Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con) I beg to move, That
this House has considered the Government’s role in upholding the
impartiality of BBC news coverage. It is an honour to serve under
your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I refer the Chamber at once to my
entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am
grateful to have secured time for this important debate. The BBC is
a much-treasured national institution. Its news service is relied
on by...Request free trial
Sir (Northampton North) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Government’s role in upholding
the impartiality of BBC news coverage.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I
refer the Chamber at once to my entry in the Register of Members’
Financial Interests. I am grateful to have secured time for this
important debate.
The BBC is a much-treasured national institution. Its news
service is relied on by millions of British people and others
around the world. Impartiality is rightly the foundation stone of
the BBC’s operational guidelines and the very reason why it has
garnered the trust of its users over many years. Its journalists
provide an invaluable public service, often in trying and
sometimes even dangerous circumstances. It is with great regret,
though, that I have concluded that the BBC’s impartiality has
been brought into disrepute. The BBC has found itself at the
centre of ever-increasing controversy in recent years, and the
organisation’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has led it
comprehensively to fail the British public.
Sir (Elmet and Rothwell)
(Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Sir
I will make a little progress, then I will give way. The tragic
events in Israel and Gaza
undoubtedly pose a challenge to any media outlet given the
strength of feelings that they elicit. However, a careful review
of BBC output shows a clear failure to uphold its obligation to
impartiality. In doing so, BBC News’s broadcasting and online
content has actively inflamed community tensions here in the
United Kingdom, fuelled the appalling rise in antisemitism and,
in at least one particularly shocking case, harmed diplomatic
efforts to bring an end to the violence.
Sir
Before we move on to the in-depth part of my right hon. and
learned Friend’s speech, is not one of the problems with the BBC
that it lays down rules then just ignores them? For example, what
Gary Lineker wants to say is up to Gary Lineker. However, if the
BBC says, “You do not have the right to do that,” when he then
does it and waves two fingers, does that not completely undermine
the BBC’s editorial content?
Sir
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The BBC’s failure to
adhere to standards and deal with those problems when they arise
is a fundamental, systemic and systematic problem; I will come on
to that.
(Strangford) (DUP)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
(Chipping Barnet)
(Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Sir
I will give way to the hon. Member for Strangford ().
I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for bringing forward
this debate. I apologise to him and to you, Ms Bardell, for not
being able to be here throughout; I have a meeting with a
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Minister. The right
hon. and learned Member is right to set out the case
on Israel and Hamas. If we
look at the BBC’s bias against Brexit and Northern Ireland, it
cannot even name our country right; indeed, its correspondent is
called the Ireland correspondent. My goodness me. How long will
it be before the BBC understand that when the Welsh
correspondents are called Welsh correspondents and the Scottish
correspondents are called Scottish correspondents, the people of
Northern Ireland should have a Northern Ireland correspondent? We
are part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland. That is who we are. The quicker that the BBC catch on,
the better.
Sir
The hon. Member makes a good point. The examples of biased
content are great in number, and I simply do not have the time to
document all of them.
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Sir
I will share a sample in a moment, but I will give way first.
One of the most worrying examples of biased content on the BBC
was their coverage of the bombing of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital,
where its rush to accept the Hamas allegation that it was caused
by Israel genuinely
created problems on the ground and made it harder to resolve
things. It had a real-life impact. That is an example of how the
BBC needs to be much more careful in its coverage
of Israel
Sir
My right hon. Friend makes a good point, and I shall come on to
that in more detail momentarily.
BBC News has been roundly and deservedly ridiculed for its abject
failure to identify Hamas as a terrorist group. Under immense
pressure, the BBC eventually chose to acknowledge in its ongoing
coverage that Hamas is proscribed in the United Kingdom, but it
still refuses to explicitly label it as a terror group. That
double standard was clear for all to see just weeks after Hamas’s
heinous pogrom on 7 October, when BBC News immediately reported
on its website an incident in Brussels as a “terror attack”
linked to Daesh. Not only is the BBC failing to uphold the law of
this country when it refers to Hamas as anything other than a
terror group, it is effectively becoming complicit in Hamas’s
well-orchestrated disinformation campaign.
The most dangerous example of the dissemination of disinformation
during the current conflict came on 17 October—as my right hon.
Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet () has said—when the BBC
inaccurately reported that Israel was responsible
for an explosion in the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital. BBC News’ breaking
news Twitter account hurriedly notified its 51 million
followers:
“Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli airstrike on hospital
in Gaza, Palestinian officials say.”
BBC News’ international editor Jeremy Bowen told television
audiences that “hundreds” had been killed and “thousands” injured
after the hospital was “destroyed” in what he described as “the
attack”—terminology that would clearly lead viewers towards the
wrong impression that Israel was
responsible.
There was an urgent Israeli investigation into the explosion at
the hospital, subsequently independently confirmed by non-Israeli
sources, which revealed that the incident was in fact caused by a
misfired terrorist rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Even then however, BBC News saw fit to present claims and counter
claims on its website, as if there was some sort of moral
equivalence between a democratic state whose leaders are elected
by their people and whose courts deal with their government, and
a genocidal terrorist group that oppresses its people and murders
children and innocent civilians.
(East Devon) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Sir
I will in a moment.
That particular incident at Al-Ahli Arab hospital had profound
real-world implications. It led to the cancellation of a Head of
State-level regional peace summit and violent protests erupting
across the middle east, and the World Jewish Congress said it
contributed to a spike in antisemitism globally—including the
burning of synagogues in Tunisia and Germany. Such were the
repercussions of that one misreport.
Reasonable people accept that mistakes can be made in any
profession. However, it was the dismissive nature of the BBC’s
response to the Al-Ahli coverage debacle, and the continuing
pattern of troubling output since then, that does not reassure
that lessons have been learned. Disgracefully, when Jeremy Bowen
was interviewed about the incident he dismissively said he did
not “regret one thing”, and that he did not
“feel particularly bothered about that.”
Bowen seemingly downplayed Israel’s discovery of
evidence—including guns—that confirmed Hamas’s military
operations within Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, saying it was “not
convincing”. Perversely though, he said
“wherever you go in the Middle East you see an awful lot of
Kalashnikovs and it’s not inconceivable that…I dunno…perhaps the
security department of the hospital might have them.”
Repeated preparedness by the BBC to disseminate unverified claims
provided by a proscribed terrorist group with a track record of
disinformation should trouble us all.
My right hon. and learned Friend is making a great speech
detailing some of the failures of BBC editorial policy. However,
it is not just the BBC that does not describe Hamas as a
terrorist organisation, other public service broadcasters such as
ITV and Channel 4 do not do so either.
As politicians, we have to be a bit careful about asking
broadcasters to bow to our whims as Members of Parliament when it
comes to proscribing things and making editorial decisions. As a
former BBC journalist myself, I think there is a real need to
balance that with editorial justification and impartiality—and I
am sure my right hon. and learned Friend will come on to that in
his speech. It is important to recognise that other public
service broadcasters also do not describe Hamas as a terrorist
organisation.
(in the Chair)
Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman continues, I remind
Members that interventions should be short and brief.
Sir
What we want, need and expect from the BBC is a lack of bias and
proper impartiality—that is all anyone expects. It is supposed to
be a leader in its field and to set an example for other smaller
broadcasters. I make no apology for expecting high standards from
the BBC.
(Brigg and Goole) (Con)
In relation to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for
East Devon (), is it not the case that, when
we have a criminal case in this country, the BBC describes the
people in those criminal cases as murderers, burglars or whatever
else they are? We have a legal framework in this country that has
determined that this is a terror organisation, and the BBC should
apply the same rule in that situation.
Sir
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As my example indicated, it
does that for Daesh, which is another terrorist organisation. It
will not do it for Hamas, and that is because of a link
with Israel Not all
examples are as flagrant; the bias of BBC News and its
journalists can be seen in other ways, which shows the depth of
the problem. The BBC follows Hamas’s cynical policy of not
distinguishing between civilian and combatant casualties. BBC
News reports routinely add what amounts to disclaimers on
information released by Israel or the Israeli
army as being unverified. Time and again, that same rule is not
applied to information released by Hamas. It was only after
another pressure campaign that the BBC even started informing
viewers that casualty figures in Gaza were provided by a
terrorist-controlled Hamas health ministry, yet that seldom comes
with a disclaimer about how they are unverified by the BBC.
For example, take a story on the BBC News website from just 2
February this year, in which it reports:
“More than 26,750 Palestinians have been killed and at least
65,000 injured, according to health officials in the Gaza
strip.”
It then states:
“Israeli officials say that 9,000 of those killed were Hamas
militants but have not provided evidence for the figure.”
By the way, Hamas have subsequently said that they had lost 6,000
fighters, still half of what Israel has
claimed, but the BBC has chosen to ignore that Hamas statement,
unlike many other news outlets. That happens daily. Each time the
message that it conveys to readers, viewers or listeners is
that Israel is not to be
trusted over the word of a proscribed terror group that are known
to wage information war.
(Stone) (Con)
On the broader question of the charter itself, a royal charter
confers a privilege, which is effectively a kind of monopoly.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the licence fee
payers, who come from all over the country, are themselves paying
for disinformation on the basis of what he is saying? That, if it
were a product liability issue, would lead to all kinds of legal
consequences.
Sir
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Of course, it puts the
BBC in that elevated status where the taxpayer is obliged to pay
for it, and there are consequences from its poor leadership in
this area. The BBC’s coverage of weekly pro-Palestinian marches
has displayed an extraordinary disconnect from reality. It has
repeatedly stressed that the marches are “mostly peaceful”, yet
television reports have featured BBC journalists amidst crowds
chanting genocidal refrains and brandishing flagrantly
antisemitic placards. Not all viewers will have an understanding
of those deplorable scenes and it is incumbent on the BBC to
cover them responsibly.
On 30 October, the BBC posted a news item on its news app
headlined, “Met Police chief wants clarity on extremism”. The
article actually concerned the appalling displays of antisemitism
and violent rhetoric at those pro-Palestinian rallies, but
strangely the BBC saw fit to use a photograph of an Israeli flag
as the banner image accompanying the piece. The message that
would send to the casual reader is unmistakable: Israelis, or
pro-Israel individuals, are the extremists.
I would like to touch on BBC Arabic now, which has repeatedly
presented former Palestine Liberation Organisation Major General
Wasif Erekat, who has celebrated the “heroic military miracle” of
7 October, as an independent military expert. Erekat has appeared
on BBC Arabic at least 12 times since 7 October, despite having
admitted to firing artillery shells on what he calls “Zionist
positions” from Lebanon, and making outrageous remarks about how
Hamas does not target civilians.
Concerns about bias within from the BBC are perhaps unsurprising
when one considers some of the employment controversies engulfing
the organisation, which I would like to touch on now. A
scheduling co-ordinator for BBC3, Dawn Queva, branded Jewish
people “Nazi apartheid parasites” and referred to the holocaust
as the “holohoax”. In the wake of 7 October, BBC News Arabic
journalists likened Hamas to freedom fighters and spoke of a
morning of hope. A Beirut-based correspondent on BBC Arabic,
Sanaa Khoury, tweeted that Israel’s prestige is “crying in the
corner” and liked a comment about receiving sweets that were
distributed in celebration of Hamas’s attack.
We have heard about Gary Lineker, who encapsulates the problem
within the BBC. Lineker has shared a video with 8.9 million of
his followers, with the offensive accusation that Israel is committing
genocide and mourning the death of a Palestinian footballer, who
was later revealed to be a “martyr fighter” for Hamas. He also
shared a message calling for Israel to be
banned from international football tournaments. Lineker has
frankly made a mockery of new social media guidelines that had
been drawn up following an earlier controversy over his
politicised posts.
Amid that sorry state of affairs, it is perhaps unsurprising,
though no less distressing, that the director-general of the BBC,
Tim Davie, recently acknowledged that antisemitism was within the
corporation. Perhaps that is not surprising, when “The
Apprentice” star, who we have heard about recently, tweeted that
Zionists were “odiously ogre-like”. The BBC compliance department
apparently ruled that that was not antisemitic. Instead, they
sent him on a diversity course. If Zionism were just a policy,
and not a euphemism for Jews, as we all know it is, how can
someone who supports a policy, of any sort, be physically ugly?
That gives the lie to the whole charade. What they are really
talking about when they say Zionists is, of course, Jews.
Shamefully, BBC employees were prohibited from attending a major
march against antisemitism last year, on the spurious grounds
that it was controversial. Compounding that, BBC News saw fit to
describe that as a pro-Jewish march.
The BBC has been criticised by Ofcom for its coverage, as many
will recall, of a vile antisemitic attack on Jewish students in
London in December 2021, finding that it had
“failed to observe its editorial guidelines on due impartiality
and due accuracy.”
In that episode, the BBC had falsely accused Jewish victims of
making anti-Muslim slurs. That was swiftly disproven, but the BBC
failed to update its online news article for nearly two months,
with no regard for the wellbeing of the attack victims and the
wider Jewish community.
Simply, there have been too many examples of a lack of
impartiality for the BBC to keep dismissing concerns. The BBC’s
biased coverage throughout this conflict has undoubtedly had an
impact on the public’s perception and the understanding of it,
and has steered it in a more anti-Israel direction.
(Aberdeen North) (SNP)
What response has the right hon. and learned Member had from the
BBC when he has raised these concerns? Is it taking action?
Sir
I will be coming to that. We know that the BBC has received
myriad complaints. The consequences of its lack of impartiality
have been particularly acute for the UK’s Jewish community. Just
as the Al-Ahli misreporting led to a violent spike in
antisemitism across the world, so too has the relentless bias of
BBC News coverage contributed to the record level of intimidation
and attacks on British Jews.
It is interesting to note that more than three quarters of Jews
in Britain—77%—believe that BBC coverage of the war in Gaza is
biased against Israel according to a
recent poll by Survation for a newspaper. Dozens of current
Jewish employees at the BBC are understood to have filed formal
complaints related to their concerns about antisemitism,
describing it as a “grim” and “frightening” time to be Jewish at
the corporation. The BBC’s senior management has fundamentally
failed to deal with this problem and uphold its own guidelines.
The organisation now appears complicit in peddling misinformation
and allowing antisemitism to fester. In those circumstances, I
have come to the conclusion that the BBC is institutionally
antisemitic.
It has now been 20 years since the Balen report into the BBC’s
anti-Israel bias. The organisation has spent hundreds of
thousands of pounds of hard-working licence fee payers’ money to
suppress that 20-year-old report. I ask my hon. Friend the
Minister to join me and add her voice to the calls for the BBC to
finally publish that report. I wrote to the director general
before Christmas, and he declined to release it. I also ask the
Minister whether she would agree that the time has come to
finally say that the BBC’s ability to mark its own homework must
be removed. Existing complaints procedures are ineffective and do
not command confidence.
I shall end by recounting the words of 22-year-old Noah Abrahams,
who left his dream job at the BBC after its refusal to
unequivocally call Hamas what it is: a terrorist organisation.
Noah said that words have the power
“to fuel hate and put fuel on the fire…Words impact how we think,
how we react, how we act. They have influence.”
I challenge all of us here to stand up for truth, challenge the
BBC in its deeply entrenched bias, and call for
accountability.
(in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members to bob if they wish to be called to speak.
I hope to call Front Benchers by 3.28 pm, so I ask those who are
speaking to be mindful of that.
2.52pm
Mr (East Londonderry)
(DUP)
I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Northampton
North (Sir ) on securing this debate. I
will start, as indeed he did, by quoting what anyone can get if
they go on Google and ascertain the BBC’s main contribution to
wider society on its website:
“The BBC is the world’s leading public service broadcaster. We’re
impartial and independent, and every day we create distinctive,
world-class programmes and content which inform, educate and
entertain millions of people in the UK and around the world.”
That was indeed the case many years ago. I hope that the BBC can
salvage something of its reputation and return to that
high-sounding statement of what it sets itself up to be.
The right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton
North alluded to the high-profile on-screen talent, as they are
called. The most expensive, well-paid employee in the BBC is Gary
“Multimillionaire Lefty” Lineker. Mr Lineker was taken to task
whenever he made his initial contribution, which it was felt
breached the guidelines. The BBC agreed that he did indeed breach
the guidelines to which he and others were expected to adhere.
Within a few hours, however, some of Mr Lineker’s on-screen
friends—some of whom were in his employ—decided to down tools,
and they walked out. We had one edition of “Match of the Day”
without Gary Lineker in situ. Then the director general of the
BBC caved in, instead of saying to Mr Lineker and those who were
with him, “There’s the door. If you don’t like the guidelines,
off you go and get jobs elsewhere.” That is what the director
general should have said—and did not. He caved in, and Mr Lineker
returned, smirking at his ability to thumb his nose at the
guidelines.
Then the BBC revised the guidelines and Mr Tim Davie was asked:
if Mr Lineker says again, under the guise of the new guidelines,
what was in breach of the old guidelines, is he in breach of the
new ones? The director general could not really answer the
question. I do not know whether Mr Lineker decided to test the
water again, but off he went. The right hon. and learned Member
for Northampton North alluded to what he said the next time; and,
of course, no action was taken. Unfortunately, this is a blatant
example of how the BBC seems to be prepared to take whatever the
woke or the leftist agenda is as something they must endorse. If
there is a breach of the guidelines, it turns a blind eye to
it.
The hon. Member is making a very good point about high-grade
staff at the BBC. Does he agree that, whether someone is a staff
member or a star, the social media guidelines for working in the
BBC should be exactly the same?
Mr Campbell
Yes, I do, and the penalty should be the same as well. That
should go without saying, but unfortunately we have to say
it.
I wish to turn to the comprehensive analysis that the right hon.
and learned Member for Northampton North gave about Hamas
and Israel He spoke with
in-depth knowledge, and I do not wish to add anything other than
to agree with him. I watched aghast at some of those breaches,
whether it be Jeremy Bowen or the BBC News Arabic journalist, and
the whole plethora of issues he raised.
The BBC has some excellent investigative analysis programmes,
such as “Panorama” and BBC Northern Ireland’s “Spotlight”. From
time to time, they do very comprehensive, in-depth investigations
into issues that are in the public interest. That is exactly what
they should do, and they are to be commended when they do it. But
over a period of years, there has been an issue of huge public
interest, not just in Northern Ireland but across the UK, and it
is a concept that I have consistently ridiculed, because I have
personal experience of it: the hard border on the island of
Ireland.
There could have been a “Panorama” or “Spotlight” investigation
to show how ludicrous it is and how porous the border is. It was
nonsense to be bullied by the EU to agree to some sort of trading
regime between the UK and the EU because of the threat of a hard
border when it could not materialise, because there were 280
physical crossing points on the land border, which only stretches
for 300 miles. It would take a military force of some hundred
thousand personnel to man up, and we had 30,000 personnel when
there was a murder campaign and they could not create a hard
border. But there was no “Spotlight” or “Panorama” investigation
into the concept of a hard border.
Similarly, at the moment we have a trading issue between Northern
Ireland and GB, which is hopefully being resolved. We could have
an investigative programme into the problems that some people
have in trying to get plants and seeds from GB into Northern
Ireland. A simple reporter, with a photographer, cameraman and a
sound person, could go on the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer,
acquire a few plants and seeds, put them in a car, drive back to
the ferry and return to Northern Ireland with no problem caused
to the EU single market. Yet the EU demands certain regulations,
which we hope are being resolved. There is no investigation by
the BBC, when it could and should be doing one.
Another issue that is coming up is a BBC Four programme called
“Shooting the Rapids”. It is to be broadcast this weekend,
although I will obviously reserve complete judgment until I watch
it. In it, a former director-general of the BBC says that the
British public were not being told the truth about the troubles
in the 1960s and 1970s in Northern Ireland because—I apologise
for the language—
“the bloody Protestants were running the BBC in Northern
Ireland.”
I do not know where he has been for the last 30 or 40 years, but
he needs to come back and check who is running the BBC in
Northern Ireland now. Martin Bell and Denis Tuohy of the BBC also
say that the BBC was prevented from telling the British public
about discrimination against Catholics in education, work and
housing. If they had come to me or gone to people I would have
recommended they speak to about disadvantage in education, work
and housing, they would have seen that it is not the people they
think, but many Protestants, who are currently disadvantaged in
those sectors.
So there are some programmes, and I hope the Minister will take
on board the issues. I do not expect her to respond to every
assertion about individual programmes, but there is an Ofcom
responsibility and a Government responsibility, particularly
regarding the recent mid-term review, to tell the BBC that there
have been a plethora of assertions and allegations made against
its coverage and its partiality and partisanship in news
reporting.
(South Antrim) (DUP)
There is very much an imbalance within the BBC in relation to
those in frontline reporting being from one section of the
community or another. The difficulty we have is that there seems
to be a hidden agenda in terms of what happens not only in
Northern Ireland but in this House. What is deemed important is
what is made important by the media, not necessarily the general
public; it is what the media want to portray as the most
important thing to focus on.
(in the Chair)
Order. Before the hon. Member responds, let me say that I am sure
we are all looking forward to him making his peroration so that
everybody gets a good crack of the whip.
Mr Campbell
Thank you, Ms Bardell, and I will bring my remarks to a close. I
agree with my hon. Friend. These issues have to be investigated.
Hopefully the Minister, who I know takes a deep interest in these
issues, will be able to raise them with the director-general and
we will see, not words, promises and new guidelines, but action
from the BBC, both nationally and in the regions.
(in the Chair)
Before I call , let me say that I am going to
impose a formal time limit of four minutes to allow interventions
and to make sure that everybody can get in.
3.03pm
(St Austell and Newquay)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I
congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for
Northampton North (Sir ) on securing this important
debate. He made an excellent opening speech and, as I have only a
few minutes, I will not cover the ground that he covered. He made
great points and cited specific cases where the BBC is clearly
failing in its responsibility to be impartial, particularly in
regard to the reporting of the events in Israel and Gaza.
The BBC enjoys a privileged position in our country, particularly
in the broadcast media. It is funded by the licence fee—it is,
effectively, publicly funded—and we have a right to expect it to
uphold higher standards than anyone else. Comments were made
about other broadcasters, but we expect the BBC to set the
standard and to provide the leadership that others will hopefully
follow. I believe that it has failed to do that in recent months
with regard to Israel and Gaza.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North
cited a number of incidents, but I will highlight the case of the
rocket that hit the hospital. It felt like the BBC could not wait
to jump to the conclusion that it must have been Israel It seemed
almost disappointed when it came out that it clearly was not and
it grudgingly had to admit that it had got its initial reports
wrong.
That raises a number of serious concerns about what is going on
at the BBC. I sometimes wonder whether it has a blind spot and is
so blinded by its views about Israel that it
cannot see how biased it is being in its reporting, or whether it
is aware that it is being biased but just does not care. I am not
quite sure which it is, but it has to be one of those two. The
BBC seriously needs to assess what is going on and the way the
conflict is being reported on its broadcast news media, because
it has a role in shaping public views. Clearly, we have seen a
rise in the number of antisemitic incidents taking place in
recent months in this country and the shameful treatment of a
number of members of our Jewish community across the country. It
is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that, sadly,
the BBC has contributed to that because it has
presented Israel in such a poor
light over recent months.
I am not saying that Israel is faultless and
never gets anything wrong, but it feels like the BBC will report
Hamas reports, statistics and numbers without any qualification,
without any sense of caution that that information is coming from
Hamas, yet when Israel reports
something, it is highly qualified as though the BBC is saying,
“It is Israel telling us this.
Therefore we need to treat this cautiously.” I think that that is
having an impact on the public’s view and on the public
perception of what is happening. Sadly, that is feeding through
into what we are seeing on our streets.
In the mid-term release on the BBC, assessing its charter
responsibilities, the Secretary of State did lead on the issue of
and concerns about impartiality. That leads me to believe that
the Government perhaps share many of our concerns about the
impartiality of the BBC, so I simply ask this in concluding: what
further discussions are going on with the BBC to hold it to
account and to its obligation to be impartial and to fulfil its
public service obligation in reporting the news from Gaza
and Israel
3.07pm
(Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I
congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for
Northampton North (Sir ) on securing this debate.
All reporting on this conflict should be done from the starting
point of remembering that on one side we have a Jew-hating,
gay-hating, misogynistic, terrorist death and rape cult, and on
the other we have a democratic, liberal state with strong
independent processes, which was attacked on 7 October. The fact
that 77% of British Jews—remember that just 0.5% of the
population of this country is Jewish—do not consider its coverage
to be fair should be taken by the BBC as a cry of pain from the
Jewish community, and it should take that very, very
seriously.
My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned the director-general’s
recent email. I ask the Minister to follow up with the
director-general to ask what he is actually doing to respond to
these examples of antisemitism in the BBC. In a debate a couple
of months ago, I described the BBC as Israelophobic, and I think
that the words that my right hon. and learned Friend used—about
it having an institutional problem with antisemitism —are
absolutely true. That is fuelling not only hate towards the
Jewish population in this country; the way in which the BBC is
presenting this conflict on television is also fuelling hate
towards Members of Parliament.
Why do I say that? We have heard my right hon. and learned Friend
talk about how the BBC continues to quote as fact casualty
figures from Hamas—an organisation that has previously
misrepresented casualty figures. Meanwhile, Israeli witnesses to
the rape of Israeli women on 7 October had their story told on
the BBC with the proviso that the BBC had been unable to verify
those claims. That was not applied to Hamas, of course. The BBC
has deliberately presented this conflict from the point of view
of civilians in Gaza and contrasted that with the Israeli
military or with Israeli politicians, including those at the most
extreme ends of the Israeli Government, with whom all of us on
the Government side of the House would have little to do and who,
at the end of the day, have little impact on the positioning of
the Israeli Government’s policies.
The BBC has chosen to subject viewers to an antisemitic “The
Apprentice” participant. Even when it became aware of that, it
offered him sensitivity training. I have written to the BBC
numerous times asking who provided that training and what the
specific content was on antisemitism, because none of the
charities that deal with this and have expertise on this, such as
the Antisemitism Policy Trust, were involved, and the BBC will
not tell me.
As Hamas perpetrated its massacres on 7 October, the BBC aired an
interview with Refaat Alareer, a lecturer at the Islamic
University of Gaza, who described the attacks as “resistance” and
“legitimate and moral”. A senior BBC broadcast journalist joked
about a woman whose grandmother was abducted by Hamas as
receiving an “inheritance”. On Christmas eve, the BBC reported
unverified and false claims from Hamas that the Israel Defence Forces
were carrying out summary executions—it had to apologise for
that. Today we see an example of that with the coverage of
civilians in Gaza. Of course, there is absolutely no doubt that
civilians are suffering, but the coverage provided on the BBC
today is not something that was given to members of Israeli
society or to those victims. I would like to go on, but the
speaking time in the debate is so limited that it is impossible
to.
In my final few minutes, I will ask the Minister to do a couple
of things. One is to ask the BBC for a full review of how its
coverage of this conflict contrasts with others’, and the other
is to ask whether the BBC plans to offer proper antisemitism
training, provided by actual members of the community with
expertise on the subject.
3.11pm
(Gravesham) (Con)
I, too, am concerned about the BBC’s persistent failure to fulfil
its legal obligation to be impartial. We saw this with Brexit. To
give an example, News-watch, which is an independent monitoring
organisation run by a former BBC producer, said that, on Europe,
there were twice as many remainers as pro-Brexit speakers, with
an even greater imbalance in the amount of time people had to
speak, at 7:3, or nearly 9,000 words against 4,000 words. No
wonder the political elites of this country were stunned by the
result of the referendum—they did not see it coming.
The BBC, in its language about Brexit, was not impartial, as
illustrated by it persistently describing leaving without a deal
with the EU as a so-called cliff-edge Brexit. No one wanted that
outcome, but the BBC should not have been portraying it as a
potential disaster via the terminology it used.
I wish I had thought of that for my speech. The reality is that
the BBC fails to impartially report the multiplicity of
viewpoints in the UK. It prides itself on diversity, but it has a
real lack of diversity of thought. There is an intellectual
homogeneity, which means there is no real balance of opinion
among its staff. There is no recognition among those who make the
decisions at the BBC that a recruitment policy that broadened its
culture would better serve licence fee payers and better reflect
the BBC’s viewers and the wider country.
Today the stakes seem very much higher, as we heard in the superb
speech by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for
Northampton North (Sir ). Given that the BBC has
these huge resources made available to it via the licence fee,
and given the heightened tensions here as a result of the crisis
in the middle east, we thought it really could do a bit better.
In 2021, colleagues and I wrote to the Prime Minister and urged
him to consider directing Ofcom to deal directly with all
impartiality events at the BBC, rather than letting the BBC do
those itself in the first instance. Of course, that would need to
be accompanied by some changes in Ofcom; to deal with complaints
impartially and objectively, its contents board needs to change,
because it seems to be stuffed with former BBC lifers. I also
urge Ministers to consider requiring the BBC to set up an
independent unit to monitor bias on an ongoing basis.
3.14pm
(Stone) (Con)
I would first like to refer to some figures from the past five
years on the complaints made by licence fee payers—that is,
taxpayers, 90-odd per cent of whom pay for the BBC. According to
the figures, there were 1,935,179—nearly 2 million—audience
complaints to the BBC from 2017 to 2023, of which only 3,692
progressed to the BBC executive complaints unit. Only 147
complaints were upheld or partially upheld by that unit, and only
four of the 1,067 escalated to Ofcom were decided to be BBC
breaches of the broadcasting code. It goes from 2 million
complaints to four breaches upheld by Ofcom.
That tells us a great deal. Anyone with half a brain would
realise that the rest of the 2 million complaints must have
contained, and do contain—as people know from their common sense
and personal experience—gross breaches of impartiality. I have
been talking to Ministers about that for several years. To my
great regret, the mid-term review was revealed to the public by a
mere written ministerial statement, when it should have been done
by an oral statement on the Floor of the House. I hope I have got
that right, but that is my understanding.
Secondly, we need a proper, full debate. I pay tribute to my
right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North
(Sir ) for raising this issue, with
particular emphasis on the Hamas-Israel situation. However, the
problem goes very much deeper. It is an endemic, almost perpetual
problem, to which there appears to be no answer. Great importance
should therefore be attached to the need to propose or implement
an effective and workable regulatory structure between the BBC
and Ofcom, and to reform Ofcom’s role in the complaints
framework.
An inadequate reform of the complaints framework has been going
on, and particularly the intended roles of the BBC board and the
editorial guidance and standards committee. Despite the
Government’s recognition of the inadequacies of the BBC, there
has been a failure to initiate an independent framework for
handling complaints. Although we need a vital reform to
facilitate the closer scrutiny of impartiality, with no reason
specified that has unnecessarily been postponed until the next
charter review in 2027.
A major omission of the review is a failure to define
“impartiality”. The review actually claims that the task was too
complex. I find that astonishing, particularly when one considers
that the Oxford dictionary definition of “impartiality”, which is
pretty standard stuff, insists quite clearly that
“official judgements and reports should be based on objective and
relevant criteria, without bias or prejudice”.
All the evidence points in the other direction. The figures that
I have given are absolutely astonishing, and it is a great
failure for us not to have managed to get this right.
I pay tribute to this Minister, and to other Ministers who have
participated in this process, but I have to say that it has not
met the degree of performance for which we would have hoped. We
were hoping for a mid-term review that would deal with the issue
of impartiality, and I regret to say that this will need a bigger
debate on the Floor of the House, with the Minister giving a full
account and every Member having the opportunity, cross-party, to
get this thing right once and for all.
3.19pm
Sir (Elmet and Rothwell)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I
congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for
Northampton North (Sir ), whose opening speech
covered such a wide area, with many vital points backed up by the
evidence that his fine legal mind was always going to bring to
this debate.
My Jewish constituents are bloody terrified now. It was bad
enough leading up to the 2019 general election, when many of them
felt that they would leave this country, but they had fairly good
faith that the Labour party would not win that election. Now,
they are truly terrified. I have heard my hon. Friend the Member
for Brigg and Goole () say that he feels safer
in Israel than on the
streets of his own country. That is true for a great number of my
constituents who, to make matters worse, are seeing an in-built
bias in the BBC almost justifying those launching antisemitic
attacks against my constituents.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I did not get chance to
say this because of the limited time, but will he consider the
coverage today on the BBC? Once again, the picture being painted
by the BBC is of suffering Gazans—who inevitably are suffering,
of course—versus a well-armed Israeli military trying to deal
with Hamas. There are no images of Hamas fighters or the hostages
being held. It is this picture of civilians versus the Israeli
military that gives a wholly false impression of the battle going
on. There is a whole day of it today on the BBC, and all that
will do is lead to more threats and abuse for Jewish people in
this country. Nobody has been able to verify any of the
information coming out, and we know that people cannot speak
freely because Hamas control the message and control people. The
coverage today is appalling.
Sir
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He brings to the debate a unique
perspective on what is actually happening to the Jewish
population in this country; it is more than I could hope to
describe at this time.
There are several ways in which how terrible the Israelis are
just creeps in, especially when listening to the radio, when we
do not necessarily have the pictures. For example, Israel have bombed a
refugee camp”—most people believe that a refugee camp is an area
full of tents and people who have been displaced and are
suffering. These are historical refugee camps, with concrete
buildings and towns that have been built around them. The
laziness about going further and actually describing the
situation adds to these issues.
The BBC is a very important institution in this country. There is
always a role for public service broadcasting, but I hear so many
of my constituents say that they hate the BBC. I would argue that
what they hate is BBC News, not the BBC itself, but the reality
is that the BBC’s bias is coming through in so many ways. Gary
Lineker can say what he wants, but those who said that he could
not say it and then did nothing about it are doing untold damage
to the credibility of the BBC.
Would my right hon. Friend like to lay a bet that these
particular proceedings will not appear on “Today in Parliament”
tomorrow morning?
Sir
That is quite amusing. I was sat here wondering if we would
actually make “Today in Parliament”; I think it may get a
mention, but it will probably be quite well edited. The reality
is that we live in a world where people are willing to be more
militant. If the BBC does not grasp this problem and deal with
it, people will stop paying their licence fee and damn the
consequences. They can overwhelm it with social media, a bit like
when the poll tax happened and it basically got dropped because
no one was paying it. That is one of the issues for the BBC.
If we ask people, they say they listen to BBC Radio and football
coverage a lot. A public service broadcaster has an important
role in any country. When we have these debates, we must be
careful not to give the impression that we want to abolish the
BBC. What we all want is quality, independent, impartial news
coverage that allows the public to get a view of what is actually
happening in the world. There are plenty of television and news
stations, especially in the advent of digital television, that
will pander to people’s opinions if they want that. A public
service broadcaster must always be above that.
I cast my mind back to when, on the “Today” programme, Amol Rajan
was interviewing the Home Secretary, who told him
“if you’re just going to make a statement, I can go and get a cup
of tea”.
I had never heard that on the “Today” programme. It is vital that
some of the most hard-hitting questions should be put to
politicians, and we should be able to answer them. I do not care
how bad they are, as long as everybody gets the same toughness of
interview and questions. But it is not up to journalists to sit
there and make statements towards the politician they are
interviewing; it is up to them to probe the policies they are
running and where they are at. If that ends up embarrassing the
politician, so be it, but it has to be equal across the
board.
I have a great concern that what is happening at the BBC is
undermining the entire institution. What potential conversations
can the Minister have to ensure that those who are setting the
rules to protect the impartiality of the BBC, but are doing
absolutely nothing to enforce them, can be held to account? I
believe that this institution is vital across the world and to
this country, as long as it is doing what it is supposed to be
doing, and, at the moment, it is not.
(in the Chair)
I thank Members for their brevity. We come to the Front Benches
earlier than expected, starting with the SNP spokesperson.
3.25pm
(Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Thank you for your work in chairing today’s debate, Ms Bardell,
and I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for
Northampton North (Sir ) on obtaining the debate. I
will cover a few things, some of which have been covered and some
of which have not been so much.
Public service broadcasting is incredibly important, and it is
incredibly important that impartiality is measured and is there
in the broadcasting. Many UK Government decisions have undermined
the impartiality of the BBC, including the director-general being
a former Tory candidate, and including a personal friend of
being made the chair of the
BBC—a Tory donor who donated £400,000 to the party and lent
£800,000 to Mr Johnson specifically. So there is an issue with
impartiality—an issue with being seen to be impartial, as well as
with potentially being impartial.
I have a BBC studio in my constituency that does local news in
Aberdeen and has also been involved in some big events that have
happened. For example, when the Queen passed away, it was the
first on the scene reporting. I want to be clear to those people
working in my constituency, and across the BBC, that we are not
saying—nobody in this room, I think, is saying—that any of them
individually are antisemitic, other than perhaps the ones that
were mentioned by name. It is not—I do not think, from anyone—an
attack on these individuals. I want to be clear that we value the
work that they do and the fact that they do report in sometimes
incredibly difficult conditions. Sometimes reporting is got wrong
from every broadcaster; mistakes are made and they need to be as
swiftly as possible rectified.
I want to be clear about the BBC’s position on what happened in
relation to al-Ahli Hospital. It said that
“contrary to many reports—the BBC did not claim that the Israelis
were responsible for the attack. We, along with many other…media
organisations, reported initial claims by Palestinian officials
and eye-witnesses…that this was an Israeli air strike…We
attributed the claim to those making it.”
The BBC sought a response immediately from the IDF, and when
“the Israeli authorities countered those claims”,
the BBC “prominently and consistently” reported the position of
the IDF. That is the BBC’s position. It may be an idea to watch
back some of that coverage to see what exactly was said by the
journalists at the time.
I like the hon. Lady and I hate to criticise her on this, but I
think that that is not really credible. The BBC reported it, and
I believe—I will check this—that it went out on push
notifications. The fact remains that as a serious public
broadcaster, on an issue as sensitive and as serious as this, the
BBC should have applied independent verification to this story—as
it demands and requires Israel to provide on
claims—before it put that out and gave it such prominence. So I
do not think that its response is really credible, with respect
to the hon. Lady.
I just felt that this was the BBC’s position and I wanted that to
be clear, because it does not have a voice in this debate right
now.
Sir
It may just help if I repeat the BBC’s breaking news Twitter
account—the push notification to 51 million followers:
“Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli airstrike on hospital
in Gaza, Palestinian officials say”.
Which, in that, is attributed to Palestinian officials, but
absolutely—I think it is worth watching it back. But the BBC
position is that it was very clear about that.
On the ideas around the bias or the lack of impartiality,
apparently 36% of the public see the BBC as neutral; 15% see the
BBC as pro-Palestine; and 17% see it as pro-Israel. There have
been protests outside BBC studios throughout Scotland suggesting
that the BBC is in fact too pro-Israel. Those protests have taken
place outside a number of BBC studios in Scotland, including
twice in Aberdeen. Any of those things are concerning and
worrying for staff. People absolutely have a right to protest.
Whichever the view of the protesters, the protests can be
worrying for people who are perhaps not anywhere near reporting
on either what is happening in Gaza or on any other sort of
foreign affairs.
I am sorry to do this again, but I heard this when I met the BBC.
I have had it said to me that, “Look, a lot of people think we
are pro-Palestinian. A lot of people think we are pro-Israeli.”
That is irrelevant. It is about the actual coverage; it does not
matter what the perception is. That does not mean that there is
not an issue here. I have so far not found a single example of a
BBC journalist who has had to be dealt with, suspended or
reported for making pro-Israeli statements on their social media
accounts, whereas there are plenty that relate to this. The fact
that there might be that perception does not alter the fact that
there is an issue.
Actually, I do think the perception is important. It is also
important that, as the hon. Gentleman said, 77% of Jewish people
in the UK think that the BBC is biased. Having said all of that
about the views of the general population, it is none the less
incredibly important to listen to the communities who have a long
history of persecution, particularly Jewish people. It is
incredibly important to listen to those views and to understand
that, if a community feels that the BBC is doing something wrong,
it needs to take that incredibly seriously.
Sir
The hon. Lady has been generous in giving way. I reiterate the
point, which I am sure she will agree with, that it is very easy
for people to make any sort of claim or counter-claim, but there
needs to be some evidence. I like to think that in my speech I
gave numerous evidenced examples. If people are going to say that
there is evidence of BBC pro-Israel bias, they need to be able to
cite some examples of that. I do not think they will be able to
do that.
Given that I came to talk more generally about the impartiality
of BBC news and I had few notes on the conflict in Gaza, I am
afraid I do not have an answer. I am not here to defend the BBC.
I just wanted to be clear on what its position was, particularly
around that one incident that was mentioned.
I met representatives of the Union of Jewish Students in the wake
of the beginning of the conflict. We spoke about what was
happening at the University of Aberdeen and how safe or unsafe
they felt on campus. They raised concerns with me about
reporting, but the concerns that they raised were not
specifically about the BBC; they were about reporting in general.
It is very important for us to listen to those people who are
saying, “We are being discriminated against” or “There is bias
against us” because, as a non-Jewish person, I do not feel, see
or hear all the undercurrents. It is not only we as
parliamentarians who must listen to such views; the BBC must
ensure that it listens to members of the community who are the
experts in this when providing diversity training, as the hon.
Member for Brigg and Goole () mentioned. I absolutely agree
with his suggestion that the training should be carried out by
those people who are genuine experts, such as Antisemitism Policy
Trust. I will declare an interest. Members can look at my entry
in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in relation to
that.
It is important to think about the regulation of the BBC. We
recently had the first Media Bill in 20 years. It has been a long
time since there was a change to the regulation of public service
broadcasting in general. However, the BBC is governed by the
charter and the agreement that comes alongside it. In some ways,
Parliament is unable to take action on this; that is more in the
remit of the UK Government. I ask the Minister, when she is
looking at this, to look at some of the genuinely good work the
BBC has done around increasing diversity—I have spoken to it
about that in recent times—and to assess whether she, the
Government, and the communities that are impacted feel that the
10-point plan and the impartiality and diversity training the BBC
has put in place are sufficient, so that the BBC can be
impartial, continue to be respected, and provide the public
service broadcast that so many people rely on in order to get
their news.
3.35pm
(Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Bardell. I
would like to begin by congratulating the right hon. and learned
Member for Northampton North (Sir ) on securing this important
debate. Impartiality has always been, and must remain, a crucial
underpinning of the BBC. It is right that the BBC is
operationally and editorially independent from Government, and
that impartiality is embedded in its governance at every level.
As a result, not only do eight out of 10 UK adults consume BBC
news on average per week—double the next nearest provider—BBC
news is unique in its ability to gain the trust of audiences in
the UK regardless of their political persuasion.
As has been discussed in this debate—we have heard opinions from
across the House, and indeed across the country, from East
Londonderry, St Austell, Brigg and Goole, Gravesham, Stone, and
Elmet and Rothwell—many are deeply concerned about the
impartiality of coverage regarding the terrible events
in Israel and Palestine,
where over the past few months we have seen an intolerable loss
of life and an unacceptable growing humanitarian disaster in
Gaza. There has been some debate over the way the BBC chooses to
use the word “terrorist”. To be absolutely clear, Hamas are
terrorists, and proscribed as such in UK law. Hamas has committed
brutal atrocities and I call it a terrorist organisation, as is
only right. The BBC is responsible for its own editorial
guidelines, and it is not for politicians to tell it what should
and should not be included in them. However, I will use the word
“terrorists”, and it will report that I did.
On the BBC’s coverage of the topic more broadly, concerns over
impartiality have been raised by people of many different
persuasions and backgrounds. A poll conducted by More in Common
found that roughly equal numbers of people find the BBC’s
coverage to be as pro-Israel as pro-Palestine. However, an even
larger percentage of the 2,000 people polled said they felt that
the public service broadcaster’s output on the conflict
between Israel and Hamas had
been mostly neutral. That is not to say that the BBC makes no
mistakes, and when it does, it must work swiftly to rectify them.
That is particularly important at a point where community
tensions are high. The Community Security Trust, a charity that
works to eradicate antisemitism, has reported a staggering 500%
rise in antisemitism, and Tell MAMA, a project working to address
anti-Muslim hatred, has reported over 2,000 Islamophobic
incidents between 7 October and 7 February—more than triple the
600 reported during the same period the year before.
We must denounce hate crime in the strongest terms, and I expect
to see a robust response to all incidents of hate associated with
the conflict. I recently met the Community Security Trust, Stand
Up! and Maccabi GB to discuss the worrying rise in antisemitism
and Islamophobia and the work going on in communities to promote
tolerance and integration. There is no place in Britain for
antisemitism or Islamophobia, and all of our media outlets have a
duty to report responsibly and accurately on both the conflict
itself and the rise of hatred in this country. With that in mind,
it is concerning that Jewish employees at the BBC have raised
complaints about its coverage. The BBC says it has
well-established and robust processes in place to handle any
issues, concerns or complaints, so I would hope and expect that
to be dealt with fairly and accordingly.
Does the hon. Lady agree that although the word “racist” is often
used in this context, much of it is actually to do with divisions
of opinion on matters of religion, and that is very much at the
heart of a lot of these problems? If she does not know that, does
she recall that Gandhi himself, when asked what the most
important question about politics or religion is, said that those
who do not understand that politics is secondary to religion do
not know what they are talking about?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point; he has certainly put
it on the record. I would like to move on.
On the BBC’s record on impartiality and its complaints processes
more broadly, it is timely that the Government’s mid-term review
has finally been published, as it looked directly at those
issues. Indeed, the review noted that the BBC has completed the
implementation of its 10-point plan, following the Serota review,
with measures including impartiality training for staff, internal
content reviews and regular staff surveys on impartiality.
Further to that, following the independent review by John Hardie
in 2023, the mid-term review also notes the new social media
guidance for BBC presenters who do not cover news, current
affairs or factual journalism.
The Government also found in the review that BBC First delivers
fair complaints decisions that withstand scrutiny from the
regulator. In terms of improving that further, the review makes a
number of recommendations, including external scrutiny of
complaints, improving the visibility and clarity of the process,
ensuring the quality and timeliness of responses, and giving
greater transparency on decision making. It is important that
action is taken to work on those, and that Ofcom looks at
progress in those areas when it reviews BBC First before the
charter renewal.
Like any institution, the BBC does not get everything right. It
is, however, a cornerstone of our creative economy and an
important part of our day-to-day lives. The BBC is an important
national institution, and we believe we must secure its future as
a universal, publicly owned, public service broadcaster, not
least in a world where misinformation is rife and public interest
journalism is becoming harder to access.
3.41pm
The Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries ()
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I
thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton
North (Sir ) for securing an incredibly
important debate on the impartiality of the BBC, and the
Government’s role in upholding it. I am also grateful to every
hon. Member who has contributed this afternoon, as well as the
Opposition spokespeople, including the hon. Member for Barnsley
East (), whose contributions
have been constructive.
I appreciate the important words that were said in relation to
Hamas as a terrorist organisation, and a clear understanding that
the Government have taken action, but will keep a lot of these
matters under review. I think there is unanimity here that the
BBC is an incredibly important organisation, the integrity of
which we all fundamentally seek to uphold. That is why we are
here today talking about this issue. There is a collective desire
in this House to focus the BBC on its core purpose when it comes
to news, to report on the world with a relentless dedication to
facts and truth. That is the foundation on which trust is
built.
Trust, in my opinion, is the BBC’s currency in a very complex,
ever-changing world where regional events can ricochet with great
consequence into the communities and neighbourhoods of the UK.
Hon. Friends have spoken of that and given examples, and it
causes me a great deal of concern, both for my constituents and
for my Jewish and Muslim friends, who have received pretty
horrifying attacks from the same source—Islamist
fundamentalism.
That worries me deeply, and nobody in the UK wants to see that
play out in our streets. We have a duty to try to lower the heat,
and also to have difficult, complex arguments on this issue. That
is why we all feel strongly about the BBC’s role in that. We have
an implicit social contract that grants the BBC a unique place in
national life, with an equally unique funding structure in the
licence fee, because it is bound by duties that commit it to that
truth-telling and the reflection of communities in every corner
of the UK.
Having a public service broadcaster structured in such a way says
something very important about our values as a society, where a
commitment to freedom of expression and openness provides an
increasingly stark contrast to jurisdictions where the truth is
manipulated or suppressed, or focused only on stories of the
powerful. We can see that in how conflicts are reported around
the world in other countries.
Indeed, the first public purpose listed in its royal charter
requires the BBC to provide duly accurate and impartial news and
information. The impartiality of the BBC goes to the heart of the
contract between the corporation and all the licence-fee payers
it serves. The public rightly expect the BBC to be an exemplar of
impartiality and accuracy, while allowing a range of opinions to
be offered and debated.
Of course, the BBC is not there as an instrument of Government.
Ministers seeking to interfere with editorial decisions or the
day-to-day running of the organisation would be in nobody’s
interests, in seeking to build the trust that is so fundamental
to its core purpose.
Will the Minister commit to putting forward the idea that there
should be a proper definition, along the lines of the Oxford
dictionary, as I mentioned, so that we have a definition of
impartiality in the charter, as well as the statement she has
just made about it?
I am always happy to engage with my hon. Friend on those sorts of
issues, which we have engaged on in relation to the mid-term
review. I shall look into the particular issue he raises on the
definition of impartiality, although I suspect that it is written
down in some of the documents. It may not be in the charter
itself, but we do talk to the BBC about this on a very regular
basis.
As hon. Members will be aware, I tread a fine line here. I
appreciate that there may be a desire from colleagues for me to
go very far in sticking the boot into the BBC on certain issues.
I want to ensure that I am always on the right side of that line,
because I would not seek to undermine the trust that the BBC must
put at the centre of its compact with the public.
By the same token, if concerns are expressed by citizens of this
country, and by hon. Members on their behalf, about how the BBC
is carrying out its duties to fair and impartial news, and the
structures that hold it to account, then I think that requires a
response. No organisation, particularly one of the BBC’s nature,
should be exempt from scrutiny. If large numbers of citizens are
questioning the legitimacy of the BBC’s funding model as a
result, in a way that I fear might risk undermining the future
sustainability of the organisation, then it is fundamentally in
the interest of the BBC for there to be a response.
Sir
We often find the left screaming that the BBC is a Tory
mouthpiece and the right screaming that the BBC is a left-wing
mouthpiece—that is political opinion, and it probably means that
it has got it roughly right. But there are indisputable facts
that are black and white, as with the bombing of the hospital and
the failure to verify sources. That is where the BBC is taking a
wrong turn. That is what is fundamentally undermining the
credibility of its impartiality. It is not the knockabout
politics we have on particular issues; these are black and white
facts.
That is the point that I am trying to make. We do not seek to
interfere with the BBC editorially, but where there is a risk
that trust and faith in the organisation will be undermined
because of how it is being run, that should be of concern to the
BBC, of concern to Ofcom and of concern to the Government.
Further to the point from my right hon. Friend the Member for
Elmet and Rothwell (Sir ), I feel we are being
trolled in this debate. Someone has just sent me a picture of the
main banner running alongside the BBC News website at 3.39 pm
today, which says:
“Gaza health ministry: 29,878 Palestinians killed”.
We are being trolled in this debate. There is no reference to
that being Hamas’s figures. There is no reference to the fact
that we know that thousands of those people who have been killed
are Hamas operatives. These are the very issues we have raised
today. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that there are
facts, and then there are opinions. It is a fact that these are
Hamas’s figures, but they are not being presented as such. In
this very debate in which we are calling this out, the BBC is
trolling us. It is having a laugh.
As I say, I am trying to get the line correct between giving the
BBC editorial independence and expressing concern.
In the mid-term review, we have tried to ensure that there is
much greater power for the BBC board to conduct thematic reviews
of complaints and to have much more independence from the
editorial teams, so that if there is a clear pattern coming
through in the nature of the complaints about the BBC’s reporting
and editorial decision making, the BBC can look into it. That is
a new innovation from the mid-term review.
I note that Samir Shah, the incoming chairman of the BBC, has
made reference to the idea that there may be an opportunity to
review how the BBC is reporting on foreign conflicts, to ensure
that the corporation is getting it right. This goes to the
fundamental currency of the BBC: it is a trusted organisation,
but with that level of trust comes a much deeper level of
responsibility. Hon. Members have spoken about how licence fee
payers are paying for this content and therefore rightly expect
certain standards to be adhered to.
A response is needed, not so that we can kick the organisation
and its dedicated reporters, but so that the BBC can discharge
its fundamental duties to be a beacon of trusted information in
an era of water muddying, truth bending and industrial
disinformation. That is precisely how we worked in the mid-term
review. Halfway through the royal charter, the review was an
opportunity to pause, examine and evaluate the effectiveness of
the BBC’s governance and regulation. The review focused on a
range of issues, including editorial standards and impartiality,
and our recommendations were unambiguous about the fact that
there is scope for material improvement across a variety of
areas.
The review highlighted that impartiality continues to be a major
challenge for the BBC. Audience perception that the BBC is not
sufficiently impartial is an ongoing issue. Within a culture of
continuous improvement, we think that more can be done. Following
direct and constructive dialogue with the Government, the BBC is
implementing major reforms, although perhaps not major enough for
my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.
That would be true. Surely an improvement would be to have a test
within a few months—a review of what has already been done under
the new system that has been created. If that fails, the whole
system fails.
My hon. Friend and I discussed the mid-term review and its
findings just before it was launched, and I said to him that
there is an opportunity to see how it is playing out, which will
inform some of our discussions about charter renewal and future
funding debates. A review of the funding model for the BBC is
forthcoming. We will invite all hon. Members to engage with that
review, which may be an opportunity for my hon. Friend’s views to
be aired loudly and persistently.
Sir
I am grateful to the Minister for highlighting the fact that
there will be a funding review, but how the BBC is funded is not
the issue. The BBC has built a reputation as the trusted news
source, and it is letting that reputation down. There will be a
BBC no matter how it is funded, and people will turn to it. The
problem now is that there is a bias being launched
against Israel That is a fact.
The hon. Member for Barnsley East () talked about a survey in
which people felt that it was balanced, but they are the ones
receiving the news, not the ones involved in it. It does not come
down to how the funding is put in place; it is about how we
ensure that the BBC keeps its impartiality.
I was referring to the next staging posts down the line. My hon.
Friend the Member for Stone suggested that the mid-term review
was not meaty enough for his tastes, so I was simply encouraging
him to engage in the next stages of the conversation. It is an
incredibly important national conversation that will involve not
just hon. Members, but the general public.
I have expressed to the director-general a concern that in public
life we sometimes focus on the micro issues in relation to the
BBC. I am not suggesting for one moment that this is one of those
issues, but we get involved in regular tussles without asking
fundamental questions about what we want the BBC to be going
forward. That is something that I hold very close to my heart,
because we are entering a very uncertain world in which
misinformation and disinformation are being industrialised, and
the BBC has an incredibly important role. It is in our interests
as a nation, and as a western nation, to try to ensure that its
future is safeguarded and that it maintains its public perception
of trust and impartiality. I simply encourage hon. Members, in
advance of the charter renewal process and in advance of
discussions on the funding fee, to ask some of those big,
searching questions about what we truly want the BBC to be.
As we are on the topic of asking questions, will the Minister
write to the director-general to ask him what his actual plan is
to deal with the institutionalised antisemitism in the BBC, which
I think he has acknowledged himself in his email to staff? Will
she ask him what specific training was given to the antisemitic,
racist star of “The Apprentice”—well, I will not call him a star,
because he is not a star; he is just a nasty little racist—on
content related to antisemitism, because the BBC will not tell
me? Will she ask him whether the BBC has an editorial note on
antisemitism within the newsroom and, if it does not, whether it
will produce one?
I thank my hon. Friend for those searching questions. I have
regular discussions with the director-general. Hon. Members
regularly talk to me about their concerns relating to how the BBC
is run, and I relay some of those concerns. We have open
discussions when he comes to see me and vice versa. As my hon.
Friend notes, an email has gone out to all staff within the BBC
in relation to antisemitism. I will be happy to discuss his
specific questions about training for the candidate for “The
Apprentice” and the other issues in person with the
director-general at our next meeting, if not before.
I have no doubt that somebody from the BBC will be listening to
this debate and noting the concerns that have been expressed in
this Chamber about how the organisation is run. It must be very
difficult in BBC newsrooms when staff have concerns about other
members of staff in relation to personal opinions on social media
that have recently come to light. Again, it goes back to the
fundamental interests of the organisation, which are to make sure
that staff can work in the newsrooms with a drive towards the
truth and without fear of intimidation from anybody else in that
newsroom.
I return to the mid-term review. We worked very hard with the BBC
and Ofcom to try to tackle the fundamental concerns that have
been raised about impartiality. A new, legally binding
responsibility on the BBC board will require it actively to
oversee the BBC’s complaints process to assure audiences that
their concerns are being fairly considered. I appreciate that
many hon. Members in this Chamber wanted to move on from the BBC
First complaints process. Again, that is an issue that will be
considered in charter renewal. We will also be closely monitoring
whether there is a substantial change in how complaints are
handled as a result of the mid-term review changes.
We have recommended that Ofcom’s regulatory responsibilities be
extended to the online content that the BBC produces. I believe
that one hon. Member referred to a complaint about how an
incident involving antisemitism on a bus in Oxford Street was
reported. That was part of the BBC’s online material, and it is
the kind of complaint that will be brought into scope because of
the mid-term review.
Will the Minister be good enough to take into account the views
of KC, a Cross Bencher in the
House of Lords who was a governor of the BBC? She wrote an
important letter to The Times or The Daily Telegraph—it does not
matter which—about the judgment of the BBC. Will the Minister
look at Baroness Deech’s extremely interesting letter and speak
to her about it?
(in the Chair)
Order. I have been generous in giving the Minister extra time to
answer all the questions, but I hope she will afford the same
consideration to the right hon. and learned Member for
Northampton North (Sir ) and allow him to sum up.
I shall look into the specific issue that my hon. Friend the
Member for Stone raised.
As I say, the mid-term review is by definition a stepping stone.
It takes us to charter review, which will be the time to ask many
more fundamental questions of the BBC. I do not wish to take up
any further time. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the
Member for Northampton North again for securing this debate.
3.57pm
Sir
I am grateful to you, Ms Bardell, and to Front-Bench and
particularly Back-Bench colleagues.
The BBC is a treasured institution. We care about it and want it
to prosper—that is why we are here—but it is failing. Ironically,
as colleagues have mentioned, today the BBC is heavily pushing
what it is calling its Gaza day. No one begrudges it that—that is
what it is entitled to do—but has the BBC done an Israel day? If it
purports to be neutral, it has to do both. Why not do
an Israel day? If Uruguay
and Paraguay were at war and the BBC did a Uruguay day, we would
find it also doing a Paraguay day. Why not interview the victims,
the injured, the Israeli families of the murdered of the pogrom
or the hostages who have been released? Why not interview the
heroes who saved civilians? If it purports to be neutral, it has
to do both, so it is a highly topical example. It is suspicious,
of course, because doing such an Israel day would
be a lot easier to arrange and could perhaps have been done
already.
Today the BBC is going some way to proving the case, but what
makes the BBC institutionally antisemitic is not that there is
bias or antisemitism within—sadly, there is a lot of that
everywhere—but the fact that the management have not done what
they should be doing about it. That is what makes it
institutional. BBC employees suffering abuse from within,
mistakes not being corrected, staff and so-called talent not
being disciplined and erroneous reports not being corrected or
being pushed out without responsible checking have inflamed
community tensions here in the UK, fuelled the rise in
antisemitism and harmed diplomatic efforts to end the
violence.
To hold oneself out as neutral and to be biased is a form of
corruption. The BBC can no longer be permitted to mark its own
homework.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Government’s role in upholding
the impartiality of BBC news coverage.
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