Pact CEO Nigel Warner appeared at the Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool today, where he called for a more open debate on the future of BBC funding as part of the ongoing Charter Review.
In the Pact submission to the Government’s Green Paper on the BBC Charter Review, we detailed how reform of the licence fee will be necessary to offer long-term security and certainty to enable the BBC to make investment and commissioning decisions. We believe that universality must be maintained as a key principle, which will allow PSB programmes to be available to everyone, free at the point of use.
A ‘lower fee, wider net’ universal household levy would provide a more stable, progressive and platform neutral public funding model and would keep the BBC as a shared national utility. International models - such as in Germany, Italy and Norway - demonstrate that such an approach can be implemented in a range of practical ways.
Pact also recognises the attraction of a perpetual Charter as a further way to mitigate uncertainty for the BBC and we see merit in moving towards this kind of system. However, BBC executives must be held to account and know that there is some mechanism that clearly has authority to make changes to the BBC.
Our full submission to the Government’s Green Paper on the BBC Charter Review will be published and shared with members in due course.
Pact supports the introduction of a household levy to make the BBC sustainable for the longer term. The debate on this should be open, not closed down at the outset. We need to be realistic about what can be done in the time the Government has left on this Charter, but public engagement in an open and frank conversation is essential. Pact also supports a perpetual BBC Charter, but the BBC must continue to be held accountable to Parliament, the public and regulators.