Governors consider Resources Ltd again
The BBC Board of Governors are again considering proposals to turn the BBC Resources Directorate into a limited company.
The BBC Unions have sent a further open letter to the Governors before their meeting today (19 February). The follows the last Governors meeting on 22 January when they decided not to endorse management's plans to turn BBC Resources into a wholly-owned subsidiary.
The Unions have warned the BBC that they will ballot for industrial action if Resources Ltd is approved, and have criticised the proposal as 'a solution looking for a problem'.
Open letter to the Governors of the BBC from the Joint Unions
Perhaps for the final time we write directly to the Governors on the subject of BBC Resources Ltd. It appears that a decision is likely today on the incorporation proposal over which we have repeatedly expressed our concerns.
If reports of the internal debate amongst BBC managers are true, it also appears that there are sections of the Corporation which share at least some of our misgivings. For example, the suggestion that key parts of the distribution system like Presentation areas and Technical control rooms may not be included in the Limited company has done little to support the comforting assurances of Resources managers that business will go on as usual.
Our worries extend beyond the impact that Resources Ltd might have on staff job security and the BBC-wide collective bargaining agreements which form an essential part of the Corporation's industrial relations structure. There is an additional and widespread fear that incorporation of Resources will change irrevocably the nature of the BBC, and set it on an inexorable path to becoming a publisher/broadcaster. This seems a high price to pay in order to solve a questionable problem of commercial law.
The BBC's unions have not stood in the way of Resources Directorate in its efforts to expand the amount of commercial work it undertakes, and accept that in the modern world the earnings accruing from these activities are essential to the sustenance of a quality production base within the BBC.
However, we have two comments to make on the desirable level of commercial activity that the Corporation should engage in. On one hand, it is self-evident that some reasonable limit should be in place - too much outside activity will undermine the arguments in favour of licence funding, and could affect the BBC's ability to make its own programmes.
On the other hand, wherever the limit is set, we doubt whether there is any danger of reaching the levels of market penetration which could trigger anti-monopoly action by the regulators. For reasons of commercial confidentiality, Resources management are circumspect about details of their trading volumes, and we can work only with informed estimates. Even with the roughest of these, though, it is hard to find any Resource area whose current, or projected, UK market share is anywhere near the proportion which likely to be set as a threshold for executive intervention, putatively 30%.
Looking at the European market, which some areas of Resources have identified as having greater growth potential, the BBC's share is measured in single percentage points, and could easily be increased several times over without attracting regulatory attention.
If fear of competition law is the last remaining argument in favour of incorporation, we urge the Governors to consider carefully whether the risks posed by the regulations are so great as to justify a decision which many observers believe will eventually propel one of the BBC's largest directorates into the private sector.
BECTU/NUJ/AEEU