision isn't just about the money, it's also about the independence, and it's about honouring commitments, and that's why it's so important.
Lionel:
Pat, where do you think Labour is on this position, and on the BBC in general? And we know that once they get into government there will be friction, there always is. But where do you think they are on the licence fee and, in general, their attitude to the BBC?
Pat:
I think they think it's a good thing. I don't think they have the instinctive animus that some Tories have towards it. I think, like universities, like many other things which are really important, it'll be quite low down their list of things to engage with, because there's so many other crises in all sorts of other places. At the very least, if they said "Now we would honour the deal, it's 1.50 pound per month, we think it's worth it." That would help. But it's a game, isn't it? It's a sort of gotcha game. So the Tories say, "Well, we're going to go to Rwanda, you're going to rip that up. So we're going to restrain the licence fee. Are you going to let it rip?" There's a childish political game, playground game going on there, and Starmer is very cautious. But I would hope that, at the very least, they honour the deal that was struck, which gives them all four years, in an imperfect window, to try and work out what to do next.
Alan:
Final question from me, Pat, is how could, in your thinking about the BBC and its future, how could it insulate itself from the kind of government interference that it's had, certainly from the Conservatives, but also, to be fair, from Labour in the last government? Is there a form of mutualisation, or is there a different kind of constitutional arrangement where the BBC, while not being completely unaccountable, could be more arm's length from government?
Pat:
So, I chair a pressure group called the British Broadcasting Challenge, which campaigns for public service broadcasting. We think it's a good thing, we think it's a valuable public good. We published a paper on the future of the BBC, which is on our website, and that says that we want to, first of all, separate the appointment of the chair from the political process, and throughout the appointment of the board, we should have a genuinely open public appointment process without... Because if it's going to be Samir, well, it's Rishi's choice. That immediately adds something to this game that is, I think, unhelpful. So, we'd like to see the appointment of the chair and the board taken out of the party political process, and handled by a genuinely public appointments process.
We also think the funding decision and the funding arrangement should be taken out of party politics with a funding body, which determines how the BBC should be funded. I don't know where that sits, I wouldn't necessarily put it in Ofcom, if they're regulating the BBC, but we believe there should be an independent funding body that decides how the BBC is funded, with a separate process for appointing the panel.
The final thing is we want to see, promote, encourage more public participation in the big decisions that the BBC takes. So the decision to, in my view, decimate local radio was taken without any public consultation meetings that most of us were aware of. So, the use of people's juries and other democratic forms to at least get some external input into those decisions, we also think would be valuable.
Lionel:
Well, Alan, Pat Younge was certainly eloquent and forceful in his defence of the BBC, and he gave some serious advice, I think, to Tim Davie, and to the new chairman, Samir Shah; stand up to the government, don't accept this forced redrawing of the original agreement. My only comment would be, I think, Tim Davie and his top team do need to do some serious planning about what comes after the licence fee, and not just stay on the back foot, waiting for this government or the next to come up with a new formula.
Alan:
I agree. I thought there was an eloquent defence of the BBC, and really portrayed as part of the national infrastructure, that was really important. But I hope Thangam Debbonaire, who's the shadow culture secretary, who's likely to be in the hot chair in any Starmer government, was listening today. If not, we'll send her the link, because it's time that Labour think about the BBC and how to protect it. I'm sure Labour realises it, but any Labour government lives in a hostile environment in this country, because most of the press is tilted to the right. And actually the BBC, because it's impartial, it's even more important to Labour than to the Conservatives, because it's duty-bound to give them a fair crack of the whip. So, if Labour can't see the importance of the BBC, then they're not paying attention.
If you've got any questions for us about the media, email them to mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk, and we'll answer a few of them in a future episode.
Lionel:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect magazine and Fresh Air.
Alan:
Remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
Lionel:
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Alan:
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