TORIES GO TO WAR WITH BBC OVER CUTS
No10 fury after reporter says Osborne’s cuts risk returning Britain to 1930s poverty
OPEN warfare broke out between Tory ministers and the BBC last night over its doomladen coverage of spending cuts. George Osborne was angered by a report on Radio 4’s Today programme which said austerity was ‘utterly terrifying’.
It claimed the cuts risked taking Britain back to the sort of Depression- era poverty George Orwell wrote about in his 1937 book The Road To Wigan Pier. The Chancellor went on the attack during an interview on the same programme, saying the BBC’s coverage of cuts was ‘hyperbolic’ and ‘nonsense’.
Later, David Cameron’s official spokesman agreed, saying that the report had been full of ‘hyperbolic descriptions’ when what was needed was a ‘measured debate’.
Tory MPs also attacked the programme’s ‘disgusting and offensive’ reporting. The row highlights concerns among many Conservatives that there is bias against the party among senior BBC figures.
Ministers have made a series of complaints about its coverage of welfare reforms since the Coalition
was formed in 2010. They feel that BBC broadcasters are also often unduly negative about the performance of the economy.
Last night a source close to Iain Duncan Smith said the latest row was ‘classic BBC to take such a relentlessly negative line of questioning’. Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps added: ‘With an election approaching, it is vitally important that the BBC adheres to the highest standard of editorial impartiality.’
Fellow Tory MP Andrew Percy said of the comparison with The Road to Wigan Pier: ‘How can it be appropriate to compare 2014 to the 1930s when there was no NHS, no socialised housing and no welfare state? You had levels of poverty in the 1930s which we will never see again. To compare then with now is distasteful. This is yet another example of Left-wing bias at the BBC.’
Another Tory, Andrew Rosindell, said: ‘The BBC must present an accurate picture and should not be doom and gloom merchants.’
Mr Osborne was left fuming over comments made by BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith.
In a brief report broadcast on Today soon after the 6am news bulletin yesterday, Smith suggested that Mr Osborne was returning Britain to Road to Wigan Pierstyle poverty and social injustice.
Smith described the supporting documents to the Autumn Statement, which was delivered by the Chancellor on Wednesday, as a ‘book of doom’. And he described as ‘utterly terrifying’ the way public spending would have to be ‘hacked back’ to 1930s levels. He went on: ‘You are back to the land of The Road to Wigan Pier.’
Smith also suggested the Chancellor was apeing Gordon Brown by using positive growth forecasts as a fig leaf to cover the ‘embarrassment’ of the poor state of the economy. He said: ‘ When you sit down and read the Office of Budget Responsibility report, it reads frankly like a book of doom. It is utterly terrifying.’
In a tetchy interview with Today presenter John Humphrys two hours later, Mr Osborne said he had heard Smith’s comments and it had been like ‘listening to a rewind of 2010’, when there were many apocalyptic predictions of the impact of austerity.
‘You had BBC correspondents saying Britain is returning to a George Orwell world of The Road to Wigan Pier,’ Mr Osborne said. ‘It is just such nonsense. I thought the BBC would have learnt over the past four years
‘What we need is measured debate’
that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened.
‘I had all that when you were interviewing me four years ago and has the world fallen in? No, it hasn’t. Government departments are going to have to make savings. On the welfare bill, we are going to have to do things like freeze working-age benefits.
‘I’m not pretending these are easy decisions or that they have no impact. But the alternative of a return to economic chaos, of not getting on top of your debts, of people looking at Britain across the world and thinking that is not a country in charge of its own destiny, is not a world that I want to deliver.’
Mr Cameron then waded into the row. His spokesman said: ‘Characterisations of the Autumn Statement such as a “book of doom” or “The Road to Wigan Pier” are hyperbolic descriptions that do not help us.’
The BBC said: ‘We’re satisfied our coverage has been fair and balanced and we gave the Chancellor plenty of opportunity to respond.’
It is not the first time Smith has been savaged by the Tories.
Two years ago he was involved in a row outside Downing Street with Craig Oliver, the Prime Minister’s director of communications.
Mr Oliver attacked Smith for his ‘partial’ coverage of a row involving Jeremy Hunt, then Culture Secretary, and his handling of Rupert Murdoch’s
When you sit down and read the Office of Budget Responsibility report it reads frankly like a book of doom. ‘It is utterly terrifying. It is suggesting that spending will have to be hacked back to the levels of the 1930s in terms of as a proportion of GDP. ‘That is an extraordinary concept. You are back to the land of The Road To Wigan Pier. We are facing an extraordinary cavernous financial hole which to some extent yesterday’s razzmatazz around the politically popular budget rather glossed over.
NORMAN SMITH, BBC ASSISTANT POLITICAL EDITOR ON TODAY PROGRAMME
bid to buy BSkyB. On Wednesday, Newsnight broadcast bleak blackand-white footage of rioting workers over a commentary by presenter Evan Davis, who said: ‘You have to go back to the Depression of the 1930s to find a crisis comparable to the one we are in – it is one of those once-ina-lifetime experiences.’
Conor Burns, a member of the culture, media and sport committee, told the Daily Telegraph it was ‘absurd’ for Newsnight to suggest ‘either political party will be intent on taking Britain back to a pre-welfare state, pre-health service Britain’.