Culture Secretary suggests 10-year time limit on BBC charter will be removed
Lisa Nandy said the current charter would be ‘the last of its kind’.
The Culture Secretary has suggested the 10-year time limit on the BBC charter will be removed as she hailed the corporation as “an engine for the whole nation”.
Lisa Nandy said the current charter would be the “last of its kind” in a speech at the Society of Editors conference on Tuesday.
“If the NHS is essential to the health of our people, the BBC is essential to the health of our democracy, and so while the terms, the structures and the funding for the BBC will continue to be negotiated every several years, we should seek to end the bizarre situation where if the charter isn’t agreed in time the BBC ceases to exist,” she said.
“We continue to look at the authorities to the consultation on the charter, but the truth is we would not accept this for the NHS and we should not accept it for the BBC.
“This is about protecting the BBC and everything that it represents for the long term, for all of us.
“We will act to future-proof this type of institution in these stormy times when public debate feels more toxic and polarised than ever and too often the BBC becomes a lightning rod for the ongoing, exhausting culture wars.”
The charter, which is renewed every 10 years and expires in December 2027, sets out the BBC’s public purpose and is the constitutional basis for the corporation.
Currently, the charter renewal has a fixed end date, which outgoing director-general Tim Davie has previously said leaves the corporation “open to being treated as a political football”.
Asked whether she is going to abolish the 10-year limit, Ms Nandy said: “For far too long, we have ducked the big questions around the future of the BBC, whether it comes to the length of the charter, or to how you sustainably fund the BBC.
“We can’t continue to duck those big and essential questions, and so this charter will be the last of its kind.”
She said: “In recent decades, the BBC, which has always adapted and evolved throughout its history has reinvented itself as an engine for the whole nation.”
The Culture Secretary added that in the current charter review, the Government “intends to strengthen the accountability of the leadership of the BBC not to politicians, but to the people it serves in every nation and region”.
“This will include commissioning power, not just programming, moving much closer to people, stronger and more streamlined internal accountability so that staff can hold their leadership to account with a much clearer expectation that licence fee-payers will be able to see how that money is spent and the result of those decisions,” she said.
