Dimbleby: BBC wandered from path of public opinion

THE BBC has ‘wandered from the path’ of public opinion on issues such as immigration, the corporation’s veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby has said.

The 83-year-old former host of Question Time said that over the years the corporation ‘has not been strong’ on looking at the reasons why people in some parts of the country were ‘uneasy’ about the ‘scale of immigration’.

He pointed out as you ‘move further north’ through the UK the BBC is ‘less and less in favour’, questioning if the reason for this was the ‘agenda’ used in its news coverage and broadcasting.

The presenter, who is fronting a forthcoming three-part documentary about the BBC, also called for the licence fee to be changed so the rich pay more for it and the poor pay less. He said the amount people pay should be based on the council tax band system, as the current one is ‘manifestly unfair’.

Mr Dimbleby also said yesterday that BBC director-general Tim Davie was right to yield to critics who felt the corporation had not been impartial.

It comes as presenter Andrew Marr, who recently left the BBC, admitted in an interview in today’s Daily Mail the corporation ‘might have to have a subscription model’. It comes after an eventful week for the corporation, after the

Government froze the licence fee for two years at £159 in a new sixyear financial settlement.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries suggested this licence fee settlement ‘will be the last’. Senior Tories and the BBC have clashed over the way it covered Boris Johnson’s apology to MPs for the Downing Street lockdown party.

Mr Dimbleby was asked by World at One presenter Jonny Dymond whether Mr Davie was right to ‘yield’ to critics on concerns the BBC was not impartial.

He replied: ‘Yes. I do think it’s important and I do think the BBC needs to and does. I think Tim Davie does acknowledge, for instance, that as you move further north through the United Kingdom the BBC is less and less in favour. There must be a reason for that which we need to explore. Whether it’s the agenda that’s used by the BBC in its news coverage and its broadcasting. I suspect there may be tweaks to that which need looking at.

‘But it’s very important that you try and keep in lockstep with public opinion.’

When asked if he thought the BBC had ‘wandered from the path’, Mr Dimbleby said: ‘A bit yes, I do. A bit. It may not have wandered from the path. Maybe the country’s wandered from the BBC’s path, I don’t know.’

Asked if there was anything in particular he could point to, Mr Dimbleby said: ‘Immigration for instance. Over the years the BBC has not been strong on looking at the reasons that people in some parts of Britain were uneasy about the scale of immigration.’

In a letter to a newspaper yesterday, he said the fact the licence fee was currently a ‘flat tax paid by rich and poor at the same rate’ was ‘manifestly unfair’.

He said the BBC could suggest a different method based on council tax bands, with those in the highest band paying the most.