Do we really want the BBC to suffer death by a thousand cuts?
Nyear, the BBC – creation of a brilliant Scot, John Reith – celebrates its centenary, respected and envied (and resented by autocrats) around the world; the heart of Britain’s highly successful broadcasting ecology and creative industries and a key driver of its global soft power; and, despite endless claims to the contrary and attempts to undermine it, still the UK public’s most trusted news source and most widely-used entertainment medium. In a world of growing disinformation, and with post-brexit Britain now alone in a harsh geopolitical world, we need it more than ever.
Yet the BBC has never been in greater peril. And, astonishingly, the main reason is Britain’s own Government, supported by raucous Beeb-bashing newspapers. (The two organisations currently attacking it almost every day are the Chinese Communist Party and the Daily Express).
Ask people why the corporation is in peril and they’ll give you a list: they may say it’s too big and does too many things; it wastes money on celebrity pay, fat cat bosses and bureaucracy; it’s too Londoncentric; it’s lost the public’s trust after decades of left-wing – or right-wing, or proor anti-brexit – prejudice (or, in Scotland, unionist bias and/or giving Nicola Sturgeon too much airtime); its licence fee funding is no longer fit for purpose when people can subscribe to whichever TV services they want; it’s at war with the Government, Rupert Murdoch and most of the newspapers; or it’s doomed anyway because of technology and consumption trends, as young people now only watch Netflix and Youtube. (This mishmash is a mixture of truths, exaggerations, halftruths, myths and lies – I don’t have space to discuss them all here).
Well-informed people may mention money: the combination of fast-rising content and distribution costs (driven by Netflix, Disney et al and the need to support both broadcast and online distribution simultaneously) and the funding cuts imposed – with no published analysis, no public consultation and no parliamentary scrutiny – by George Osborne in 2010 and 2015.
But they almost certainly won’t mention the depth of the funding cuts since 2010: by 2019, these had already reduced the BBC’S public funding by 30 per cent in real, inflation-adjusted, terms. That’s before the additional impact of Covid-19.
The most egregious hit is from the over75s free TV licence concession, first introduced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2000 as a Government-funded welfare benefit. It was never intended that the BBC should cover the cost (now £675 million per year and rising): the deeppocketed fuel suppliers aren’t expected to fund the free winter fuel allowance for OAPS, which costs the Government almost three times as much (£2 billion per year).
Mr Osborne first tried to force the BBC to fund this concession in 2010 but was faced down by the then Director-general, Mark Thompson, and his Chairman Sir Michael Lyons. In 2015, however, a weakened BBC under new DG Tony Hall faced a newly confident majority Conservative Government, with Mr Osborne, still Chancellor, further fired up by six secret meetings with News UK, including two with Rupert Murdoch himself, over the eight weeks after the Conservatives’ unexpected May 2015 election victory.
The BBC reluctantly agreed to take on the responsibility for deciding the future of the concession – that is, whether to cover the cost of free TV licences for some, all, or no households with one or more members aged 75-plus. Its enemies have, characteristically, claimed that it agreed to fund the full cost for all homes with over75s. This is a lie. And when people like the PM say the BBC should “cough up”, they never say which services it should cut to cover the huge cost. At best, they mention cutting presenters’ pay, which would increase defections – reducing programme quality – and save only a small singlefigure percentage of the cost.
In June 2019, the BBC said it would limit free licences to households with members aged 75-plus in receipt of pension credit, a means-tested benefit. The Bbc-bashing newspapers predictably denounced it as a greedy granny-killer without identifying the real villain, Mr Osborne, who had played a cynical blinder.
Broadcasting costs – content, talent and distribution – are rising faster than inflation. But, thanks to continuing efficiency gains and increasing global commercial income, the BBC would be able to take all this, and more, in its stride if its public funding had merely kept pace with inflation over the last 10 years.
What are the numbers? In constant (2019-20) pounds, the public funding of the BBC’S UK services went from £4,580m in 2010-11 to £3,203m in 2019-20. The difference, £1,377m, is 30% of the 2010-11 figure, but 43% of the 2019-20 one.
Think about that. If the BBC’S public funding had merely kept pace with general inflation, it now would be 43% – nearly £1.4bn – higher.
Without the cuts, the BBC could do pretty much everything that’s demanded of it. Above all, it would be able to invest in new content, services and technologies for younger viewers and listeners while maintaining its investment in services like BBC4 (about to be scaled back) for its traditional, mostly older, audiences.
The corporation has always been attacked, ever since Reith – at least partly – stood up to the Government during the 1926 General Strike, and most recently in the run-up to the last charter renewal and funding deal in 2015. But this time it’s different. Boris Johnson is the most Bbc-hostile PM ever (more, even, than Margaret Thatcher) and next year’s interim funding deal will come on top of the cuts already imposed by Mr Osborne.
Watch this space. It won’t be pretty.
The attacks on the BBC are driven by a mixture of commercial and political vested interests and free-market ideology. If the resulting cuts continue, it won’t be that long before Reith’s BBC is reduced to a minor side-show like PBS in America.
There’s still time to prevent this tragedy, but only just. The simplest solution would be to restore the public funding of free TV licences, although there are other options. The key issue is to ensure that future generations inherit a strong, properly funded, politically independent BBC.
If the BBC’S public funding had merely kept pace with general inflation, it now would be 43% higher