Questions for the BBC

THE BBC’s commitment to political impartiality is absolute. Its Royal Charter requires it. So does its unique legal power to collect the licence fee.

But only constant vigilance can compel the Corporation to understand what this obligation means in practice.

As one of its own most senior presenters, Andrew Marr, has openly admitted: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people.’ He said it had a ‘cultural liberal bias’.

So there is reason to take seriously the complaint of Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, that the BBC does not give his Government’s policies unbiased treatment.

He is particularly dismayed the BBC did not even show an interview it recorded in which he argued the Government was successfully getting people into work.

He also feels that the Corporation’s Economics Editor, Stephanie Flanders, unfairly doubted the encouraging statistics on this front. He has a point. Ms Flanders does not always give an impression of impenetrable neutrality. A year ago she famously said on air that she found Chancellor George Osborne’s attitude ‘mildly nauseating’.

It is perfectly reasonable for BBC journalists to question Government figures – providedtheydosofairlyandunselectively, and question the Opposition with the same vigour. But do they?

Mr Duncan Smith’s complaint deserves careful scrutiny and a full answer, not the usual bland evasion.