Ministers urged to rule out BBC's national break-up

Published on Monday 16 February 2004 00:00

THE government was under pressure yesterday to rule out plans to end the BBC’s 80-year-old existence as the UK-wide institution.

Leaked Whitehall documents revealed the government has considered breaking up the corporation into "separate entities for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland".

The internal memoranda, published in the Sunday Times, also showed that the government is considering a wider role for the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, bringing the BBC under its jurisdiction. The move would end the practice whereby the BBC governors ensure the corporation’s impartiality and accuracy.

The proposals will be regarded ominously by the BBC management which fears the government may use the charter review, announced in December last year, to punish the BBC in the wake of the Hutton Report.

The documents say there could be scope for national and regional autonomy to "reduce perceived metropolitan bias."

The paper continues: "How far is it essential for the BBC to be organised on a UK-wide basis? Is there a case for separate entities for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, or at least a more federated approach than now?"

If executed, such a scheme could mean the emasculation of the BBC, ending UK-wide news bulletins and, therefore, threatening its strongly-guarded reputation for editorial independence.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said yesterday it was mystified by the documents, with a spokesman insisting it did not come from the department. "We don’t recognise the quotations from these documents," he said.

"They bear no resemblance to our stated position on the future of the BBC. As the consultation paper, a document published in December last year, makes clear the whole purpose of charter review, which takes place every ten years, is to re-examine every aspect of the BBC, its purpose and work.

"Everything is up for discussion but, as we have said many times before, the end result will be a strong BBC completely independent of government," the spokesman added.

The message was underlined by Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, who again repeated the government’s wish for the BBC to remain independent.

Ms Jowell said ministers still continued to value the BBC’s work, despite the bitter dispute with the corporation over a report by a former correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, alleging No 10 had doctored intelligence reports to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The BBC’s ten-year charter is up for renewal in December 2006. In keeping with previous governments Ms Jowell has announced a public consultation as part of the charter review which will be followed by a green paper, probably at the end of this year. It is not clear whether the documents obtained by the Sunday Times were written before or after Ms Jowell announced the consultation process.

The leaked documents give no reference to the date, government department or author of the proposals, nor to whom they were sent.

It is possible they were written last year and formed the basis of the discussion document published in December. This invites opinions on the licence fee, the future structure of the BBC and the quantity and quality of its programming.

The discussion paper also calls for public feedback on the national and regional structure, posing the following questions:

• How well does the BBC serve the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions? What changes, if any, would you like to see?

• Is the current balance between national, regional and community level programming right?

A senior executive in the BBC told The Scotsman yesterday he was more concerned about the source of the story - the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times - than its apparent authorship, the government.

"Who knows what Murdoch is up to?" he said.

Mr Murdoch has made no secret of his dislike of the licence-fee funded BBC which he sees as competition with his BSkyB satellite operation.

However, there are genuine fears among some of the BBC management team that the government is still seeking revenge after being vindicated by Lord Hutton and knows the BBC is particularly vulnerable at the moment.