BBC (Hansard, 25 October 1993)

§ 9. Mr. Grocott
To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what plans he has to change the structure of the board of governors of the BBC.

§ Mr. Brooke
None at present, but the role of the governors is one aspect of our consideration of the BBC's future after 1996.

§ Mr. Grocott
Does the Secretary of State share my alarm at the part of the Thatcher memoirs that describes the appointment in 1986 of Marmaduke Hussey as BBC chairman as an "improvement in every respect"? Does he agree that that view is not widely held? Since 1986, there has been a progressive and serious decline in morale at the BBC as budgets have been cut, programmes threatened and staff lost. The BBC needs not mad Thatcherite economics but a commitment to programme makers, viewers and the values of public service broadcasting.

§ Mr. Brooke
I have not even taken the first step that many politicians have made, of looking up my own name in the index to the Thatcher memoirs. Therefore, I certainly have not reached the stage of reading any other part of them. Happily, the gentleman to whom the hon. Gentleman made reference is still the BBC's chairman, and I much enjoy working with him. I repeat the answer that I gave to an earlier question. The admirable feature of the efficiency gains that the BBC has been securing—to which the hon. Gentleman may have been referring adversely and obliquely—will go into programme improvements.

§ Mr. Corbett
When the renewal of the BBC charter is considered, the Secretary of State will have an opportunity to make some important changes to the way in which the BBC is governed. Will he consider replacing the present BBC governors with an independent board of trustees, which would monitor performance promise on behalf of viewers and listeners? Would it not make the BBC more openly accountable if representative organisations nominated potential trustees, who would be examined by a Select Committee and then appointed by a broadcasting appointments commission? That would end the situation in which the Government are seen as appointing their cronies as governors.

§ Mr. Brooke
Some of what lay behind the early part of the hon. Gentleman's question, about the role of the board of governors and how it should work in the future, is reflected in the Green Paper. As to how the board of governors should be appointed, if one of the preoccupations is to ensure total political insulation, I am not wholly confident that that would come about if the House were involved in nominating.