Robert Peston hints that the BBC Trust should and might be split….its power to regulate the BBC removed:
Here are a couple of mildly interesting tidbits about my own shop, the BBC.
First (and there is nothing terribly revelatory about this) Lord Coe is a virtual shoo-in to be Lord Patten’s successor as chairman of the BBC Trust.
Of course his appointment is not 100%, because there is a formal and slightly cumbersome appointments process.
That process includes interviewing and vetting by a Department of Culture, Media and Sports appointments committee, a recommendation of a preferred candidate by government – after all the “appointable” candidates have been interrogated by the culture secretary, Sajid Javid – then pre-appointment scrutiny by MPs on the DCMS select committee and then formal appointment.
Phew.
But for the government, which for this sort of thing really means the prime minister and chancellor, Lord Coe is the outstanding candidate.
So presumably they will find a way to get him over these many hurdles.
Why do they rate him so highly?
Well they know him well (George Osborne and Coe once shared an office, I think), and they regard him as an impressive leader, with a remarkable record of success off the track (leading London’s Olympics bid, chairing the organising committee for the games, and so on).
One senior government source complained that among the chattering classes Lord Coe is widely and snootily under-rated “as that bloke who won some gold medals”.
Oh, and he is a Tory, which is de rigueur (other candidates take note).
Also Lord Coe is reckoned to be broadly positive about the BBC, which matters to Cameron and Osborne because – unlike perhaps the majority of Tory MPs – they are supporters of and believers in the BBC.
Which is not to say they are blindly uncritical.
But they place value on how the BBC wins important friends for Britain overseas – the role it plays in reinforcing the country’s “soft power” – and what they would see as its largely standard-raising role in the ecology of UK news, arts and media businesses.
That does not mean the review of the BBC’s charter – which the government said when advertising for the post of Trust chairman will now not start till after the general election – would be easy for the BBC, if the Tories form the next government.
The BBC would doubtless face challenges on the scope of what it does and could not expect any increase in the licence fee out of line with austerity in the rest of the public sector.
But it does suggest the charter review would not be about dismantling the BBC; it would not be a choice between life and death.
That said, the review is likely to be rather more existentially challenging to the BBC Trust itself, the body that has the often uncomfortable task of reconciling sometimes conflicting responsibilities – those of regulator, representative of licence-fee payers (who for these purposes can be seen as the owners) and occasional human shield when the Director General lands in a spot of bother.
As I understand it, Osborne and Cameron have never quite understood why the regulation of the BBC could not be done in a cleaner and more ostensibly impartial way by Ofcom.
If the Trust’s regulatory functions were removed, it would resemble something like the old governing board or even possibly a public company board, concentrating on oversight of senior executive appointments, money, risk and efficiency. There would be clarity that its ultimate duty of care would be to licence-fee payers.
With these more focussed duties, the BBC Trust chairman could step into the fray and shield the DG from heat in a crisis, without that compromising the chairman’s perceived impartiality as regulator (a constant tension under the existing system).
All of which adds up to my second tidbit, which is that there may have been a misinterpretation of the fact that the advert for the Trust chair job says he or she will serve a four-year term.
This was seen as somehow evidence that radical reform of the Trust is off the agenda.
That, I am reliably told, is wrong: if the BBC is not dismantled, the Trust may be.
So the BBC Charter expires in 2016, then the BBC is dismantled over a two year period, and then with the end of the BBC in 2018, the post of BBC Trust Chairman becomes defunct, THE END
Lets hope that Lord Coe announces the end of censorship at the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, with Lord Lawson appointed to impose Glasnost, and then from 2016 to 2018, Perestroika.
Highly unlikely, as said in the article Cameron and Osborne like the bbc…..all EU lovers together. Incidently, it mentions Coe as a “conservative”, just as Paten is/was!
Perhaps a good start would be that, in future, all jobs at the BBC be advertised exclusively in the Jewish Chronicle – ending the public subsidy of The Guardian and beginning to dismantle the BBCs unswerving support of Hamas.
How strange it is that the BBC should be so negative towards Israel when they employ so many Jewish people.
But then there always have been some incredibly self destructive Jews who seem hell bent on the most disadvantageous outcome for themselves and their compatriots.
Not surprising really: many Jews hate Israel and its existence as much as the BBC seem to hate Britain and especially England
As a Christian I’d suggest that the adverts are placed in the Tablet. But of course, anywhere but the guardian; the sooner that so-called newspaper goes the way of the dodo (or more appropriately, the USSR) the better.
I note that the Chairman of that other state funded broadcaster Ch 4, believes that the BBC should become subscription only.( I am unclear of the exact nature of the funding of Ch4 and he doesn’t seem to indicate how Ch 4 should be funded in future.Let us hope it too will be freed from state funding ) Anyway, he is only the latest of a number of influential people who are suggesting this. The BBC predictably, is warning that going to subscription would force people to pay more. Presumably they think that a significant proportion of LF payers wouldn’t wish to take up a subscription and simply can’t imagine how they would manage with less money. So, in typical leftist fashion, they would rather force people to pay for the BBC, even if those folks would strongly prefer not to have its daily offering of distortions and lies in their homes.
I am sure that many of us who read this site agree that moving to funding by subscription is the least painful way for any government to rid us of the tyranny of the BBC. After all it is wholly democratic to allow people to choose what they wish to spend their money on. Lord Coe, Messrs Cameron and Osborne, please take note.
All so true, but did you see the other day just how much money the BBC gets from the EU. The EU accounts list the BBC as having received over a £1m in 2013, bought and paid for hence EU bias.
I have never forgot Coe saying ‘2.9B fully costed’ when it went on to cost probably about 12B (my estimate). Coe is one of the establishment, I am not expecting a breath of fresh air. He will blow in the direction his political masters tell him to sway.
Correct Fred…..Coe..mmm….always looks as though he has a nasty whiff under his nose…..check it out, watch him as he speaks….
As I recall, when he was just plain Sebastian Coe, the runner, none of his contemporaries liked him.