Corbyn declares class war on BBC
He wants all staff to reveal just how privileged they are in an oh-so-PC overhaul
THE BBC would be forced to publish ‘equality data’ on the social class of everyone who works for it under plans to be set out by Jeremy Corbyn today.
The Labour leader will call for ‘complete transparency’ on the corporation’s workforce in an attempt to boost ‘diversity’.
He will also suggest putting the BBC’s board appointments to a public vote and demand that it sever all ties with government to make it ‘freer’.
And under radical plans on BBC funding, Mr Corbyn will say that he would make technology giants such as Amazon and Netflix hand over a slice of their cash to pay for its programmes.
He is expected to set out his plans at the Edinburgh Television Festival in a speech that would in effect be part of his manifesto if he gets into power.
He will also take a swipe at the media in the wake of the anti- Semitism row engulfing Labour by urging journalists to break free of ‘unaccountable billionaires’ who ‘control huge swathes of our public space and debate’.
Damian Collins, chairman of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport select committee, questioned the timing of Mr Corbyn’s attack.
‘It is always highly questionable when senior politicians who are being investigated by media start complaining about the way the media is being run,’ he said.
He warned the Labour leader’s proposals for the BBC could ‘ politicise’ the broadcaster and plunge it into ‘class warfare’.
Under Mr Corbyn’s proposals, the BBC would be forced to publish the social class, ethnic origin and other details about everyone who contributes to its programmes, whether they work for the corporation directly or for one of its suppliers.
A new independent body would set the TV licence fee, rather than the Government, and it would be slashed for the poor. The BBC would also have many more directors, including a minimum number of women and ethnic minorities.
In his speech today, Mr Corbyn – who grew up in a seven-bedroom manor house in Shropshire – will praise the BBC as a ‘great institution’ but insist it should be ‘democratised’ so it is ‘more representative of the country it serves’.
‘If we want an independent BBC, we should consider setting it free by placing it on a permanent statutory footing, with a new independent body setting the licence fee,’ he will say.
He will also argue that ‘we should consider whether a digital licence fee could be a fairer and more effective way to fund the BBC’.
He will tell the conference: ‘A digital licence fee, supplementing the existing licence fee, collected from tech giants and internet service providers… could allow a democratised and more plural BBC to compete far more effectively with the private multinational digital giants like Netflix, Amazon, Google and Facebook.
‘This could also help reduce the cost of the licence fee for poorer households.’
Mr Corbyn will also lay out plans for a shake-up of the wider media, which he believes is ‘failing’. He will call for a second tax on technology companies to pay for public interest journalism. Journalists and media workers need to be ‘set free to do their best work, not held back by media bosses, billionaires or the state’, he will say.
Mr Corbyn has come under mounting scrutiny from the Press in recent weeks.
The Mail exposed how he laid a wreath in a Tunis cemetery where the ringleaders of the 1972 Munich Olympics terror massacre are buried. This newspaper also revealed this week that he had welcomed Hamas- linked extremists to Parliament.
His critique of the media comes at a time when he has been accused of letting anti-Semitism run rife in the Labour Party.
He has been rounded on by his own MPs, with Dame Margaret Hodge telling him that ‘for Jewish people to vote Labour was becoming exceedingly tough’.
Mr Collins described the Labour leader’s proposals as ‘a sort of finger pointing, putting class warfare into the organisation which I don’t think would help anyone’.
The BBC is also likely to object to being forced to reveal class details of all of its contributors.
It currently publishes information about its own employees including what percentage went to private school, whether their parents worked in professional jobs and whether they were degree educated. But it routinely resists forcing its suppliers to make the same level of disclosure. The
‘A sort of finger pointing’ ‘Skewed towards privilege’
broadcaster declined to comment on the proposals yesterday.
The pressure from Mr Corbyn comes as new research by Dr Sam Friedman, of the London School of Economics, said staffing in the TV sector is ‘ highly skewed towards privilege’.
Mr Corbyn yesterday refused six times to answer a question about whether Britain would be better off out of the EU. It came during his tour of Scotland when Channel 4 News was permitted to ask one question of the Labour leader, but he repeatedly failed to give a direct response.