Speech by Tessa Jowell at the Edinburgh Television Festival

Media Guardian Edinburgh Television Festival 23 August 2003 Speech by Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State For Culture, Media and Sport

Those clips are a random selection to make one point – that good TV and radio are powerful cultural reference points. For years you couldn't cough in public without someone shouting Arsenal.

I'll come back to this point in a minute, but first, it's not just a delight but also a relief to have Ray Snoddy up here chairing where I can keep an eye on him, not down in the audience– veterans of the RTS 2 years ago will know what I mean.

But I imagine the burden of chairing won't stop him asking questions, and I'm hoping to leave plenty of time for a Q&A.

The last few weeks have seen fevered speculation from every quarter about the role of the BBC and the relationship between the BBC and Government. It comes from those pro or anti the BBC and from those pro or anti Government.

In this speech there will be nothing feverish.  What I say in this speech is what I mean.  There is no subtext.  There is no code to be decoded. No threats – either naked, veiled, unveiled or half dressed.

Instead, I intend to talk this morning about the broadcasting scene now we have Royal Assent for the Communications Bill.

Let's remind ourselves about what the Act is intended to achieve.  Its core purposes are:

  • To deliver diverse and high quality communications services
  • To ensure the widest possible access
  • To safeguard the interests of citizens and consumers
  • To make sure the UK is home to the most dynamic and competitive communications market in the world

And all this to be achieved by competition where possible, regulation in the public interest where necessary.

The Act is not work completed.  It is part of a continuing process – the next steps of which include

  • the establishment of Ofcom,
  • their review of PSB,
  • the review of the BBC's Charter,

all in the context of the growth of digital and the approach to switch-over.

This is a process intended to deliver our shared ambition – that is to deliver to the people of this country the best broadcast services of anywhere in the world, making the most effective use of fast-developing technologies.

So the to-do list is long, but I intend now to address some of the more immediate:

  • the context for Ofcom's Public Sector Broadcasting (PSB) review
  • the review of the BBC's online services
  • the code of practice for independent producers
  • media literacy
  • and I will touch on the approach to the review of the BBC charter.

I will begin with PSB and why I chose the clips you've just seen. They are a tiny example of the power of the best of PSB to provide the ultimate in collective popular culture, which unites generations.
 
Each is a shared memory for people of different ages. It's fashionable  - almost compulsory at the TV Festival - to knock the number of repeats on TV, and blame the laziness of broadcasters.

But I believe there is a real public service in keeping these memories alive, just as much as in creating new memories by commissioning new programmes.

There is value in re-showing dramas as powerful as Cathy Come Home, or documentaries as enlightening as the Ascent of Man. Taken together, the archives of the broadcasters are as much a part of our post-war popular culture as the Beatles or Harry Potter.

And the success of BBC7 shows that there is a real appetite for a second chance to see or hear just some of the thousands of hours of world class, original programming the PSBers have produced.

So "Jowell calls for more repeats"?

Well in a way I do, actually. Not lazy scheduling, not TV on the cheap. But I do applaud the mining of the archives for golden nuggets from the past.  It's everyone's heritage and everyone should be able to savour it.

That is the past of PSB.  But let's not get nostalgic. This slot is to discuss the present and the future.

And now we have, for the first time, the central purposes  of PSB defined in statute.

I put that definition in the Bill for a reason.

Because although competition can deliver much, it cannot be guaranteed to deliver all the range and quality of TV that people want.

The market will tend to deliver the safe, the proven crowd-pullers, the tried and tested.  It will tend not to innovate, not to take risks.  

John Gray, the political philosopher, put the case this way:

"public service broadcasting produces cultural goods that cannot be supplied by market institutions alone."

He compares it to "the streets and parks of a well-ordered city in the classical European tradition." 

They could be provided and charged for by the market but then "a great public good is lost - that of city life itself with its public places for gathering and promenading, its byways for loitering and sauntering, no less than for getting speedily from place to place."

This is one way of expressing the philosophical case for public service broadcasting, one that accepts that there is a public as well as a private realm.

As I said last year, this kind of cultural value is hard to pin down.  It is not always amenable to quantitative analysis, because it is about intangibles.

PSB serves people in their role as citizens as much as it serves them as consumers.  As well as giving them the entertainment, sport and culture they enjoy, it also gives them the information they need to understand the world around them. 

Information is more than news, it is also about explanation, context, contending voices, as well as factual reporting.  The market cannot be guaranteed to provide all this.

PSB also helps with identity.  It speaks of who we are, of our differences and our similarities.  It nurtures our national, regional, local and social identities, respecting the history and cultures that make us what we are.

In a world where increasingly people feel disconnected from their past, their neighbours and sometimes even their families, PSB can provide continuity and reassurance.

In a world dominated by large companies with EU, US or global identities, PSB ensures national and regional production.  This is good for jobs, but also good for national and regional cultures.

In Ofcom we now have a regulator that will promote competition and keep broadcasting standards high.  Unlike say the Federal Communications Commission in the USA, it has the powers and duties to do both, because unlike the USA, that's what this country's broadcasting culture demands.

One of its first tasks is the review of PSB.

Although PSB is vital to the quality and range of broadcasting in Britain today, change is happening and gathering pace.

With technology and markets moving fast, viewer expectations rising, business models diversifying, PSB cannot expect to be immune.

The obligation on Ofcom, the PSBers themselves and on Government is to re-shape PSB for the future, to ensure it's still relevant to the viewers and keeps its place at the centre of British broadcasting. 

At the heart of PSB is the BBC. 

The BBC has been part of the national glue, reflecting and shaping our national identity.  I say that because that's what it does and what is important.  And in a rapidly changing society that is even more important in the future than it has been in the past.

A strong BBC is one that moves with the times, that meets the needs of the present and anticipates the needs of the future. And it is precisely because of the BBC's centrality that it is put under so much scrutiny.

It is premature to talk about Charter Review in any detail – after all a new Charter would not take effect before January 2007.

But I can say that the Charter Review will be wide-ranging, open and transparent, with extensive public consultation and appropriate Parliamentary scrutiny. 

But however wide-ranging and however radical, there is one thing that I'm certain of - that at the end of the process the independence of the BBC from Government will remain.

In the review process there will be scope for every interest to be heard.  The various elements of the industry, media academics and other experts will of course express themselves with force and clarity.

However, those expert voices do not necessarily reflect the views of the public – the people of this country – who also have an investment in the BBC.

I intend to make sure that the review process will include properly based research, so that we can hear the public's voice, and know what they really think and want.

The Communications Bill process shows that, exhausting though it may be, there is no substitute for thorough consultation every step of the way.

So regard this as the first invitation of many – I want to hear from everyone with opinions on this matter, and I want this discussion to reach way beyond the cloistered circles of the media priesthood.

The review will be wide-ranging.  It will be open and transparent.  And it will be motivated by a desire to give the British people the TV, radio and new media services they deserve, and no other motive will intrude.

The charter debate will come to dominate the landscape, but next year will also see the reviews of the BBC's new digital TV and radio services. 

And I can announce today that the review of BBC's online services will now begin under the direction of Philip Graf, former Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror.

The BBC provides one of the most popular websites in the world, but much has changed in the dot.com world since the euphoria faded.

It is now time to take stock and to examine whether the BBC's online services meet the needs of the public and to consider its impact on the wider market.

Given the timing, it will also feed in to the review of the BBC Charter, looking at how online services fit within the BBC's general PSB obligations.

There will be wide public and industry consultation, with the consultation period beginning now and running until November 17th .

I hope Philip will be able to submit his finished report by spring next year.

Another key task for Ofcom in nurturing a diverse and healthy ecology is implementing the results of the programme supply review which I commissioned a year ago.

A strong independent sector is vital to the quality and range of British broadcasting.

Public service broadcasters have protected status and many privileges, in return for which they have many obligations.  Amongst those obligations is the duty to nurture a vibrant independent sector.

It's good for the industry and it's good for viewers.

And the Licence Fee in particular is venture capital for the nation's creativity.

The independent producers presented persuasive evidence to the review panel that they were disadvantaged by the terms of trade dictated by the broadcasters, inhibiting them from competing effectively in the programme supply market. 

The ITC, supported by Bob Phillis's expert panel, confirmed that some corrective action was needed.

We took this very seriously and made some key changes to the Act:

  • A new requirement for the public service broadcasters to draw up and comply with a code of practice setting out the principles they will apply in their dealings with the independent sector.  These codes must be approved by OFCOM.
  • strengthening of the independent production quota, allowing OFCOM to require any shortfall to be made up in subsequent years.
  • OFCOM also have the power to recommend that the quota be met by value as well as, or instead of, by broadcasting time
  • And we have announced our intention that the BBC should be given a duty to apply the quota to BBC1 and BBC2 separately.

I am clear that dealings by the PSBers with the independent sector must be fair.

They must allow for proper businesses to be built, for creativity to be rewarded, and for control of rights to be equitably handled between those who create the content and those who just commission it.

The new codes of practice will be vital in securing this.

I understand that the draft codes are now with the ITC and Ofcom and I look forward to them being agreed and in place by the end of this year.  And although it is not for government to dictate the detail of those codes, I would expect Ofcom to ensure that they meet the general principles of clarity and transparency that the review recommended and the Act requires.

I am delighted that we are already beginning to see the benefits of these new measures.  The early evidence suggests that independent production companies are increasingly seen as viable investment prospects, reflecting increased confidence in the sector's future.

One of Ofcom's less well-known duties is to promote media literacy in the context of broadcasting.

The newspapers have a long tradition of being opinionated. 

And the coverage of Lord Hutton's Inquiry shows that the newspapers cannot even agree on the facts, or more often, they cannot agree on which facts to highlight and which to brush aside.  And they widely diverge on their conclusions.

The point is that that's what people expect.

But readers know all this; they buy their newspaper accordingly, and we have absolutely no intention of interfering.

However the wider news environment is becoming a more crowded and confusing place, with electronic media in particular growing and diversifying.  So we need to ensure that we give the public the tools they need to make their way through the electronic world.

I believe that in the modern world Media Literacy will become as important a skill as maths or science.  Decoding our media will be as important to our lives as citizens as understanding great literature is to our cultural lives.
 
I accept that trust in Government and in politicians has been damaged, just as it has also declined for some sections of the media.  Part of rebuilding trust – trust in the media and trust in politicians – is to recognise the need to reassert the primacy of fact over editorialising and spin.

We also need an electorate that can make sense of what they hear from the media.  OFCOM has a statutory duty to promote this kind of literacy in the world of broadcasting.  It is a duty I expect it to take seriously. 

Because it is right that people are able to challenge everything and question everything.

Because that is the way to understand. 

And the end result?

It will, I hope, be a generation of informed, educated sceptics.

People should be sceptical about Government, the media and other institutions.  I don't want people to take anything from the media or from us just on trust.  But most importantly, a sceptic is too discerning to be a cynic.  Cynicism corrodes the individual just as much as our wider society.

Politicians are often accused of living in the Westminster Village.  Of speaking a language that excludes the public.  The broadcasting industry too has its jargon.  Too often we retreat to our private worlds to engage in debates with ourselves.  This is a conspiracy against understanding.  It amounts to a conspiracy to exclude the public.  And broadcasting is now far too important to our society for decisions about its future to be left to what could in effect be private conversations.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to all of us is to find a language that engages and involves the people who really matter, and that is the people of this country.  They are your audience and our electorate.

In our different ways we – us the politicians and you the broadcasters –  only exist to serve them.  And we all forget that at our peril.

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