Hall: BBC needs wider diversity of opinion
Outgoing director-general says corporation must move to regions to reflect more views
THE BBC must embark on a “big push” to move the majority of its staff outside London to improve diversity of opinion in the corporation, the outgoing director-general has said.
Lord Hall of Birkenhead told The Daily Telegraph he believed 70 per cent of the BBC’S personnel and budget should be placed in the regions to reflect better the views of the licence feepayers who fund it.
He insisted the BBC was not “the woke corporation” after a decision not to sing Rule, Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms led to accusations that it was out of touch with its audience.
Lord Hall said he and his successor, Tim Davie, had jointly approved the move to play orchestral versions of the two audience favourites, which he insisted was “the right creative decision”.
And he insisted the BBC must not “pander” to any particular group but instead be the “calm centre” in any stormy situation that arises.
Lord Hall said the way to ensure the BBC best reflected the views of its audience was to base more staff and activity outside London to get away from a “metro elite” and attract people from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds.
He said: “You don’t want people who all think alike. So you need diverse voices around the table; that could be diverse because you’ve got black, Asian, minority voices around the table – that’s important. I’ve got a thing myself about social diversity.
“And the second thing I think is really important is that we can and should be more out of London. We’re 50 per cent in London, and 50 per cent out of London – spend and people. I think we can do much better than that. I think we can get to 70 per cent out of London.”
Some of those people would be likely to work from home in the long term, he implied, saying: “What we’ve learnt from Covid is that you don’t need as many buildings as you think, therefore you can be more diverse in where you centre people.
“I think we can do a big push to get more out of London, and that changes the dynamic of the discussions you have and therefore – I hate using the word relevance, but I will do – your relevance to the people that are paying for you.”
He added: “Our job is not to take sides. We should not pander to any particular group; we should be giving everybody, whoever they are, something. We should try to be the calm centre in what is a very stormy situation.”
The Proms row has overshadowed the final days of Lord Hall’s seven-year tenure, which comes to an end next week as he prepares for a new role as chairman of the board of trustees of the National Gallery.
Boris Johnson accused the corporation of “wetness” and said it was “time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history” after critics said Rule, Britannia’s lyric about Britons never being slaves was inappropriate in the era of Black Lives Matter.
Lord Hall said the debate showed “that what the BBC does matters”. He said the decision not to sing Rule, Britannia or Land of Hope and Glory was taken because “when you haven’t got an audience ... it’s going to feel very, very flat”. However, if the Covid pandemic is over by next summer, he predicted a return to flag-waving audiences in the Royal Albert Hall.
After seven-and-a-half years as director-general of the BBC – a job he formally relinquishes next week to take up his new post as chairman of the board of trustees at the National Gallery – I put it to Lord Hall that he might have wished for a quieter departure. He looks momentarily at a loss. “Ah!” The penny drops. “Oh, you mean the Last Night of the Proms...”
Well, yes. There is to be no singing of Land of Hope and Glory or Rule, Britannia. No utterance of “Britons never shall be slaves”, nor “haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame”. A great British institution is being traduced. The public are up in arms. The Prime Minister has accused the BBC of being wet. Yet more evidence of how middle England is being betrayed by the “woke” BBC.
Lord Hall, a man of considerable emollience, considers this. “This may sound odd, but I really mean it – what this whole debate says is that what the BBC does matters, and to all sorts of different people. And whatever decisions you make, it’s when people take no notice of what you’re doing that you’ve got a problem.”
Seated in a conference room at the National Gallery, dressed, as he always is, in a blue suit, white shirt, blue tie, Hall embarks on a lengthy explanation of what happened this week.
As a result of the Covid crisis, it was initially thought the entire Proms season would need to be cancelled. But in discussions between Hall, David Pickard, director of the BBC Proms, and Alan Davey, controller of Radio 3, it was decided that the last two weeks could include live music, but not to a live audience. Their “artistic judgment” was that without a live audience singing along, having a soloist just wouldn’t be the same. “And that, I think, is the right creative decision.”
The story, reported in the press, that the lyrics had been dropped at the suggestion of Finnish conductor, Dalia Stasevska – reportedly a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement – that “change was needed,” is not true, Hall says. “To be absolutely clear, the decision was taken by the Proms team and not her. Collectively we made a decision. I have talked to Dalia and made it clear that that is the position, and also to offer her support, because she has been getting horrible abuse.
“I really understand people’s frustrations about this, I really do. I’m not sitting on a cloud somewhere. But we’re in the middle of a pandemic. It can’t be a Last Night of the Proms as we know it – it just can’t be.”
Hall has been to more last nights than he can remember, joined in with the singing and waved the Union flag with gusto. “And I love it. It’s a celebration in a particularly British way of amazing music making and the importance of the Proms.
“I get – and the BBC needs to get – the importance of these things. The BBC is a national institution, and I take pride in that fact, and I think institutions really matter to the UK, and it really matters that those institutions are there for everybody. It’s not just for a section of people, or a metro elite.”
Covid permitting, he says, the audience will be back in the Royal Albert Hall next year – and the songs shall be sung. “The sooner we can get everybody back with the flags and that sense of jubilation, the better.”
I suggest the way this escalated into a row only serves to reinforce the growing perception among many people of the BBC having gone irredeemably “woke”. Hall looks pained.
“Number one, we’re not the woke corporation. That’s not a description I recognise at all. What I do recognise is that the BBC is at the fulcrum of the big societal changes of a more polarised polity; of people disputing just about everything about the way we run our lives. And our job is not to take sides. We should not pander to any particular group; we should be giving everybody, whoever they are, something. We should try to be the calm centre in what is a very stormy situation that we find ourselves in.”
There is, he says, “a misconception” that everyone who works for the BBC “is of the Left. That’s not true, otherwise, the BBC wouldn’t have supplied so many communication directors to Downing Street.
“The notion that there is some kind of politburo saying ‘this is our view’ is nonsensical. I’ve never known an organisation argue so much within itself about whether we’re getting it right or not.
“What people who work at the BBC must do is leave their politics at the door – they can of course find it again on the way out. But diverse political views, diversity of opinion, really matters, and that could be diverse because you’ve got black, Asian, minority voices around the table – that’s important.’
It is the job of the BBC, he goes on, “to bring the country together”, and Hall feels particularly strongly about social diversity. The son of a Birkenhead bank manager, he was educated at two direct grant schools, and it was a council grant that enabled him to go to Oxford.
“I know how lucky I am. And I think that sense of social diversity and whether we are reaching out to all people is really important.
“I think we can do a big push to get more out of London. At the moment, in terms of staff and spending, we’re 50 per cent in London and 50 per cent out of London. I think we can do much better than that. I think we can get to 70 per cent out of London, and that changes the dynamic of the discussions you have and therefore – I hate using the word relevance, but I will do – your relevance to the people that are paying for you.”
As an example, Hall cites the BBC’S support when, in 2017, Hull was named City of Culture, getting the city marked on the weather map. “A small thing, but it was a matter of pride to people in Hull.” He smiles. “We’re on the weather map!”
He has taken giant strides to increase the BBC’S presence on the global map, too. The corporation is on target to fulfil Hall’s plan of reaching an audience of half a billion outside the UK by 2020. (It is presently
486 million.) This is particularly important, Hall says, in Africa and Asia, where the main competitors are Russia Today and China’s state broadcasting organisation, CCTV. “In terms of global soft power, which I believe in, I think we can really do something, and I know the Prime Minister is interested in this, and I hope that the Government recognises this and invest more.”
Wherever Hall goes in the world, he says, people tell him, “We’d like a BBC”. And the Covid crisis, he believes, confirmed just how central the corporation is to Britain: “94 per cent of the population used the BBC each week. People came to the news
‘The sooner we can get everybody back with the flags, the better’
operation in their droves looking for news and an understanding of what was going on.”
Looking back at his years in office, the “hard stuff ”, as he puts it, “and it has been hard”, was the decision to scrap free TV licences for up to 3.7million people over the age of 75, and reforming the BBC to make it “fair for all”. He is talking about the gender pay gap.
“It had to be done,” he says. But surely it was the delay in doing it that was the problem?
“Well, we were dealing with the problems of a generation. And that’s tough. But we published our data on the gender pay gap before anyone else. And it was the smallest [gap] in the sector, yet still we got into great storms about it.”
And the licence fee? Speaking to the BBC’S Media Show earlier this week, Hall admitted that he considered resigning over the “nuclear” issue of being forced to choose between charging the fee and making huge
cuts. “But I though, you’ve got to get in there and try to stop this or ameliorate what they are proposing to do.”
So does he now regret his decision?
“I don’t tend to talk about regrets, but let’s put it like this, it was the Government who took the decision to take away the money. Not the BBC’S.”
It must be a relief, I suggest, for him to be finally leaving an organisation where he has been kicked from all sides for the past seven years.
Hall laughs. “A friend of mine pointed out that director-generals don’t normally leave of their own volition, so that’s an achievement in its own right.”
He pauses. “This may sound really weird, but I’ve enjoyed it. The price of taking the licence fee from everybody is that you’re owned by everybody. And the fact that the judgments you make are open to debate and discussion is part of the job. It also tells you how much the BBC matters to people.”
Hall has another meeting, and the interview is over. He leads the way along the corridor and through a door into the Gallery itself. It has been open to the public, in limited numbers, since July 8, and a sparse number of visitors – masks mandatory – are enjoying the luxury of having the nation’s finest collection of art work almost to themselves.
He says that what he wants to do in his new role, which is unpaid, is encourage more “home-grown audiences” – he laughs and corrects himself, “visitors” – to the gallery and help to develop the digital and education side.
The place and role of major cultural institutions has been further brought into sharp focus this week by the British Museum removing the statue of Sir Hans Sloane from his pedestal. Hall says he cannot foresee the National Gallery facing a dilemma like that.
I ask whether, like the British Library, there will be a suggestion that staff should donate to Black Lives Matter and pledge support for Diane Abbott’s petition to Stand Up To Racism.
Behind his mask, Hall raises his eyebrows in what I take to be a wry smile, and gazes around him.
“It really is beautiful here, isn’t it?” he says.
‘The price of taking the licence fee from everybody is you’re owned by everybody’