Welcome to this meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. This morning’s session is the long-planned hearing on the work of the BBC, part of our regular scrutiny of the corporation and ahead of the launch of the charter review. We are joined by Dr Samir Shah, chair of the BBC board, and Tim Davie, its director general. Welcome to you both. This is the first hearing in Parliament with the new Select Committee, although we were hosted by you both at Broadcasting House in November. Do any Members have any interests that they wish to declare at this point?

I am an ex-staff member—a long time ago.

Thank you very much. Our aim for today is to focus on long-term sustainability, vision and strategy for the BBC, and then we will get into the more operational matters. You will probably share our frustration that, as so often seems to be the case for these hearings, we will find ourselves discussing the latest scandal to have hit the BBC and the latest crisis. That is not where we would want to be as a Select Committee, and you must be as frustrated as we are by that, but we will have to come to those issues, including the recent issue of the Gaza TV programme, because they do raise significant questions about the BBC. We will come to that a bit later. We will discuss editorial decisions, the Gaza documentary, and behaviour and standards, but before we do that, I want to start by focusing on the fundamentals at the BBC: the issues of the charter, the licence fee and the case for public service broadcasting. Dr Shah, you came before our Committee the last time for your pre-appointment hearing. You may recall that you left the Committee with a few qualms about your willingness to answer some of the questions. Obviously, this was before you took up your post. We wanted to hear from you three months after you were appointed, if you remember, but the general election got in the way. You have had almost a year now in the role, so we hope that you will be able to be robust and frank with the Committee now about your view on some of the big-picture questions that we want to put to you, particularly about how the BBC is operating. We have a lot of questions to get to, so if you can both be direct and pithy and concise in your answers, that would be helpful. Dr Shah, as we move into the discussions about the BBC charter review, the BBC is facing a number of challenges, not least on its returned income, increased competition for audiences, the range of digital and technological advances, how people consume news, and their viewing habits. In this context, is there still a case for public service broadcasting and is there still a case for the BBC?

Chair, thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I will endeavour to answer your questions. As it happens, this is actually the anniversary—I started a year ago today.

Happy anniversary.

The short answer to your question is that not only is there a case for the BBC, but the case for the BBC is stronger than it has ever been before. If you look at the competition that is around—there are a lot of challenges, do not misunderstand me, and I will talk to some of the challenges that we have, but it seems to me as I have looked over the last year that the case for the BBC is huge. I will break it down into three different sections. The first and most important is news and the arrival of misinformation and disinformation. The fact is that when you leave it to the market, opinionated news is what happens. That is why it is so important that the BBC is the place to find fact-based journalism. In society, not just in Britain but in the world, there should be a space where people can be assured that you have fact-based journalism that is impartial. That is even more true now than it has ever been. When we come to discussing the World Service, that is an important point, because we are not acting alone. There are other actors, like Russia and China, trying to spread their information, so it is really important. The importance of the BBC as the place for fact-based journalism is stronger now than ever before. Secondly, there has been a lot of choice and a lot of programming, much of which is very good. Let us take streamers and one of the most popular bits, which is drama. The streamers’ drama tends to be aimed, for perfectly good commercial reasons, at a global audience. The BBC is passionate about making programmes that tell our story—the British story. We have amazing dramatists in this country who write and tell our stories. The BBC is the only organisation that can focus on British storytelling for a British audience, because we are paid for by the British people. The third area, which is now increasingly distinctive, is bringing the nation together. You would not turn to Netflix for a collective experience, but we can provide that, and we have done. Whether it is in terms of programming like “Gavin and Stacey”, or it is the coronation, we collect the nation. These three things, which Tim has very well articulated, make the case for the BBC and for public service broadcasting as a whole.

Can I ask you about your role as the chair of the board? You have articulated the vital importance of the BBC, but the challenges that you have articulated in some cases are quite existential. They are about the very future of the BBC, with regard to its charter review and its place in the world. At the same time, there are ongoing operational issues, which we will talk about later. It requires enormous strength from the board, but particularly from the board’s chair. Now that you are a year in, do you feel that you have what it takes to be able to offer that leadership?

Let me tell how I approach the business of being a chair. This is a very big, complex organisation facing a number of challenges at different levels. The way I have seen it is that at the very highest level the BBC is undergoing a huge transformation from being a broadcaster that has delivered programming through channels—what we would call legacy channels—to being a digital broadcaster where you deliver things on demand. This is in response to the changing way people are consuming content. This is a very big strategic change.

I am not asking about that; I am asking about you in your role as the person who needs to grip this now. The BBC is a world-class organisation and it has a phenomenal reputation, but that reputation needs to be guarded every single day. Can we be sure that you are the right man to steward it through these very choppy waters?

It is a good question, and the way that I have approached it is that I have asked for a board effectiveness review. That was carried out a few months ago by Chris Saul, a very distinguished figure, who has done much of this. One of the questions that he asked the rest of the board and the executive was about my own performance. You can ask him and I can send you the data, but the report came back with what I would say was a great endorsement of my chairing of the BBC. Nothing is ever perfect and I am making some changes—I can talk more about the changes that I am making—but the overall statement was that it was very supportive. The senior independent director, Sir Nicholas Serota, also said to me that he had talked to all the board and they were very supportive of the way that I have chaired the organisation, the way I have conducted myself and the job and role of the board.

What has been the biggest challenge that you have faced as chair so far in the last year?

Do you mean in terms of strategic challenges or personal challenges?

Either. Let us have both.

All right. Well, the personal challenge is quite interesting. It is an interesting point, because I began by saying that our job—the board’s job—is to hold the executive to account. When the papers come through, I tended to go straight to the questions that the board have about what the executive paper is on, whether it is about what we are doing about the East Bank or whatever the stories are. There was feedback that this began with slightly too aggressive a tone, and that we should let the executive first lay out what went well as well as what did not go so well, and then continue. That was managing the board to make sure that we gave the executives time to set out their stall before we went in and challenged them. I think that if you were to sit and watch any of our boards, they are pretty challenging—Tim can answer to that. I think the executives do feel that they are given quite a run for their money. Maybe I took the business of, “We need to hold them to account,” a little too hard and I have pulled back from that. At the bigger level, there is a top level of transformation, and we must not underestimate how that flows through the whole organisation. To go from channels and analogue to digital is a huge change. At the everyday level there is constant vigilance and impartiality, which we may come to. I have personally taken on board the whole question of the culture, and we can talk more about that. I have been asked a lot, “What are your specific strategic priorities?” I have three. The first is the future of the lens of independence. I want us to secure a charter for a generation. It is important that the charter protects the BBC’s independence. We can talk about why I think it should be for a generation. Secondly, we need a funding model that provides us universality, because that is a defining point of our public service mission.

What do you mean by universality?

I mean that everybody in the country should have a stake in the BBC, not just the subscribers to it. It should be accessible to everyone and it should be used by everyone—well, not completely, but we do well on that. Those are my two criteria for universality. The funding model, however we work on it—we can go into more detail about that, because we have done a lot of work on that—should deliver on those. The final thing is that I am really keen on decentralising the BBC. It is important that we move power out of London to outside, let us say, of the M25. It is really important, because when we do our research, the public do not exactly feel that the BBC reflects their concerns or views. They do not recognise the BBC in that way. We do need to tackle that. It goes back to universality. The BBC has to reflect the country as a whole.

We will push a bit more on the future of the BBC, and I will start with Tom.

That is exactly the question: what does mutualisation look like in practice? The basic principle that we should have greater audience involvement in what the BBC does is absolutely right. I will be honest: I am not quite sure how mutualisation works for the BBC. We are looking at it and examining it. The principle is a really good idea. There are issues here. People say that when it happens, it gets taken over by activists, and that is an issue. We need to guard against that. But I do agree with the principle that we should find ways to engage our shareholders—our licence fee payers—with the business of the BBC. As part of that, as you know, we are going into a public consultation about what the public want of their national broadcaster. Tim is very much across the detail of the questions that we are asking. That might begin to throw up some ideas. There have been other ideas—citizens assemblies and lots of different mechanisms by which about what you can encourage involvement and engagement. That is a good thing to do and we should do it. They pay for us, so it is quite right that we should hear them, listen to them and act on what they say to us.

Again, these are important questions. When we discuss the new charter, we really should talk about appointments to the board and how the process by which those appointments are made strengthens the independence of the BBC. To me the most important thing is to maintain the independence of the BBC, because that is where our reputation rests. I am not suggesting that the BBC board should not reflect the concerns of the country; I think that it should, and I think the political establishment should have—all of you represent people within the country and you have a right to have a view on the board, but I do think we should look at how we can strengthen the process and make it more independent.

The case for the BBC is stronger than ever but the jeopardy is higher. The first thing into the building blocks here is that we know that support for the BBC is based not wholly on, “Aren’t we good for you?” but on, “Are you used?” That is why we said universality is not just about access; it is about usage as well. That is why I am obsessed with the fact that, factually, 84% of people used the BBC last week and 95% used it last month. So the first thing that we can do to have a participatory BBC—I am actually worried about the participatory nature of our society as we speak about it today. Do people feel involved? The BBC has to be an essential, independent body where people can feel involved in civic society. The stakes are high. The first answer to your question is that the best thing that we can do is involve them in watching, listening, engaging, debating and being part of our process. The thing that we all have to worry about is people disengaging from that completely. Then we get to a set of mechanics, which we are working on. There is almost a ladder of different involvement that you could have: comment boards all the way up to—there are lots of ideas in the air—specific accounts where you have education that we could make more personalised. It is all those things—ways that you feel closer to the BBC and you own a stake in it. We own a lot of IP, and we may touch on IP. We all own the BBC’s IP. How do we make that apparent? It may not be just a co-op/mutual model—I am not criticising that. I do agree that we do not want any tokenistic measures and measures that, frankly, can be—we know that shareholder meetings do not often have all shareholders involved. I think your concerns are valid. We—

It is without doubt that when I spend time of a Friday evening, the people who come with the most views and share their perspective on the BBC may be those who are what we might call a core audience. I love them to bits, but if we are interested in the whole of society being engaged, it is important that every mechanic is either representative or brings in those people who are on the edges of our civic debate, not just those who want to be most involved. That is a central challenge to the ownership question. We all agree that building a link to the BBC and feeling ownership of it is important.

Linking the charter to funding?

In principle, the charter should establish the purpose and mission of the BBC and what it should be doing, and then, once we have decided that, we should ask what the best way of funding that is. That would be the way that we should do it. In the real world, we have three years to sort both things out and they probably will exist in parallel. They are in some cases two separate instances and in some cases they fit together, but we have to work with what we have. The logic says, “Let’s decide what the BBC is for and what it should do and then how to fund it,” but in the practical world we will have to engage in both discussions over the next year as we get to the final moment, which will be January ’28.

That would be the logic of it, but I think that we will have to work on both fronts at the same time.

We have had a first discussion, saying, “These are the various options.” We have had a constructive discussion with the DCMS, which you would expect. There is no rocket science here. This is, “Here are the options.” I agree with the conversation that we have just had: it is really important to say, “What do we need to deliver and what that will cost?” We are in a global marketplace in terms of funding content. The head of drama at the BBC has to find 30-plus dramas a year. That has a price tag attached and we have had significant money taken out of the BBC—30% out over a decade. We have to decide what we are going to do with this public service operation that we have, which is world-beating. Within that, we are having a discussion that says, “Okay, here are the models in the various parts of the world. Here are the options you can look at,” whether it is a household tax, whether it is fees, whether it is something else. There are all kinds of things. I have talked publicly about how we believe in the BBC that we need to reform. We do not believe that we should just sit and defend what we have. That is a really important point. We do not want to sit. We believe that reform is needed. I have talked about the level of progressiveness, the scope, the enforcement—all these things—and we are having those discussions.

The chair might want to talk about this, but advertising and subscription.

Yes, we are absolutely clear that advertising and subscription is not the right approach. It goes back to universality and back to that old phrase, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” If subscribers are paying, they will call the tune on what we make. If it is advertising, it is advertisers. We are certain that the people who should call the tune are the British public—the licence fee payer. That is why it needs universality. You can get that through either a reformed licence fee or another mechanism, but it is important to us that if the BBC is to remain the BBC as we know it—a public service broadcaster—it needs to be universal, essentially, and therefore it should be owned by the British public.

My understanding is that general taxation has been taken off the table. We would be sceptical because it allows the Government to have too close a say on it and we would like it to be slightly more independent. We are not thrilled by the notion of general taxation, but I am pleased to know that it has been taken off the table as an idea.

We will come on to the licence fee in a minute, Tom—hold that thought.

It may be that Tom wants to come back on the licence fee, but I want to ask about commercial income. Your organisation has a very enviable stock of IP, from the mother brand to individual pieces of creative output. There has been a strain on licence fee income, but I think that the bigger drop last year was in commercial income. Tim, could you say a bit about how that came about? The question what is to be done about it is probably for both of you.

We have ambitious plans for the commercial arm and I am very proud of what is—I will come to last year, but if you look at the track over the last few years, we have doubled the business. We have a £2 billion turnover. By 2023-24 we had returned £1.9 billion to the licence fee payer from the commercial arm. This business is the envy of the world. To have grown it in the way that we have done, with services like BritBox, getting distribution rights to “Bluey” and these deals that we have been making—it is very innovative and we have grown the business rapidly. There were some minor headwinds, in a market where there were major headwinds, in terms of our overall revenue last year, but profitability was still nearly £200 million. The challenge of the commercial business is a little bit apples and oranges in terms of the shape of the revenue and the money. As I have said before, the licence fee as constructed currently—and we will come on to that debate—is £3.8 billion or £3.9 billion, which costs £100 million to £200 million to collect. I do not have to make P&L work on that; I just have to make you get good value for £169.50. The commercial arm is £2 billion revenue. It hits its EBITDA or cash margin targets, but that is about a 10% margin. It also contributes a bit of return. All in, you are at £300 million. What I would say about the commercial going forward is that I am confident that we can grow the business. There is opportunity still. In the areas that you are talking about, our IP, we have a fantastic franchise—that is the word today, isn’t it?—which is called “BBC News”. We are investing in building an expanded bbc.com. We are ambitious. We welcome the increased debt facility that we have in that business, because it was not very geared, which is important. The issue with this is that there is a tension that I sit across, which is how much we take from the commercial arm in dividend to support ensuring the licence fee offer versus investing in the business long term. That tension is growing, because we are essentially having to move a business and transform it into the digital age, and that requires a lot of capital.

A lot of businesses struggle with that balance—reinvesting in the business versus dividends for shareholders.

Of course. I am not moaning about it. I am just saying that even if you doubled the commercial arm, it would not utterly transform the position that we are in with regard to the public service funding. That is what I am saying

Within the commercial income streams, where do you see the most promising lines of growth?

First, we are beginning to migrate from old-school linear channels, which have been kicking up money, to the obvious, which is the digital service. BritBox in the US now has over 4 million subscribers, has very low churn and the enterprise value is very high. The deals that we have on IP like “Bluey” are generating very serious return. We have put more money into production, audio production, so there are plenty of areas of growth.

We have very significant efforts. If you were to visit Darwen you would see our retention units and so on. We have better data now that we can deploy. We have seen some progress this year. We will see a bit of erosion. By the way, there is not a business model of a traditional media business that is not seeing significant erosion in its model as we move from limited choice to infinite choice. Having said that, we have the vast majority—24 million licences—in circulation. We will see licence fee revenue go up this year. The number of households will be down, but I do not think it will be down as far as the year before. There is no complacency there. There is a question for the longer term that relates to the scope of the licence fee and the value of it. All these things are material in terms of what retention you get, but we have a sophisticated and impressive operation in terms of revenue in the BBC. It is clear that the societal case for the BBC is stronger than ever, but it remains, at the licence fee level, quite transactional. In other words, if people feel that they are getting value for their licence fee, they may have all kinds of views—and believe me, they do—on the BBC and its output, but by and large the communities that we need to keep into the BBC and public service broadcasting are those who feel that they do not get enough—they are not viewing it enough. That is what we are working on.

May I add something about “no licence needed”? We need to be clear that there are two bits to it. There are people who are using that as a reason to evade paying the licence fee and there is a genuine group of people who do not use the BBC services. Where that might not have been a credible position 15 or 20 years ago, it is credible now that there is so much choice, you do not use the BBC. This is why the licence fee needs to be reformed. The trajectory, we know; we did very well last year and we managed to hold it up, but there is a trajectory, which is why the licence fee needs reforming. It needs reforming in its scope. Over the years it has reformed in its scope and what it captures. I am persuaded that we need to make it more progressive. That is worth thinking about as an issue. Also, we obviously need to enforce it, but I am troubled by the idea that in today’s world not paying the licence fee is a criminal offence. That is not to say that we do not need enforcement, but I am troubled by it, and whatever our reformed licence fee, it needs to address those points as well. It is quite an important point. As Tim said, we are keen to reform the licence fee to make sure that we meet these things as well as creating the scale that we need to deliver our mission.

If evasion of the licence fee is 11% at the moment, how high does it have to get before it undermines the universality of the BBC?

There are two questions. There is the usage and the funding. In terms of undermining universality, the biggest thing is usage. Then you work out how you charge against that usage to be fair. I will not repeat the numbers on usage, but we have had an exceptional year, and thank you to my teams for delivering the usage numbers. Off that, you can charge—you can legitimately say to people that they will be charged. I do not have a figure that says, “At this particular point.” What the chair has said is exactly where we are. For starters, a lot of it is just straight evasion. When we research, the vast majority of people say, “We want everyone to pay because we’re paying.” There is a small number of people, and it is small, who are not using, but the vast majority of it is evasion. Therefore, we need to be clear about scope and enforcement and all those things, to ensure that as many people are captured. Over time, of course, the data improves through digital usage and all the things that we can do. We are not quite there yet, but that will help us to ensure that we capture and get the income that we should be getting.

Have you done any modelling on what a progressive licence fee would look like in terms of keeping the same income for the BBC? Dr Shah, you mentioned that you are tempted by a more progressive model. Have you looked at how much more that would generate? I assume that you would charge wealthier people more at the higher end, but charge less well-off people less. Do you have any figures on that?

There has been quite a lot of modelling done on that.

We have modelled pretty much everything. It reminds me of one of those old-school graphic equalisers, where you could charge a bit more here: what would be the implications of that? We currently fund over-75s on pension credit. One of the biggest questions that we have going to the licence fee is what we pay for and what the Government pay for. Remember that for many decades the World Service, which we may well get to, was paid for by Government, and if we do these concessions, that was paid for by Government.

Sure. To return my question, though, have you modelled how much income you would get? Could you increase the income that the BBC could get under a progressive licence fee?

Yes and no. I am not being evasive; it is just how much progression you give and what your charging is. But do we have those models? Absolutely.

Could we see some of those figures? Could we see some examples from the BBC?

We can give you those figures. The issue is what is acceptable and what the public want. The figures are relatively easy; the question is: what is the right balance that ensures that the licence fee, or whatever emerges from it, is good value?

Have you modelled what decriminalisation would look like? Dr Shah, you said that you were tempted by that. What would that look like in terms of income?

Tim will give you the precise numbers. This is a modelling exercise. My understanding is that decriminalisation would cost between £200 and £300 million a year, so it would add up to over £1 billion over the five-year period.

That you would lose?

That we would not get, yes.

Haven’t you just said that you can see merit in that as chair of the organisation?

Merit in—

In it not being a criminal offence.

No, I said that it troubles me that it is, because it feels—

It is a binary situation, though, isn’t it? It is either a criminal act or it is not.

I think we need some form of enforcement, otherwise people will not pay.

So you do want enforcement for it.

We must have enforcement, but we need to think about how that enforcement can be done. There have been questions of whether it should be a civil matter rather than a criminal matter. A civil matter has its own issues about what happens at the far end of it if people do not pay—the whole bailiffs thing. I am not suggesting that there is an easy answer here; I am simply saying that when I hear people saying that not paying the licence fee is a criminal offence, I feel uncomfortable about it.

You are chairman of the BBC and you are troubled by the idea that people are criminalised by not paying the licence fee. You are not a commentator; you are the chair of the BBC, so what is your solution to that?

If there were a simple, straightforward solution to it, if you could just say, “Don’t worry about enforcement”—

I am not suggesting that it is simple, but what is your solution at the moment?

We do not have a solution at the moment, but when we discuss the new funding model, we should make enforcement part of that debate and discussion.

But do you have a view? Dr Shah, you recall that when we met you a year ago in the predecessor Committee, the one thing that troubled us what that you were reluctant to opine one way or another on a whole range of issues. One of the questions we asked you, quite straightforwardly, was whether you felt that it was appropriate for members of the board to be members of political parties. As a Committee, we would have been satisfied with either answer—we would have agreed or disagreed with you but we would have been satisfied if you were able to substantiate a viewpoint—but you did not articulate one. You were unwilling to come down on either side of the fence. This is what we are hearing again. What we want from the chair of the BBC is some strong views. Whatever those views are, we want to know what they are and why you feel that way. You equivocate on virtually everything.

I hear what you have just said. As Tim has said, we have done a lot of modelling of different kinds of enforcement, and they cost us money. If it is the case that we can get the Government to make do—because we need to create a quantum of money for the BBC to do its job. Let us say that it cost £200 million to £300 million a year. It is not in my gift whether the Government will make that right. If they do not make it right, I cannot just say, “This is what we want.” It has to be a debate and a discussion.

It is remarkable that, as chair of an organisation, you do not come out so strongly in defence of there being a righteous cause to pay the licence fee, because it is value for money and all the other things on which you have spent time in making the case for renewal, and, considering the sheer volume of cash that you need to raise to continue, that you start with an equivocation that might lose you £200 million or £300 million—your figures—a year in lost fee paying. It is extraordinary. I would have thought that, as the chair of the BBC, you would come out and bat on any wicket for the BBC. You can have a view on it, of course, but it is not your role to give a sense of what is or is not troubling at the end of a judicial process for people not paying something that they are supposed to pay. You are giving very mixed signals.

I am sorry that I am giving mixed signals. Let me be clearer.

If you start an innings £200 million or £300 million a year behind, that is a lot of money to make up.

Let me give you not-mixed signals. If the Government were to take back the funding of the over-75s, that would save us several hundred million. If the Government were to take back paying for the World Service, that would save us a few hundred million a year. That is not in my gift but if they were to do that, the ability for me to say, “Let’s not criminalise the offence”—we would be able to make that happen. It is not in my gift to do that. There are many other calls on the licence fee—S4C and other things. If that money were taken, and it was not our responsibility, then we would have the money to cope with that phenomenon of criminal enforcement if—

Can I just say one—sorry, you finish.

We are also discussing, for example, charging businesses. It is an equation. If we can get enough movement on the reformed licence fee that we can get that kind of money back, then the idea of taking off enforcement becomes realistic. That is what I am really saying.

In the interests of time, I want to move on.

That is an unexpected turn to this conversation, because this topic has come up in this Committee before, and it is usually members of the Committee who say—and it is true that the licence fee situation is a bit of an outlier and there are particular questions about the number of women who are criminalised and so on because of it, but still, it is rather unexpected to have you saying that. I wonder to what extent technology changes this story anyway. We were just having a word about TV detector vans, such as they were, but these days if you can enforce at the point of use, and people cannot access the content unless they have paid, presumably that changes the enforcement scenario in the future anyway.

First, we want the licence fee enforced, end of, and the vast majority of people paying expect it to be enforced. All we are debating here is the right mechanic to enforce it. We have had some challenges in the current system, as you will with any system, because no one around the table has the perfect system. If you look through the various reviews of BBC funding, to be fair, everyone says, “The licence fee is not perfect, but we think the licence fee is the best system that we have at the moment.” We are hearing that debate here. The point here is that we as the BBC have to have heavy enforcement. By the way, the other side of it—the word “heavy” could be a misrepresented—

Effective.

Effective—thank you. I will take your word. We need effective enforcement—wipe “heavy” from the record. We know about the imperfections of the licence fee, such as women alone in a household. We have done a lot of work on that, but there is only so far that you can go. No one wants—and they do not at the moment—in any way the domino falls, for it to be an imprisonable offence and all those things. Having said that, when we look at things like civil penalties, you get to bailiffs, and you get all kind of questions. I think we are a long way from jumping to a new place. I want to build to the point that has been made, which is a very important one. In the short term, within charter change, bluntly put, I have looked at what you could get on the data side, and there is definitely potential over time for a more rational, precise enforcement system—

Through technology.

Through technology. The answer is that it will take a bit of time. You cannot get there on the charter renewal, but longer term we could chase an area where it is much more rational, which is if you use the BBC, you can—

On the progressive point, I think there is a strong argument, but presumably you start on the basis that everything that is currently being paid for continues to be paid for. The progression is who else can pay a bit more than they currently are. Or are you suggesting that it starts at zero again and some will pay less or none?

There is that argument, which requires some debate. I have been misrepresented: “Tim Davie wants to charge more.” I am not leaping there. The current progressiveness is about those who are struggling at home with their household budget, like over-75s on pension credit who get a free licence. What I have said is that historically—and I think it was a mistake—that has been put on the BBC.

But—and I say this as a champion of the BBC; I celebrate the role that it plays, wishing that it was a bit more front-footed about its existence—you have a situation where there is not a comparable per-month spend for the people you are talking about.

You do not have to convince me that it is great value for money.

Exactly, so why are we not hearing that? Why are we not hearing that from the leadership of the BBC? Why is it forever on the back foot? Why isn’t there a front-footedness to the value for money argument and how much you pay per month, and the lack of comparable membership fee? You cannot get a Netflix subscription for that. What is more, as somebody who wants to be able to download your material, I cannot, but I could pay a bit more—but that does not exist, because you have not yet caught up with technology that has existed for 10 or 15 years elsewhere.

I will bite on the last bit and then come back. I am hugely proud that, pretty much uniquely as a local media company based outside the US or China, we have fantastic digital products. You can download on iPlayer. That is part of the deal.

You cannot on a computer. You can on an iPad; you cannot on a computer.

It is a rounding error on the computer now, with respect. Those other devices you can download on, and that is all part of your licence fee. It is a fair challenge to the person in my job to get on the front foot on the BBC, and now and again, as you know and as the Chair referred to, we have numerous things going on in the BBC. I think that we are being front-footed about it. I am talking all the time about the value, if you talk about licence fee communication and look at what we are delivering. What I would say is that overwhelmingly it is about behaviour and usage, and then you do what you are talking about. If you do not have the former it is no good telling everyone, “We’ve got all this stuff” if they do not use it. We are obsessed by that. [Interruption.] Well, this is what the research is telling me. I take your challenge. We will be as front-footed as you like, and we are absolutely on manoeuvres on that.

There are significant challenges. In some ways we are defying gravity. As you know, in real terms we have lost a lot of our income over the last 10 years. Currently—and I am thankful for it—we are in a four-year period of CPI. The problem, of course, is that with high-end television, as you know, inflation has been beyond that. The answer to the question is that that is probably one of the main preoccupations of the executive team. How do we ensure that we preserve local services and the various things that we think are so valuable to the BBC, when we know—linking directly to the earlier conversation—that when people look at how they ascribe value to the licence fee, if you ain’t got those big dramas and you ain’t got those big moments, you don’t get there? The short answer to your question is that we are working extremely hard in a couple of areas. On funding, we are working really hard on co-production. We have done that for years, but we are having to work extremely hard to do that to maintain 30-plus dramas, our natural history and all the things that we are doing. That is getting increasingly difficult, and at the edges are we beginning to see some real challenges, particularly around very high-end drama pricing—which is the Peter Kosminsky “Wolf Hall” and so on. There are a few titles. They are not overwhelming. If I talk to my content team, there are not lists and lists, but there are a couple of titles now where you say, “Sorry, we can’t get to the £5 million to £10 million an episode.” We are not out of the game. We are doing very well. If you think of “Blue Lights” and all these shows, they deliver great audiences, and not everything has to be a £5 million to £10 million budget, but that is getting more tense, and it does put pressure on other areas that do not quite deliver as much audience impact. But that is the job. The job for the top team is to make those choices and ensure that we are on the front foot, delivering the value.

We are very appreciative of the tax credit regime.

You are talking to someone who makes television programmes, so of course it is not high enough. But I think the threshold numbers could go—you know, comedy; there are a number of areas where, with the Government, we need to nurture the industry. The BBC is one set of discussions, but we have huge issues beyond the BBC. One of the things that I am worried about is that when I am visiting many of the cities and areas around the UK, we are often the only show in town, and we have very significant unemployment among freelancers. We will have to do more to continue to attract investment. We have the skills—not all the skills, sorry, but we have the craft heritage and we have people who can make these programmes. We need to drive more volume in.

I am open-minded to it. I just need to see exactly how that works. I am going to meet Peter Kosminsky very shortly and we will talk about it. I think the idea that contribution is flowing back into the UK is a good idea. Just exactly how that works and where it goes requires a bit more debate.

Hi, both. Thank you, Tim, for putting me in touch with BBC Bangla. I went and had a look there in January.

Thank you for your visit.

They did say that they want more money, inevitably, so I am just conveying that request to you.

That is fairly normal for most visits I make as well.

After that, I went on every national network, so that was the start of something. I became a minor celebrity for a couple of days. My question is about international stuff. I know that the Chair said that we should not make this all about the scandal over the documentary last week, but there are questions to be asked. In Parliament on Thursday there was an urgent question on it. Samir Shah, you have been head of current affairs, and you have also run an independent production company. It is right that this thing did not meet editorial standards. I just wonder what went wrong. When it is a production company as well as the BBC, what is the chain of accountability?

As you rightly point out, I have a lot of experience in current affairs documentary making and indeed being an independent producer. I would say that right from the start, from the moment this story kicked off, Tim and I have been in constant conversation about precisely those questions: what went wrong, how and why did it go wrong, and what are we going to do about it? Those questions started literally day one following transmission of that programme. I asked Tim and his team to write a report for the board answering those questions. There was a very speedy piece of work done where that report came to the board last Thursday. To my shock, we found that there were serious failings on both sides—on the independent production side as well as on the BBC side. In the statement that we produced from the board, following what was quite a robust, candid and open discussion addressing those questions, based on the paper that was prepared for us, we acknowledged that there were failings on both sides and that we now need to move to the stage of asking what actions we will take. We have now asked for a further investigation. Remember, the first step was an interim report. Now we need to talk to people directly and find out what their answers are. We need to do this properly. But I am surprised. The processes, the editorial guidelines and the standards that the BBC has are very good. They are very strong, and I know because I have been on the receiving end of them. I worry that it was not so much that the processes were at fault as that people were not doing their job. That is what we need to establish.

I suppose the question is the accuracy of the film. There might be, conversely, a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The thing has been withdrawn from iPlayer. Obviously, transparency was lacking. There is a letter going around from originally 500 media professionals and now 1,000 who say that it was an over-reaction. You could edit or put health warnings in. This was a kid whose dad had that job title. In some of these regimes—I know this was the case with the Ba’ath party in Iraq, from having constituents there, and in from Bangladesh, having roots there—to be a doctor you had to be in the party. We do not know whether this individual had prior warning of 7 October and whether they were involved. Do you know what I mean? It could be that by removing the whole programme—

I will ask Tim to answer the detail, but I want to make it quite clear that the idea that we see what is happening in Gaza through the eyes of children is a good documentary idea. It really is. When I was in current affairs, my Gaza, as it were, was Northern Ireland. If somebody had said, “Let’s look at the troubles through the eyes of the children”—it is a good documentary idea. I do not want anybody to think that is not the case. What we are talking about is the execution of that idea and the level of trust that took place between the BBC and the independent production company. I will let Tim pick up on that.

First, nothing is more important than that we are trusted. We have built trust, so you can imagine that there is a lot of frustration and disappointment. It is not about the BBC and people like myself, but we are very sorry to the audience, because we do not want to be in a position where we have flaws in the programme making. Overall, I am proud of the way that we are covering some of these polarised, fiendishly difficult events where many of our journalists, as you know, are under enormous pressure and ferocious lobbying, and it has been extremely difficult. But in this case there are flaws. People said to me, “Well, you have to have external challenge.” We do get external challenge. I get external challenges reported on from various institutions and other people questioning our programming, and it is appropriate. I am editor-in-chief and if someone says, “You’ve got a problem here,” it is quite right that I go and ask the teams, “Have we got a problem?” and dig into it. In this case we got challenges—

Do you know who from? Which organisations were challenging you?

Various challenges, but—

Can you tell us?

How many complaints have you received?

Overall, we had—it depends what you call—sorry, I am not being evasive. On the log this morning there were 500-odd complaints about the film being biased against Israel. We had about 1,800 wanting to put the film back, but then we had some serious complaints from various parts of the—we had various complaints from different people and various organisations in terms of their concern about this programme. There are specific concerns, as you know. We have been highly transparent, in my view—and that is how I try to deal with things—in terms of saying that there was a specific question around the father of the boy. As we dug into it—and we have been totally transparent—we found out that we were not told. To your point, you can debate the materiality of that, but in my view, if you are asked a number of times and that question was not answered from our side—and we have fantastic teams, by the way, and I certainly think that, with the pressure that they are under, you have to understand some of these situations. But it is the level of curiosity. You ask, “Is there anything more I should know?” That is basics. At the end of the day, as editor-in-chief, I have to be secure in not only where the film was at editorially, but in the making of that film. At that point, quite quickly, I lost trust in that film. Therefore, I took the decision quite quickly to take it off iPlayer while we do this deep dive. That is what has happened.

So it could come back after editing or something. There are questions of accuracy and coercion.

I am not ruling anything out. What the chair has said is absolutely right. Do I think that this is a valid—

Was it accurate and was there coercion involved—those kinds of things?

I think that we have done a good bit of initial work that tells me more than enough that there are flaws, but I want to do a forensic analysis. There are lots of things floating around in terms of budget and all those things. We want to make sure that we have done a forensic analysis of the process and the editorial, and do the work.

Dr Shah, you asked whether it was a question of people not doing their jobs properly. Is that a reflection of the staff of the BBC in general? Has something fallen through the gaps between the BBC commissioners and the independent production company? Are you talking about it reflecting BBC staff choosing to be lax when it comes to reporting of Gaza?

It is nothing about the staff in general. We are looking very precisely, on this particular film, at the decisions that were taken, at what point they were taken, when and how the process of compliance took place, and whether people did or did not follow the compliance rules to the letter. That is what we are now digging into, to find out exactly what happened and why it happened. I know that the compliance rules are really tough. We do have to comply. We do not just sign something off without interrogating it. I have done it myself. Therefore, the question to ask—let us be fair. We are talking about human beings here and they need to have a right to answer the questions, to be talked to, to find out; before the board discuss what is appropriate action, we need to hear from everyone about it. I would say that it is confined to this programme. There is a wider question, which I can come to, about the BBC’s coverage of the middle east in general. That is an important question. As Tim has said, we have loads of complaints about our coverage on specific programmes or in general, and it seems to me that this warrants a proper, independent review of our coverage as a whole. That takes us beyond this story, but on this story, we are examining how and why the compliance with editorial rules did not take place.

Ofcom wrote to you yesterday on this. They said that they feel that they may need to step in to facilitate this investigation. Can the BBC mark their own homework on such a matter? As you say yourself, trust matters. Trust is absolutely integral to the BBC. A film like this has huge value, but we have to be able to trust what we are seeing and understand its provenance.

Ofcom’s letter, and I welcomed it, asserted that it is for the BBC to investigate first—BBC first—and if that is not satisfactory, Ofcom can then move in. That is the right process. On marking your own homework, we literally marked our own homework on Thursday, and we came up with a very robust statement that there had been failings on our side as well as the others. I am not sure that the phrase “marking our own homework” necessarily means that we do not do the job properly. Peter Johnston, who has been tasked with doing this, did the Russell Brand review. It was an excoriating piece of work and we marked our own homework. We do it. BBC first, as the first system of doing, it is not in itself a bad thing. I think Ofcom’s position is right. If they are not satisfied with how we have conducted it, it is perfectly right that they have the right to investigate further, but let us do our job. We will do our job. I ask the Committee to trust me. The board is very exercised about this—seriously exercised about it—and we will get to the bottom of this and take the appropriate actions.

There should be questions around the whole coverage of this war. Is that within the remit of the Peter Johnston inquiry?

No. Sorry, this is a separate—

I think there should be scope for something like that—

No, I am agreeing with you.

Because I have been sent loads of stuff about it from day one. Dr Zomlot—is he the ambassador or is he head of mission because it is not an actual country?—was on TV and the question was always, “Do you condemn Hamas?” People have evaluated these and measured the leniency with which certain interviewees—

Let me be clear about what I am saying.

There is scope for a wider thing.

There is a piece of work to do with this particular film, “Gaza”. There is a very important piece of work to do about how the BBC has covered the wider story of the middle east conflict. That needs to be done independently. We call it a thematic review. We have done one on tax and spend, where Andrew Dilnot was a lead figure. We have done one on migration, which I was part of before I took up the post. This is such an important topic that I feel strongly that this should be the next one we study. Please understand, as Tim said, that we get a lot of complaints and are accused about all our coverage from all sides. It does not just come from one side; it comes from all sides. We need an independent review of how well we have done this. Have we done it impartially? That is quite a big piece of work and it wants to be done.

Okay. We have got the message.

You have had to make a value judgment in removing the film from iPlayer. Is it right that you do not agree with the 500 to 1,000 artists who have said that this breaches regulations on regulatory, legal and ethical obligations because you have removed it in the first instance? Do you disagree with that argument that they are making?

This is one to me. It was a very difficult decision, because representing some of the views—these are stories we want to tell. This is a very hard situation for us. [Interruption.] Bear with me. Also, we have a rich and important current affairs history in this area, where we have programmes we are very proud of. It is worth saying this documentary maker has a great reputation in making some fantastic documentaries. I do not think we are in breach of anything. As editor-in-chief, very simply, if I cannot trust a programme, it is nothing to do with one side or the other. This is where it has been misrepresented. It really is. By the way, if you think we bow to lobbies from other side, come and spend a day with me. We do not. We try to navigate a course sensibly and rationally, based on fair, balanced journalism, and everyone has a view on it. What we did, and I did—and it was a very tough decision—was say, “At the moment, looking people in the eye, can we trust this film in terms of how it was made and the information we have?” That is why we made the decision. It is a simple decision in that regard.

But why is it a retrospective decision, having—

Because we had new information.

But to show some even-handedness questioning-wise, the BBC repeatedly raised concerns about the child’s family links to Hamas. Again, that is not marking homework; that is credit to the independence of the news organisations.

Absolutely.

But why were not those suspicions not properly investigated or reported? There is a requirement under section 19 of the Terrorism Act to do so. Shouldn’t the counter-terrorism police now be investigating whether BBC funds have reached Hamas, through payment to the father or to the sister, who, as I understand, has also received money?

I need to segment the issues there slightly. That first decision was not related—payments were not the thing being debated at that point. It was the simple fact of the relationship. At that point, I did not need information on the payments. It was enough to say that we had asked about—remember, the question was, “Is there a relationship with Hamas in any way?” You can talk about the looseness of the relationship, that should have been declared. To your point, I—

Transparency was lacking.

Transparency was lacking—exactly right. At that point I look people in the eye and say, “Can we trust this film at this point?” It is not, “Is it a valid area of journalistic endeavour?” It is not a criticism of the wider newsroom. It is absolutely, “Can we trust this programme?” That is when we take it off iPlayer. Then you say, “Okay, let’s have a look. Let’s look in detail at this. Let’s look at the funding.” It is worth saying, just to be utterly clear, that, as I understand it today—and I want to make sure that I am safe, bluntly, because we need to do this deeper investigation—the BBC has only made one payment, which was for a licence fee to the programme maker, the independent, to make the film. We need to do the detailed work, but the initial assessment of the economics showed that there was a small payment to the sister because—and it was a totally normal payment—the boy recorded the narration and went to a studio to do it. We just need to understand how that works. We are very clear about our obligations in terms of the law and what parties we have to—I do not want to get into too much detail, as you would understand, but we do not need any prodding. My view is absolutely clear; it is if we have obligations, to make sure everyone is aware. By the way, what we are aware of is in the paperwork that we have issued in our statement, and absolutely everyone should be aware of that, including any authorities that need to be. That is absolute transparency. That is where we are.

Will the scope of your inquiry confirm if the money paid for the documentary ended up with Hamas?

Part of the work is to do a forensic analysis of exactly what happened to the money.

But are you asking that question?

Of course.

Will we expect an answer?

It is worth saying that the independent production company—to represent them fairly—have written to us very clearly that no money has gone to Hamas, but we absolutely have to do that work, and the answer is yes, of course, as far as you can go.

It is fair to assume if the family of a senior Hamas leader is paid, that money goes into the orbit of Hamas.

Let us deal with the facts without assuming anything at this point. I am telling you the facts I know and that is why I can stand on. I have told you what I know, which is that a limited amount of money was paid to the sister. That is what I am being told at this point.

Given this situation, referring back to my earlier question, trust is the issue here. If people are calling into question whether the BBC can be trusted on this issue, is the BBC the right body to be doing that inquiry?

The review we will be doing is—I think we have a very good process. I have fast-tracked the review out of News, which is a really important point, to Peter Johnston, who has outstanding credentials, by the way. He ran BBC Northern Ireland, which requires a degree of navigating the current affairs course that is quite demanding. Peter has an outstanding track record reporting directly to me. We fast-tracked that to what we call stage 2—sorry for the technicalities—to the ECU. It is right that he does a full report, and then we have Ofcom. We have an independent regulator, as per their letter—exactly as their letter outlines. I believe that is a proportionate and right response. Separately, as the chair has said—and this is a matter for him and the board—we have thematic reviews that stretch beyond one particular affair, because this does leak into bigger allegations around the BBC’s coverage, on which, to earlier points, we have vociferous views on either side of this conflict. It is absolutely right that as a public service broadcaster, we have independent oversight. Part of what I have tried to do for the BBC is to be a guardian of true impartiality through thick and thin, and that requires being completely transparent. I think there is the right moment. Being blunt, the challenge is often the time you do that in if you have journalists in the field and all those questions, but we are absolutely committed. The board has been clear with me that it wants to have that independent review and I welcome it.

Dr Shah, you said the board is very exercised about this, and I am not surprised. From the point of view of the BBC’s reputation, this is awful, and today more than ever for a similar case if it had happened in the past. You talked about the distinction between opinionated news and fact-based news. Later in this session we may come on to talk about the different sources that people now self-select their news from and the brand flattening effect. You have both talked about there being failings both at the BBC and at the independent production company. The failings at the independent production company matter not to the people of Britain. It is called Hoyo. Brand awareness in Britain of Hoyo is zero. Brand awareness of the BBC is close to 100%. It is with you. You are the trusted source. Given that Hamas are in administration in Gaza, presumably things that happen there have their say-so, regardless of the identity of the father of the child who was involved. Therefore, there must have been a whole series of questions. Did you have questions that were unanswered, or did you have questions that were answered incorrectly by the production company? In any event, given the sensitivity of the situation and given the nature of administrative control of Gaza, surely, on the precautionary principle, until you had full comfort on those types of questions, the thing should not have been aired in the first place.

Are you asking me to answer?

I am asking either of you.

Let me first agree with you that this is a really, really bad moment. What has been revealed is a dagger to the heart of the BBC’s claim to be impartial and trustworthy, which is why I and the board are determined to answer the questions you have just asked. That is what we are trying to do here. Who did know what? You make a very good point about the film itself, and it slightly addresses Tim’s point about losing trust in the content of what we saw because of what you have just said. This is why we need to do a proper deep dive into the mechanics of the filmmaking itself. My experience is not in Gaza, but I know that when we made films in Northern Ireland, we had to be very careful about the circumstances in which the terrorist organisations worked and how they controlled things and what we did. It was really important, so what you are asking is absolutely right. I want to reassure the Committee that this exactly why Tim is deep diving into this. We will find this out. You are quite right: it is the BBC needs to come out of this. Whatever happens to the independent production company, what matters is that we need to restore trust in the BBC, and we need to get to the bottom of this so that we can begin that process.

Dr Shah, you are a filmmaker—a programme maker—yourself. Would the BBC normally risk its reputation by subcontracting the due diligence of something as important as this to the independent production company?

It is another really good question. The independent production sector is a highly experienced, very mature and developed one, which does lots of really quite difficult programming. This particular company made an interesting and, again, difficult programme in Ukraine. I do not know if you saw it. It was “Enemies in the Wood”, a fine piece of work. There was every reason to think that it could do a good piece of work. I am not involved in the commissioning. We look at things after they have been commissioned and transmitted. Certainly, I am not suggesting that independent production companies are not capable of doing—

But my question is: is it the normal system and process that you would subcontract the due diligence?

We do not subcontract in that way. We contract and then we—to answer the question directly, there are unanswered questions.

When you say there are unanswered questions, there are questions from the BBC—

From the BBC that should have been followed up and answered. There is plenty of process here. I 100% agree that, for the audience out there, at the end of the day, this is about trust in the BBC. At the end of the day, the editorial responsibility for anything we publish is on the BBC. Having said that, if you are in my job, you want to understand why the failings happened, and clearly there were serious flaws on both sides. Then you get to the question how you can absolutely ensure that the right questioning and everything happens so that you do not get that problem again and you put the oversight in. That is the direct answer to your question.

One of the questions I did ask was, “How did this programme come to be? Was it an idea that came from within the BBC and then they thought about which company would execute it or whether they could do it in house?” This idea came from the company. It was not a question of subcontracting; it was a question of commissioning. I can have an idea. I can try to sell it to the BBC as an idea. That is how commissioning works.

Director general, you got to the heart of this. You said there were unanswered questions. We want to know whether that was because the questions were not comprehensive enough and not followed up effectively, or whether it was an active deception on the part of this production company to give you misleading answers.

I have no evidence of the latter, but that is part of what we need to do in the review.

So as it stands, that is still a question.

Absolutely. Well, we just need to get into the detail of exactly why those questions were not answered.

To Rupa’s point earlier, is there a way of making this film safe so that it can be seen by everyone and they can make their own minds up? From what I have seen, there is an 11-year-old, Zakaria, who helps paramedics at al-Aqsa hospital in this film, and does that rather than staying with his family because his family do not have any food or water, and he says he has seen 5,000 people dead. That is an 11-year-old. That is not the narrator of the movie; that is one of the people in the movie. Surely that is a valid voice to be heard by the BBC licence fee payer, if it can be done safely. Surely it is possible to edit this film so that you remove the narrator—in other words, the point of contention—and you still allow the children’s voices to be heard by everyone. Then the licence fee payer can see for themselves what they make of it.

Certainly, as I said right at the front, there was absolutely legitimate journalism to be done here, and the voices of those children in Gaza are absolutely something we need to hear. That is what makes it, frankly, frustrating to be where we are. You are going to get the same answer from me, because it is appropriate, which is that we need to do the work and understand the questions and then make that decision. There are clearly considerations here and we have to do our work calmly in the midst of, as I say, ferocious noise around us. I just want to say one thing. I want to reinforce that the vast majority of our journalists are doing a tremendous job, but we are only as good in this job as the weakest link, as it were. This is damaging, but I want to say that overall trust in BBC News remains very high. We have grown it over the last year. Sorry, it is important that we are not losing all context here. This was a serious failing, but we have trust numbers that we are very proud of. We are the most trusted brand in the world. Part of what we do to earn that trust—and believe me, it is never an easy day—is to be highly transparent and go through enormous processes when we fail like this to show how we will fix it. We are very transparent about that. That is part of our process.

I do not know if it is a view I share with Paul but, personally, if the conclusion on this is to redact the original programme, I do not support that. In the interests of transparency, we should see the thing as it was supposed to be and how it went out initially. You could of course self-redact and choose to emphasise and hear different aspects of that testimony, and I absolutely concur with Dr Shah’s point about the validity of seeing this war through a Gazan child or indeed an Israeli child—I look forward to that documentary being commissioned—but I do not think this is about redacting.

It is about—[Interruption.] Sorry, this is very important. I agree with the thrust of that. It is about whether something meets our editorial guidelines and our standards, end of. It is not about a position on either side; it is about whether it meets editorial standards. Part of that is the making of the programme, not just what is on it, and we need to go through that work.

Good. We need to make some progress now.

Sorry, that made me think. Al Jazeera did a documentary—I have not seen it, but I have been told about it—with bodycams of IDF soldiers and some of the things that they captured. Would you ever do—

There is not an area of scope that we would not make a documentary on. It is a question of the editorial controls. That one does not look like the easiest compliance journey, but we report without fear or favour and we want to get to the truth. The answer is that we will look at any proposal. Our journalists are out there looking at those kinds of things. The issue is where editorial control sits. It is worth saying that part of the challenge here is journalists on the ground in Gaza, what access we have and making sure we are not being minded. All those things are fair concerns. It just depends on the situation.

International news is often a bit flavour of the month. We are talking about this at great length. Yesterday, there was an aid blockade in Gaza, but that does not seem to have been on the evening news yesterday. I heard it on the “Today” programme in the morning. What we see at the moment is very Ukraine-focused.

I think we are doing a great job on our coverage and I think there is appropriate prominence, if I may.

For example, you put me in touch with BBC Bangla. I asked when I came back if I could go on “Dateline UK” and describe that, but the programme has been axed. I do feel there is a shrinking space for international news with how you have restructured your news channels and things. My last question is about domestic political bias. I have questioned you on this before. My point is that when politicians appear, if we go on TV, we are captioned with our party label and that is transparent and clear. I know you always say that you have a team on “Question Time” that is scrupulously fair about this, but we know from not just “Question Time”, but “Any Questions”, “Politics Live”—or “Daily Politics” or whatever it is called—that you often get these right-wing Tufton Street think-tank people and that is not totally clear, or you get owners of right-wing print media. The print media in this country, again, is shrinking. Every day you do the papers and you hold up the headlines, and 70% of those are right-wing conglomerates—Murdoch or the Rothermere one, whatever it is called. Sorry, I can see you smirking, Tim. Is this amusing?

No, it is just that you have got journalists in the room. Keep going. Apologies—it was just a minor surreal moment.

We have a working population in this country of 33 million and 6.5 million of those are trade unionists. I raised this last time. Why do we not have trade union leaders? That is 20% of our workforce. Those people are absent. We know that there is The Spectator-funded GB News. Often, licence fee payer money is used to create these culture war-type scenarios where you take contributors from GB News and give them a platform on your panel shows. When can we have a bit more balance on your panel shows? Ofcom says that in a modern democracy, citizens should have access to a range of views, and it seems very skewed to the right.

We are working extremely hard. I thought you might ask me about “Question Time”. I asked in the new series where we are: Labour 17, Conservatives 17, Lib Dems eight, Reform three—

Yes, but it is the non-party people I am talking about, Tim. It is the people who look neutral.

Bear with me—if I may. Loosely, people of the left—if that is a descriptor that still holds—and people of the right are 11 each and so-called neutral seven. I can provide the data. We are working extremely hard on this and I think our record speaks for itself.

Whenever it is an academic, it is Matt Goodwin. He has known views on immigration.

I am trying to be led by the data.

If you could provide us with that data, that would be—

Also—this is the University of Cardiff’s statistic—between 2014 and 2023, five journalists appeared on “Question Time” most. Do you know what publication they are all from? The Spectator. It is the one-legged chicken award for balance.

We need to be led by the data. It is as simple as that.

Your data is different from ours.

I want to move on. If you can provide us with that data, we would love to have it. Thank you very much.

Can we shift to local radio stations? You have had major cuts to local radio stations to make savings in recent years. Do you have an up-to-date assessment of the impact of that transition in local services from radio to online?

Indeed. Thank you for the question. As we know, it was a very difficult period as we moved money around within the local budget. As you know—you are well versed on this—we did not take money out of local overall; we kept it cash flat. I pay tribute to all the local teams, because it has been extremely tough, but it was the right decision to keep all 39 local radio stations in England and to make those changes in the afternoons and a few other programmes, which have been difficult. The specific answer to your question is that we have seen pretty much flat RAJARs this quarter. I remember that question last time; I said I would come back and give you that. Critically, in online, we have seen a very significant increase of about 40%. The reason—and this is why I was so obsessed by this, and it was not easy—is that we were producing only a very low number of local online articles a day. We now produce a reasonable amount. The 11 investigative teams are beginning to pay dividends as well, and hopefully you can get on the ground as Committee members and see their work, because it is really impressive. I am very proud of the local work. I wish I had had more money and kept everything going, but us moving money around—and it was very difficult. This is the joy of the BBC. Local radio is precious, but moving money around seems to have delivered good results for us. The other thing we have made work, which I am proud of, is if you go to our news app now and you are logged in, you get your local news right up there. That has made a big difference to those teams. Their journalism is being seen by more and more people. I am bullish about it. I wish we had more money for local. One of the biggest questions when it gets to the charter is what the right provision is for reporting locally. We know how stressed the business models are of the commercial operators around us. I say that with no glee.

I want to press you a little further on that. The local democracy reporting service has been a success in many ways, and it fills the gaps where a lot of local newspapers have sadly died—I say this as someone who used to work on a local newspaper. You have filled the gap. However, there is an increasing demand for that local news, precisely because of devolution. You have more combined authorities and you have more elected mayors. Are they being scrutinised? They are spending billions of pounds of money—not central Government, but locally. There is a need and a demand for more of that local democracy reporting service. Are you anticipating in your charter review bid that you can expand that service?

It is definitely one of those things we need to—sorry, we are a bit early, but thank you to the 165 reporters. They do tremendous job. Overall, it is a positive read-out, but there are things to learn in terms of how they spend their time, how we make the journalism flow across the system, who is using it and whether it is getting through the bigger commercial players to the smaller commercial players. We need to look at all that from a positive perspective. I would like to see as part of the charter an upweighting of local provision, end of, in terms of how that works, whether that is LDRS expansion or looking at other things we can do. It is absolutely at the heart of the charter. I welcome ideas on this. There is a number of views, by the way, on how you tackle that. Our vision is not for the BBC to be the only show in town.

May I add something, Chair?

Very quickly.

You talked about my sitting on the fence. On local radio I sat on the fence because I did not know. Since last year I have been to local radio stations, including in Nottingham, and I have understood the difficulties. As Tim says, my answer now would be that it has been a real success, not only because we have responded to how people are increasingly consuming this, which is online, and the figures show it. There was some difficulty in getting journalists to move so that their output went on all these different platforms. I talked to them directly and there was some difficulty, but now when I speak to them they are really happy with the way it works. It always is the case that people work in silos, and when you try to change that people are resistant to it, but I do think now—and it is my answer to your question—that that was a proper move to be made and I am entirely supportive of it, as the BBC is, because it fits with our strategic move to digital, and also because of the way it has been carried out and how it has strengthened local radio.

We love seeing you off the fence, Dr Shah.

Speaking of consuming things online, you love it when people come to the iPlayer or your website or some other owned property, but there is continued growth in consumers going for news as well for entertainment to social media or news aggregators. The truth is that when you ask them where they saw something, they do not say, “I saw a nice BBC clip that appeared via Apple News on my phone”. They say either, “I saw it on Instagram” or “I saw it on my phone”. Ironically, brand is more important than ever in this world, but it is harder to spot. Even when your brand is projected, it is relatively straightforward to mimic and directly or indirectly to copy the house style and to get this brand flattening effect. Do you see this as a big issue? What do you do about it?

It is a huge issue and a bit of an opportunity as well, because in the midst of that soup you just described, where disinformation is rife, we are seeing more people coming to Verify or other services on the BBC. Time spent might be impacting that—

Yes, but in the scheme of things, people who say, “I’m going to find BBC Verify” are—

With respect, our news app is bigger than Apple in the UK today. [Interruption.] Bear with me. Our usage—we are by far the biggest news brand.

And BBC One is still the biggest single vehicle, but it is a minority.

Even among 16 to 34s, we are being used. We are 70% of 16 to 34s. If that sounds like complacency and defensiveness, I apologise, because it is not. There are very significant risks in this area, and they are multiple. All I can say is we are working extremely hard on mitigation tactics and thinking through these things daily. On the brand, good point. We have quite a lot of research now about, as we go into TikTok or Instagram and we put short-form content out there, what gets remembered as the BBC. How do we make sure that that is clearly attributable to the BBC? We are learning that. Also, how do we link? “Do you want more of this? Link across the BBC.” What we need is help on this. Cross-linkage is really important. On certain services the algorithm rewards those things with advertising in it. This is more your side of the fence than mine in terms of what kind of regime we want to protect these things. We are also having to act aggressively where we see our services either ripped off or distorted. I have the highest regard for Apple, and I mean that. It is an outstanding operation, but its summarisations—an interesting word—where it was merging our headlines together were clearly not ready to go and led to not just distortions but falsehoods. I was grateful to Apple that, when I wrote to it at the highest level, it withdrew that feature. I think we will be going through this repeatedly. We are absolutely of the mind that the BBC needs to be out there on those platforms, setting the record straight, doing our work, but we are also tracking in great detail what brings people into BBC News. I am a little bit more optimistic than the pushback you gave me. You can go into those environments and get absorbed in it all, but sometimes you say, “I just want to know what is going on. I’m going to come to the BBC.” I do not think that has to be a minority sport. It may not be quite sitting down in a chair to watch a half-hour bulletin, but it may be that you want to go across. Maybe it is not the vast majority of your consumption—good for a competitive market—but it is absolutely trusted.

To be clear, I am optimistic, too—or certainly hopeful—because I think your role is more important than ever.

Can I add to that? You identified something that we are quite concerned about: the platforms on which people now consume material. We need to make sure that the BBC is available on those platforms and that we are prominent there. These are really matters for regulatory control, but I cannot emphasise enough how important that is. There are two types of algorithms. One drives you to particular content, and we need to make sure we are part of that. The other is algorithms that create content, and we may come to that, because the creation of content—fake news as we call it—will become bigger and bigger. As I said right at the beginning, we need to think very hard about how we can make sure that BBC News continues to be prominent and available to people who will consume it not just sitting at home watching television. It is really important.

On a related but different question about the business model, in a parallel industry—the music industry—there was an enormous revolution moving away from physical format music and everyone thought the industry had been changed forever. Then it turned out it was only temporary. Downloads had replaced physical format, but it was not a stable equilibrium, and then streamers came along and changed the industry all over again. The difference between streaming in telly and streaming in music is that in music you have a small number of intermediaries through whom you can access everything. You do not have a different streamer for BMG or Universal or whatever. In telly at the moment, you have these walled gardens of content. I wonder if that is a stable equilibrium or if eventually you will have the same sort of structure as in music, where, whatever your way in is, you can access everything. If so, what are the implications for the BBC?

Good question. Big question. There is no doubt that there will be further consolidation, and scale will be defining in this. We are a little way off what we might call a position where you do not have the editorial—with the strength of our brands, if I may, unlike the music industry, Netflix has a position and the BBC has a position in a way that BMG or Universal do not, and they have chosen that. My forecast is that in the medium term we will be into fewer players with these big portals. You will also have great services like Sky that can bring them together, and search engines across them. I think it is going to be a bit of a blend rather than a situation where you can get at programme level. We certainly believe that the curatorial power of the BBC to say, “Look, this is what is on iPlayer. This is the news rail”—we want to hold on to that, and I think that will hold up for some time.

If I may ask one more— Chair: It will have to be really quick.

It will be lightning quick. Of all the things that have changed in viewing and listening habits over the years, one of them is kids having their own tellies and then their own screens. One of things we have lost is watching things together. I just wonder if you think that is a trend that could ever be reversed and if it is worth reversing.

It is definitely a trend. With heavy heart, I do not think you can reverse market trends so much. Having said that, when 11 people sat down where I was on Christmas Day and watched “Wallace and Gromit”, it was a particularly precious moment. I think what you will see—and we are seeing it as the BBC, whether it is an FA Cup match or the final of “Traitors”—is these coming-together moments becoming more valuable. This is a trade-off between time and value. We are not all going to sit in the same room watching the same programmes, but when we come together, those moments will be incredibly important. The feedback we get from those moments is off the scale in terms of people feeling reconnected, dare I say.

On behalf of parents everywhere, thank you for “Wallace and Gromit”. That got us through a long Christmas break and, yes, brought us all together. Back to new audiences and new platforms, I have a couple of questions about what you said about linking back to the BBC. How do you ensure you extract enough revenue from that content that gets placed on, say, YouTube? It might be on YouTube but it is still BBC content that has taken BBC money to make. How do you make sure you get value for money in that case? If you cannot link back out of the walled garden, do we need to pull levers to allow you to do that? Secondly, it feels to me like the idea of terrestrial versus new media and social media is starting to blend out. Now, social media is just media. If that is the case, when we talk about editorial bias and we talk about content having to be unbiased, like on the BBC, do we need to look at these algorithms to ensure that they are less biased and to look at the weighting of those and see if we need to try to insert the editorial balance that we see in PSBs on certain other platforms?

Let us start at the end. That is a very big question on whether you want to regulate. Chair: And we have very little time.

Right. Honestly, leading the BBC, I just need to make sure that what we produce is absolutely to the editorial standards and guidelines. It has been incredibly important to have our regulatory framework around fair and balanced news. We see the societal consequences in other markets where that has been abandoned. That is a political choice, in some ways, and a societal choice. From a BBC person’s point of view, I just need to make sure that we can talk—I suspect we will not get to prominence. I do not know whether we will, but we do not talk enough about that. Remember, one of the reasons why we have a successful, functioning, UK-based media market is we have channels 1, 2, 3—we have the public service broadcasters. One big thing that will happen is not just on funding and all the various things we talk about; it is the implementation of the Media Act and Ofcom’s recommendations later in the year in terms of prominence. It is essential, to your point, that we get served up and we serve the public up with trusted news. To be clear—and linking very quickly, if I may, to the front end of your question—if an algorithm prioritises those things that can deliver most ad revenue, which is logical for a commercial business, that is another prominence consideration, not just what is on your big screen, as it is now called, in your living room. I cannot over-emphasise the implications of—we wanted “significant prominence” in the Act. We are pleased with the Act, but we wanted “significant prominence” and we got “appropriate prominence”. What “appropriate prominence” means is probably one of the biggest things we will do in the next year in terms of the future of public service broadcasting.

Let me add to that. I agree that prominence is very important. I take us back to how, in a previous era, we secured prominence on the EPG. That was an act of political will that BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and Channel 4 were there. It was really important. If we had been left alone, we would not be there. BBC One might be No. 246. The PSBs would just be lost. It is really important that as we move to our digital age and on demand, we have through regulatory mechanisms equal prominence for PSBs. It is so important, because if we are not there, we have already mentioned the endless rails. Where are we? It is so important.

What was your response to the Government’s consultation on AI and copyright? Are you an opt-in or an opt-out kind of guy?

I have never been asked that question. If I can do a quick, general one sentence at the top, the opportunities to deploy AI into the BBC are significant and exciting and I certainly do not want to be dragged there. We are already piloting AI, but we want to do AI for good. This is a choice to intervene. Everything we are talking about is a choice to intervene and we should not be dragged into AI. That would be a disaster for us. I am now working with the big AI companies on pilots. I can give you examples of where we are deploying AI to further our good impact. There is a separate, related question about scraping. There is a really clear thing for us. You have seen the letters that numerous media owners have signed, as well as people who have contributed IP. We, the British public, own this IP and we believe we should be paid for it. That’s it.

What would you say to a Government that is considering all things re copyright?

We—and the “we” in this sentence is a number of broadcasters—have written a letter, which is very clear, saying we do not believe that we should go to a regime where—this is not head in the sand. This is not saying we should not involve change or development. I am very interested in national libraries of AI. I think when we come to the charter, there are all kinds of things we can do to deploy AI for good. I will give you a little teaser. Think about education. Think about the fact that social mobility in the UK is so painfully low over generations. Could we use AI to help with personal tutors for everyone, regardless of their economic circumstances? All those things are exciting. You can read the letter—I can share it—but it is very clear. It says, “Do not scrape the data.” An open scrape where you can just take everything, take all the AI and then build valuable business off it—I can see the argument, but I do not believe there cannot be a way in which you can get some value back. If you look at the situation we are in, we need a bit more money, to put it mildly, for UK plc and its creative industries. Surely, there must be a way of doing this sensibly that does not restrict innovation in a way that has been characterised as quite binary.

One of the best ways in which you are an asset to the creative industries is that you are a lead within an ecosystem of content creators. In your role, do you have a bit of a duty to help protect them and their livelihoods? They are often middle earners doing quite patchy, hit-and-miss work, and experiences of workstreams as well.

Of course. We need to be accretive to the creative industries. We are not wholly about making a profit. That is the commercial arm only. We are about offering value. Therefore, we can make somewhat different decisions—and there is no judgment in this, and also no negative judgment to commercial operations—in terms of where we are geographically based and how our money flows, but what we need is a fair return on that. It is not Luddite to say that if someone has made something, we should work a way of doing that. It is difficult. It is easy to opine in the way I have just done because I have the tension between letting a thousand flowers bloom and create the value but, once you have created the value, there must be a way to attribute it back. That could be through the entities themselves or through the flow to the IP owners, but there has to be a way. Chair: We agree.

Looking to the future, a massive shift will take place in the ’30s, moving to internet protocol television. A starter for 10 question: what are the BBC’s priorities when it comes to that transition to IPTV?

To not leave anyone behind. We are a universal broadcaster. We have done it before. I remember someone—I will not name them—saying that they would eat their hat if we could do a proper DTT transition, and we did it. With long-range planning and proper process, we can all see the benefits of making sure that everyone has access to digital services. There are broader benefits than the BBC here. There are societal benefits and all those things, and television can be a first way in which people can be taken into a new technology. We have done it in our history. To be clear, we have no appetite for a position where people are left behind. Ofcom’s work on this, and the options they have given, are helpful. What I will say is that digging in purely on DTT is not where the BBC is. The BBC would like to be part of a proactive transition of the UK to fully digitised households, if that is the right word, so that they can get all our services and people are using those services, but there has to be a lot of work and there has to be a lot of help for those who want to get from A to B on this. There are also the economic questions of what is the right provision for those people who are on a tight budget or do not want to change.

On that specifically, we have the whole conversation about funding for the BBC. Who do you see is responsible for paying for the interventions necessary to make sure that, as you put it, everyone comes on that journey together?

I think we should be responsible for making brilliant programming and communicating how our services work. I definitely do not think we should be paying for a switchover in that way. That is not what the licence fee is paying for.

Thank you. There is a whole conversation around whether you continue to have DTT beyond 2034. If it had to continue for a period, what are the cost implications to you of providing that?

They are not good, certainly for full-fat DDT. We have to decide and ensure that we are not running two expensive distribution systems, because that would hobble us. There are low-cost options, as you know. I need to get into a bit more detail on this. That is not an offer; I am saying that I need to get into more detail outside this meeting to get a bit more on potential nightlight options and things that are being talked about.

The BBC has had experience of this before with digital switchover. As it happens, I was on the main board of the BBC when we did that. We were conscious, as the board will be now, that we would not leave people behind and we would manage it. I remember the moment we switched off. There was always a small group of people we could manage, but the direction of travel is clear. People will move to on demand and IPTV. There is a lot of institutional knowledge of how to manage this in the right way. We need time to reduce the number of people who could be left behind, and then it will be a matter of judgment when we decide that we have done as best we can and then we switch. It is something that we are very concerned about, because we are a universal service.

Dr Shah, what is the status of the Change Associates review of workplace culture you commissioned following the Huw Edwards court case and when might it be published?

Thank you for that. This is a very important matter for me. If you were to ask me now that I have been here year, what I was not expecting was this procession of men abusing their power, from Huw Edwards to the most recent thing. I am determined to stamp this out. We commissioned Grahame Russell at Change Associates to look into that. I have been talking to them regularly and I will be reporting back to the board; the board has been taking it. We are determined to do this. Right now, they are working on it. They have done all the interviews and have done all the work on it. We are now discussing what actions we will take. I am very keen that it is not another set of processes. I want real action—visible action—that demonstrates that if you step out of line, we can enforce it, and that something is done. One theme of all the reviews that have taken place is that junior staff feel disempowered to call out more powerful people behaving badly. We have to find a mechanism and a system that allows them to do that, so that they do not think their career is at stake, they do not think somehow they will be moved out somewhere else, and they do not say, “I can’t because this person is more powerful than me and the management would say, ‘Oh, why don’t we just move this person out?’” Those are practical things we need to do, and we need to do them and we need to enforce them. The report will come to the March board for final discussion and will be published during April. At that point, I will personally take ownership of this and talk about what we are doing. I feel very strongly about this. It is not right. The BBC of all should be setting the example. I am very pleased that Baroness Kennedy has started up this CIISA thing. We are heavily engaged with them. We want the whole of the creative industries to be involved, but we should be setting the lead and we should do that. I will own it and I will speak about it publicly once Grahame Russell has produced it and it has gone through the board mechanism. We are looking at the board in March, and then April for publication.

Good. We have spoken a lot about trust today. Have you been able to recover any salary from Huw Edwards?

We have not. We have asked and we have said it many times, but he seems unwilling. There was a moment that we thought that he might just do the right thing for a change. He has clearly decided not to. Tim, do you have any more on it? Tim Davie indicated dissent. 

I do not think we have heard, you see.

And there is nothing you can do to compel him to give back the money.

Legally, we cannot.

No. We have made the request and we have taken legal advice. That is where we are.

It is quite frustrating, because I think he should have done it. He could still do it. It is not right. He has taken licence fee payers’ money and he knew what he had done. He should return it now.

Can you give us examples of actions the BBC has taken as a result of recent high-profile cases of misconduct?

There have been a number of specifics. Remember the recent case of Tim Westwood. Tim Westwood was about 20 years ago. Russell Brand was also quite a long time ago. Tim Westwood was over a long period of time; Russell Brand was more specific. There have been specific processes in response to particular cases. That is not to say we have fixed the problem. Even though we have responded, and Tim can spell out their responses we have made, we have yet to fix the problem. You may ask me, “Will we ever fix the problem, given the profound nature of it?” We could do a lot more. Tim can spell out what we have actually done.

Very specifically on this, let us just do the process and the culture, because they sit beside each other. I think you can hear that we have faced these major issues in this industry. We are not totally unique, but we want to finish this abuse of power. I have said that very clearly to the organisation and all the people who work across the BBC. I want to touch on indies because that is related and the work CIISA is doing is really important. We have made real progress on a number of fronts. First, versus those historical, decades-old cases, a couple of things were clear. You often had things raised up and they were stuck in their silo. We now have a specialist case management process so that, if anything serious, or even anything, comes across through the BBC, it is joined up and gets referred up. I will come to the need for someone to raise it through whistleblowing or whatever, because that is the point—if they need to raise it—but if it is raised, we are not in a situation where it does not get visibility across the BBC and is not taken seriously. If anyone has examples of that not happening, that is an absolute grade 1 issue for me, because I do not believe that happens. We have anti-bullying and harassment policies. We have standardised our complaints process. In our latest research, about 70% of staff feel comfortable to raise issues. I have a mixed reception to that in my mind, as you can imagine. I could parade out industry norms and say we are better than most places, but 70% means 30% still are not quite comfortable enough. That is where I am. I am healthily dissatisfied with that. We are therefore encouraged. The Change Associates review is another chance not to push enormous amounts of process. I am particularly interested in the practicalities of what happens on the ground with the line manager when they see something. How do they raise it? This is where the industry has to get to—to get the confidence level up to call it out. Also, there are things that you hear that may be described as banter or other things. Let us be honest: culturally, things change. You do not quite know, “Is that something I want to raise or not?” We have done this in other areas. I think we need to give people more help on that. To be very clear, we have zero tolerance. We are taking action whenever we see. Think about the individuals that we have had recently. They are not on air. We are not tolerating this. That is only as good as making sure that it is working on the ground. The vast majority of the BBC—and you are welcome to come any time. You have open access to see, talk to leaders, talk to employees, talk to staff, talk to colleagues. We are proud of the way the BBC works, but we have had these instances and it is to do with how power is abused. That is it. We need to address it. Out of Change Associates, I really want practical guidelines—and that is what I would ask of the work—for line managers and building confidence among teams to never tolerate, so that they raise even something they see as marginal.

Are you confident you can stamp it out?

I want to be realistic. You can never, ever be in a situation where you can say one rogue individual who is doing something, potentially abusing their BBC status outside work—not all these instances are the same. We have had things in our past that were horrendously grim in terms of cover-ups internally. The Westwood review found no predatory sexual behaviour. It was bullying and misogyny that was not referred up and joined up. That is very, very serious, believe me. You can never say in an organisation of 23,000 people and all the freelancers that you will never have issues beyond the BBC. I can say that we can get to a point where, flawlessly, we say zero tolerance, and where we catch stuff early and never accept that someone is abusing power in the workplace. There is something quite profound about no one being indispensable, if I may. You can get into a situation—and you can think of other areas: banking, health—where you would go, “That person we can’t live without.” Part of the review work is to make sure that everyone is clear that that is no longer ever acceptable.

You have heard that I have taken personal ownership of this. That is partly because I am aware of it. I have worked on programme making and I have dealt with presenters who are quite full of themselves—let us put it that way—in some ways, and they are talented, but because we work to make them good and there is a cultural history, they become more and more full of themselves and start behaving badly. We can never control how people behave, but we can empower the staff and change the culture so that, no matter who this person is, the BBC is bigger than them. We can live without them. I need to bring about a change within the culture of the organisation so that a junior member or middle manager can say, “This person, out.” We can do that. We cannot control an individual human being if they want to abuse things but, if they do, by God, we can make them go, because we are bigger than them. The BBC is bigger than them. The history of the BBC is that we have loads of people presenting and we make them stars. If they misbehave, out. We can do that.

Dr Shah, you started by saying that one thing you were not expecting when you took over as chair of the BBC was to have a year full of successive allegations about workplace misconduct by men. Where have you been for several years if that was not your expectation?

It was more if you had asked me what the board agenda would be last year. The first thing that came up was Huw Edwards. Then there was Jermaine Jenas. Then there was “Strictly Come Dancing”. Then there was Gregg Wallace. I was not expecting that. I have worked in this business. I know it. I was talking about the extent to which it just kept coming and coming. Admittedly, some of this was timing. When I first arrived, I was told in March, this time last year, that the Russell Brand report would be coming out in a couple of months’ time. Then the Tim Westwood report was going to come out. These were old reports that had been commissioned, but they all landed in my first year. That is what I was saying.

I get that.

I listened live to the Russell Brand story and so of course I knew about it.

Sure. Director general, I accept that you suggest that reporting processes have improved, but you did talk about that 30% who still perhaps do not feel safe working for the BBC, which you are rightly worried about.

Do not feel comfortable. It is an important distinction.

Okay, but within that there will be some who do not feel safe, I imagine. You pointed to the Tim Westwood review, which was produced last week, at a cost of £3 million, I might point out—a long, in-depth review. One of the most worrying findings in that independent report was that those who were effectively on the wrong end of Tim Westwood’s behaviour said there was “a feeling that they could not raise issues with the Controller or other people in Senior Management because of the importance of the ‘talent’ to Radio 1/1Xtra”. Mr Davie, you were director of audio at the time. Do you take any personal responsibility for that culture and the fact that those staff felt that they could not—

Of course I do. I do not want people to be in workplaces where they feel they cannot raise issues. It is not my style. It is not how we should work. You cannot, when you are doing a job at director level with thousands of people, be on top of everything, but at the end of the day, that person would have the exec producer and the controller, and if they did not feel that confidence, that is a problem. Of course it is.

Do you think that has changed?

Yes, I do. Because we have a joined-up system where you have got whistleblowing, you can go beyond that. I just think the data says we have changed. You are only as good as your weakest link, so there is constant vigilance in terms of where culture is not working properly, but certainly the way I am talking to the top 300 leaders of the BBC is in a completely different place from where we were years ago. But you are only as good as what you are delivering and, to the Chair’s point, this year we have had a number of instances. Part of it may be a reflection of us moving to a world in which some of this stuff, in terms of what was lived with, is just unacceptable. Some of it might not be criminal activity but, frankly, stuff that is completely inappropriate for a workplace in 2025. I think people have been thinking, “Is that something? Do I raise that? How does that work?” We are being very clear on that. The Change Associates report will help with that as well.

What happened to the report Banijay commissioned into Gregg Wallace. It was the end of last year.

They are doing their work and we are waiting. We are hoping weeks, not months.

I am curious to see it. They instructed a solicitor, didn’t they? Again, there is an issue about who is paying for that.

Once you do these things, there is a question of scope. Once you do these things, you have to do them properly. They have to talk to everyone and make sure there is nothing—

But they have instructed a solicitor; it is not an independent inquiry. They are paying the solicitor. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, it is a Banijay-led inquiry.

And it has not concluded yet.

And it has not concluded yet.

I think your point, Dr Shah, is that there have been these people, who are often referred to as “talent”, who were effectively the gods of television—not just at the BBC; there have been other scandals on other channels—and almost felt that they were untouchable and could behave how they wanted to in and outside of the workplace, and they were beyond anybody’s power or control because people did not feel they could report bad behaviour. Are you saying that no one is untouchable now, in the sense that there is no talent too big?

It is not just talent. There are powerful people behind the screens, too. They do not have a right to abuse. No one is untouchable. No one is bigger than the BBC. I am determined to stamp this out. It is really, really important. It is 2025. We cannot have this kind of behaviour and find it acceptable. It is certainly true that Tim Westwood’s behaviour would not be possible now, but there are others. We have to make sure that the BBC is a modern organisation and that people who work for it feel able to voice their concerns if they have any, that they will be dealt with, and that no one in the BBC is untouchable.

Everyone is dispensable. That is the message.

Good, but we have had situations in the past that were not in any way a reflection of behaviour, but more to do with conduct outside, in terms of tweeting and what have you. With Gary Lineker, for example, the whole system closed around him. Are you saying that situations like that are also—you know, Gary Lineker was almost too big for the BBC to fire him.

Well, no. When you say the system closed around him, some of the other presenters felt that he had been mistreated, yes? It was not the system. The system was working its way through, under my leadership. Honestly, I can never say you will never get into situations as you deal with this industry and all the various things, but I think what you can say, to the earlier question, is that we can wipe out—our workplace has that standard and it is non-negotiable. We have not touched on independent productions—Banijay and the others. I want to mention that, because it is important to these issues. We want to make sure that people are fully compliant with the CIISA standards before we contract them. That is really important.

This goes back to the due diligence issue that we were talking about a while back. This is due diligence with regard to the behaviour and how members of staff and freelancers are treated. Given the massive due diligence issue on quite a seminal issue, are you confident that on individual matters like this, the due diligence—

I am confident, but we have to be healthily paranoid and constantly make sure that that work is done. CIISA is helpful. Those standards give it an architecture. If I am meeting with the head of an indie, if I am a commissioner, I can say, “Let’s go through this. We need to make sure that work is done.” The truth of this, in terms of building people’s confidence, is that I can see why that issue can be even greater when you are just a freelancer and you are vulnerable in terms of level of workload. Raising an issue could have a bigger consequence for you than if you were part of the BBC as a permanent staff member. That is a real area of focus.

We have some more questions that we want to rattle through with you. I will move on to Bayo.

Tim, you mentioned earlier that the BBC is a trusted brand. I concur. It is a national asset—that was another term used. You also referenced the appeal and the trust of the news category among 16 to 30-year-olds, which is really important. I want to talk about diversity targets. This is not necessarily a question asked just of you; it is very much a societal matter and the BBC is not on its own. I make that clear, but I ask the question because it is a national asset. Where do you feel you are heading with regard to your diversity targets? The strength of any organisation is the people that it reflects. If you are talking about the BBC and its appeal, it markets and presents to all of society, so it needs to be reflective of society in terms of its workforce. I would like to hear from both of you: where do you feel you are with regard to your diversity targets?

I will let Tim give you some data answers to that, but let me respond first. We need to unpack the term “diversity”. What we mean by diversity is a much more sophisticated understanding of that. In the past, it used to be a euphemism for talking about people of colour, but now we understand it is not just that. We are talking about class, we are talking about thought, we are talking about regions, we are talking about geography—all sorts of conversations, because that is what the country is made of. We are talking about neurodivergence as well. The point you made there is vital, because the BBC must look and sound and feel as if it belongs to the country. It can do that if it reflects those diverse ranges of geography, class, points of view, ethnicity—and gender, of course. It is a sine qua non. If you want a charter, if you want to exist, if you want to be a universal public service, it has to do well on these fronts. It cannot just be a group drawn from a narrow world. Actually, that does not make for good programming. You get better programming and you get better outcomes. I say that with my board. I have a board that has lots of different points of view. That helps discussion and debate, and it is much better all round. We are doing well on that. We are not doing as well on all these different fronts. Tim can tell you where we are doing well and where we still need to do work.

It is a critical issue. There has been a lot of debate about diversity in recent weeks, but it is this idea that we represent those we serve and make sure that the BBC is not—I think there is vulnerability around group-think. That has always been my issue around impartiality, to a degree, and that might be socioeconomic diversity as much as other types of diversity. In terms of reshaping the BBC, the direct answer to your question is we are making significant progress but I remain dissatisfied on a couple of measures. I set some pretty clear targets and goals in terms of 50, 20, 14 and 25. Goals are not everything. It is about how you belong in an organisation and it is about the senior leadership but, as a starting point, I want it to at least be reflective of the society we serve. Today, more women work at the BBC than men for the first time in its history. We are basically 50:50, but just over 50%. For black, Asian and minority ethnic, we are at 17.2%. We have seen that grow over the last few years, but critically also in senior management roles. If you cannot see the senior leaders coming through, that is an issue. That has changed significantly. We are seeing growth in those areas. We can share that the numbers; they are published. The area we have to keep working on is our 14% target on people with disability. We are at around 10% but we could do more work in that area. The really intransigent one that cuts across everything, which I am fascinated by and challenged by in some ways, is socioeconomic diversity. If you look at parental occupation at 14—there are 101 ways of describing it, but this is not a bad one—I will have to get you the exact number but it is at about the mid-30s for the population. When James Graham did his speech in Edinburgh, he said the industry was at 15.5% or something like that. We are at 20.6%. I am very proud of our apprenticeship scheme. Just for information, we had 46,000 applications for 290 jobs this year, which puts the industry in perspective. Even with that, it is quite difficult, because people feel the vulnerability of joining the creative industries, potentially, and all the risks around that. They are not making that leap and saying it is for them. To answer your question directly, we are making lots of progress. We are changing the leadership of the BBC. I am proud of the work we have done. I remain restless in a couple of areas.

Brilliant. Thank you, gentlemen. Dr Shah, you mentioned diversity of thought, regional representation, disability and socioeconomic diversity. Those are really important. Certainly, my question was not just around ethnicity, and I feel you both answered the question appropriately. How comfortable are you with regard to your 1,000 apprenticeships target? How can we make sure that all those different types of people, all those different voices, all those different regional thoughts and all those different abilities work their way into your apprenticeship targets? That will have an effect on your future outlook and your productivity as an organisation.

I think we are up to 1,400 who have come through the whole programme. We currently have about 900. I will write and give you the exact number. We are doing well. As I have said, the recruitment has worked extremely hard to make sure we have a diverse—in all that means—range of people entering the BBC. The diversity of thought is important. If you think about institutions connecting how people think, making sure there are no assumptions about even mainstream thinking versus alternative—we really have to be careful. I am worried about institutions detaching from those they serve.

Thank you for that. You mentioned senior management representation, which is key, because the talent—the apprentices and all these people coming through—need to be able to see a path and a journey for them within your organisation. If they do not see this in leadership, they move on and you lose that talent.

I totally agree.

That is absolutely right. I have looked at some of the apprentices, and I think they are beginning to address this point now. There are all these different areas, like a metropolitan point of view rather than a town point of view. It is important that people are drawn from those areas, because we need to guard against the idea that we recruit from the metropolitan world—not just London but other metropolises—and they are arts graduates. This is the media, after all, so it tends to recruit those people. We need to guard against that. Apprenticeships are a really good way of going out there and applying some of our criteria to make our workforce diverse, and to monitor it so that, as you rightly say, they go up and wield executive power—that they come up the system and do not just walk out. They are very important points.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bayo. We have two brief questions before we let you flee.

I am glad you mentioned gender, because that is another issue with these lopsided panels. Fiona Bruce, when she came to Ealing for “Antiques Roadshow”, did say, “I will give you that. There are not enough women on our panels.” Despite the BBC’s requirement to have at least one BAME candidate on the shortlist of every open position, how do you account for the fact that at regional leadership level there is only 5% BAME in those positions and your own target is 20%?

When you say regional, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean local—

For example, not a single head of region is of colour. Not one single TV editor in BBC regional television is of colour. Of the investigations unit that was closed down and was so controversial, not one head of those teams was of colour.

I just think we have more work to do. The numbers I gave you are overall BBC. They are true. They are really good progress.

But at those top levels—

But that counts. I have made the point that if you cannot see yourself in the leadership, you just do not believe. We are at about 14%, I believe, at last count—

Overall?

Overall, of black, Asian or minority ethnic senior leaders. That is not where I want to be in the long term, but it is a big change. There are specific areas where the amount of change in the candidates coming through will take a bit longer, and you have just identified one. I take the challenge. It is a fair pushback and we need to keep trying to make those changes. There are examples of people coming through that area and I can think of a couple that are doing a good job, but we need to do better.

It is about protecting people from the abuse that they are likely to get as well. Female sports commentators come in for the most phenomenal amount of abuse, particularly on social media. Can you do anything as an organisation to protect and prepare—

We are providing support to individuals. If I may say so, this is broader than just female sports commentators. That is particularly toxic, but for female journalists and people coming from any kind of minority, it is vicious out there. [Interruption.] Female politicians, yes—I do not need to tell you. It is vicious. We need to call out people who are doing this. I can only say that we have quite a lot of support systems in place. We are working hard on it. We are having to do more. If you take people who are working in the area of disinformation—you can think of a few people in our place who have been in front of Committees and things—they are getting enormous amounts of abuse. Thank you for the question. We are providing lots of support. We probably could keep being restless about giving more support and recognising that, and also calling it all out together, because it is just unacceptable in terms of a functioning democracy, frankly.

Dr Shah, in November you gave a speech in which you talked about the speed of Ofcom’s regulatory processes, and you called for regulation that “helps rather than hinders” in “the changing media landscape”. How would you change how Ofcom regulates the BBC?

I would invite them to be quicker than they are. Ofcom’s regulatory processes were developed 20-odd years ago. We now live in a completely different landscape. The world is moving very fast. Audiences are changing their consumption habits very fast. We need to move quickly. The example I gave was that for the first time in over 20 years, we saw some extensions to our radio services in the light of changing audience behaviour. With the public interest test, it has taken over 15 months to get one thing approved. Meanwhile, our competitors launched 15 within a month. This is really unacceptable. Ofcom need to understand how fast the world is moving and how we need to move with it. We are not suggesting not having regulation to make sure that we do not crowd out the market; just do it quicker, because it is taking a long time. You will remember, and I remember because I was, again, on the board at the time, when, rather brilliantly, the public service broadcasters launched an on-demand platform called Kangaroo. The Competition Commission killed it because, “Oh, you would crowd out the competition.” Now we are fighting to keep up. Ofcom need to understand the world we are moving in, the pace at which it is changing, what we need to do maintain our universality, our reach and our accessibility, and allow us to do that without wading through treacle to get this done. Again, to be clear, I think we should be regulated, but the regulatory system needs to be more agile.

Have you been working with Ofcom on the implementation of the Media Act? Do you have any concerns about their approach to that process?

I know the team has been, as Tim has already said, particularly concerned about “significant prominence”, because the Media Act says “appropriate prominence”, which is not good enough. We need it to be “significant”. All of you who have smart TVs, think about how long it now takes to get to public service. We need to have significant prominence, but there have been a lot of conversations.

We are in conversation. The Ofcom team are very strong and know their business. We just need to get this work done at speed.

Good. Thank you very much. You have been very generous—

Chair, can I make one point? I have never done this before, but there is an area we have not covered, which is the World Service. We have only a one-year deal at £137 million, and that runs out in April 2026. I want to put it on the record that, with the opportunities that we have and the risks we have, I see it as a grade 1 issue. If we are covering the matters of the BBC, we have not covered that today—

I was going to cover it if we had time. I was going to ask you—

I understand that, and I am being interventionist in saying that I want the Committee to note it. We are well versed as a group about the issues for us at the BBC, in terms of our business. Remember that with pressures on the budget and the movements in the budget, we have £137 million, and that is just to keep the show on the road, let alone proper investment. If we think about our business over the next few months, as we go into the spending round, that will be a big topic.

Are there any implications of the Government’s decision to change the foreign aid budget?

We do not know, but I suggest it is probably not positive in terms of the pressures on being able to fund the World Service appropriately. In our view, we must keep the £137 million coming. We want more than that, but that is a bigger topic.

If you will indulge me, let me mention another thing—perhaps we can discuss it next time—and that is the charter. When I outlined it in Leeds, I said I was looking for a charter for at least a generation, if not a perpetual charter. That is a really important statement about the independence of the BBC and what the charter contains, and why that is what we want to go for. We can have regulation under a framework agreement, but we need a charter for the BBC under which we are not constantly reviewing our very existence. It will be good to discuss this at some point in the future, because it is important that that is examined and discussed and debated. You will be pleased to know I have already made clear my position on it.

When the charter review process begins, we will start our own work, and we will very much look forward to welcoming you and your colleagues back as part of that. I very much doubt we will have to wait so long until we have the pleasure of your company again. It was great to see you both this morning. Thank you very much for your time and for being so patient with us. We have gone about half an hour over, so I hope we have not made you late for anything else, but thank you very much for joining us.