BBC's Green Paper response synopsis

On the BBC’s role for the future

The BBC accepts the ‘Purposes’ set out in the Green Paper on sustaining citizenship, promoting education, stimulating creativity & culture, serving different communities, playing a global role and building digital Britain. Michael Grade’s quote on the purposes was: "they give us - and the licence-fee payers - a clear yardstick against which to measure how well the BBC is delivering."

On funding the BBC

The BBC welcomes the decision to grant a new Charter for ten years and to confirm licence fee funding for the whole of that period. However, Michael Grade said there was one funding question raised by the Green Paper on which the BBC remains fundamentally opposed - the idea of ‘contestability’, of top-slicing the licence fee. The Chairman said "it would break the clear and well-understood line of accountability between the BBC and the licence-fee payer." He continued : "it runs entirely counter to the need to increase accountability, a key emphasis in the Green Paper. It would pose a threat to the political independence of the BBC."

On a BBC Trust

The Governors accept the Government's decision to change the way the BBC is governed through a BBC Trust. Michael Grade’s quote : "The future model will increase public confidence by creating a clear separation between, on the one hand, the management of the BBC and, on the other, the new Trust charged with setting BBC strategy and holding management to account."

On the scale and scope of the BBC

The BBC feels the Green Paper underestimates the potential impact of new technologies in the years ahead. Michael Grade said: "This is not just a matter of the switchover to digital television. Digital radio, digital satellite, high-definition TV, mobile platforms, podcasting, on-demand delivery via broadband - these, and no doubt many more technologies as yet unveiled - also have the potential to transform the media landscape and provide new ways to build public value."

On supporting independent production

The BBC’s committed to this. Michael Grade said "The Governors had confidence that the proposal for a WoCC - a window of creative competition - was the best way to open up BBC commissioning and the licence fee to independent producers, while maintaining a sustainable in-house production base with all the benefits that brings: including, not least, the training it provides across the broadcast industry. It will only work if there is a level playing field between in-house and independent commissioning. The governors will police this rigorously - by which I mean zero tolerance." (See also PACT’s welcome to the BBC’s Green Paper response).