Building Public Value - BECTU comments

6 July 2004

1. BECTU welcomes the BBC's publication of Building Public Value as a significant and welcome contribution to the Charter Renewal debate. We have made our own initial contribution in the form of our response to the initial DCMS consultation and look forward to further opportunities to comment as the debate develops. We do not, therefore, propose to attempt a detailed commentary or response to the publication - rather a brief highlighting of particular points of interest or potential concern.
2. Firstly, we place on record our positive appreciation of the arguments deployed in the vast majority of the document, including the following:
   • We welcome the development (in Chapters 1 and 4) of the notion of public value as a means of explaining and justifying the BBC's basic purpose and role: including the clear definition of basic concepts, the addressing of economic arguments (public good/merit good/external benefits) and the demonstration of how public value can (inevitably partially) be measured and quantified.
   • We welcome the attention (pages 56-8) to increasing commercial concentration of ownership in the media. This is an issue on which we have long campaigned both in the UK and EU. We believe increased attention is necessary to the issue as a corrective to the consistent portrayal of the BBC - by commercial rivals - as excessively large and powerful. A realistic perspective - as set out on pages 96-7 will help to rebalance the Charter debate.
   • We support, in Chapter 7, the defence of the licence fee and the analysis of the failings of alternative funding mechanisms. We particularly welcome the development of the arguments against 'top slicing'.
   • On the issue of governance, covered in Part 2, we specifically support the proposals (on pages 127-9) that 'the Board of Governors needs to be able to act more independently of management'; that the Board should be 'supported by a dedicated and strong Governance Unit, independent of management'; and that the Board and the Unit 'will be located apart from senior management'. These broadly match our own existing views. Furthermore, we welcome the setting out of the case against an increased role for OFCOM (pages 132-3). Again, this matches our existing views.
   • We have a number of additional points of concern which we hope can be addressed as the debate develops:
   • On the proposed Creative Archive (page 63), we seek an assurance that the rights of individuals who contribute to the archive material will be fully respected and that such material will not be used if the rights have not been properly assigned.
   • On the attempt to quantify public value (eg pages 84-5), we believe due account should be taken of the value deriving from supporting UK employment (especially in-house employment) and original UK production.
   • We have very particular concerns about the proposed reviews of BBC's production and commercial activities, especially the statement (page 98) that 'we will assess the balance of in-house and external provision, and where it makes more sense to source from an external partner, a change will be made.' As the report itself acknowledges, there are very significant advantages deriving to the BBC from having a strong in-house production base. We do not believe the Corporation needs to take a defensive position in this area - especially in the light of clear productivity gains in the recent period. We would hope any temptation to seek reductions in in-house production for purely cosmetic reasons (ie to score points in the Charter debate) will be dismissed out of hand.
   • Conversely, we do not believe the BBC needs to concede unnecessary ground in debate to the independent production lobby. We can appreciate that the Corporation will rightly seek to influence the terms of any debate on the relative merits of independent and in-house production. However, we also believe the time is right for a full-blooded critical analysis of the independents' case - including the sheer amount of corporate power in the independent sector, their orientation to markets other than the UK, their often poor record on employment and training practices, their belief that regional production starts at Amersham and their hypocritical stance on rights (claiming more for themselves while exploiting individual creators). The inflated claims of the independents' lobby have long needed puncturing. This is an opportunity to do so.
   • Similarly, we trust that the proposed review of BBC commercial activities will not concede unnecessary ground in debate to the self interested commercial critics of the BBC. As acknowledged in the report (page 104) the BBC's commercial activities bring important benefits. We see no case to withdraw from such activities just because there may be alternative commercial providers. There may be a broader public good arising from BBC activity in such areas which outweighs the self-interest of commercial rivals and which in some cases (eg websites) involves very little marginal cost to the BBC.
   • While supporting a healthy level of regional production, we will obviously have concerns about the detailed implications for staff and production of the proposals (pages 108-9) for 'less London-centric BBC' and would expect a detailed level of consultation on such proposals.
   • Lastly, on governance, we hope that the concern that the Governors 'should continue to be comprised of people with a wide range of different experiences and skills' (page 129) can be viewed as compatible with our own view that the balance and composition of the Governors needs to be made more representative of the broadcasting industry and of the country as a whole.
   • On the possible alternatives to the Charter (page 134), we seek fuller information, in due course, of the implications of the suggested alternative models.
   • We hope you will take note of our views as those - in the context of Charter Renewal - of a critical friend of the BBC. We look forward to further involvement in the future development of the debate.