Parliament should have say in chair of BBC Trust, says Labour frontbencher

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Parliament should have say in chair of BBC Trust, says Labour frontbencher

BBC chairman must be an independent appointment due to Tory 'contempt' for the broadcaster, says shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis

Conservative party hostility for the BBC is so great that Parliament should be given a formal say in the appointment of the next chairman of the corporation, Labour's shadow culture secretary said today.

Ivan Lewis wrote to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, arguing that the all-party culture media and sport select committee could help depoliticise the process by publicly interviewing the final shortlist of two candidates in February.

The Labour MP said that Conservative "ideological contempt" for the BBC meant that it was critical that the appointment of the BBC chairman ? done traditionally by the Queen on the advice of ministers ? should be done independently.

Labour insiders are increasingly concerned that former Conservative party chairman Lord Patten of Barnes is a shoo-in for the �110,000 a year job. The party regards Patten as a political placeman, who may insist on severe cutbacks.

Even some Conservatives worry that Patten is "too political" a candidate. David Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, used to work for Patten when he was Governor of Hong Kong in the 1990s.

Ivan Lewis said: "It is essential the new chairman of the BBC Trust is a strong voice for the licence fee payer and totally committed to protecting the BBC's independence."

The Lewis proposal would see the Commons' select committee ? chaired by Conservative John Whittingdale ? able to make a recommendation as to which of the two shortlisted candidates they prefer.

In his letter to Hunt, Lewis says that "adopting this approach would demonstrate you are serious about a new style of politics and committed to ensuring this appointment is made on merit, free of political bias".

Both the current Coalition and previous Labour governments have promised that an increasing number of key government appointments should be subject to "pre-appointment scrutiny" by Commons' select committees. But the post of BBC Trust Chairman has not yet been included on the list of appointments to be included in such an exercise.

John Whittingdale, the committee chairman, said that he supported Lewis's idea in principle. "This is something I have been arguing for for some while, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I know that Jeremy Hunt is sympathetic, but he told me that it was a decision that had to be taken by the Prime Minister."

That suggests that Hunt is unlikely to concede the point ? although in the past the culture secretary has been critical of the political affiliation of the current BBC Trust Chairman, Sir Michael Lyons. Sir Michael sat on Birmingham Council as a Labour member in the early 1980s, a point not lost on Hunt when he described the BBC boss dismissively as "a former Labour councillor".

Under the existing process, interviews will take place at the end of January in front of an independent three-member panel comprising: Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP; Stuart Purvis, a former editor-in-chief of ITN; and Jonathan Stephens, who is the permanent secretary at the Department of Culture.

They they recommend two names to Jeremy Hunt, who is supposed to select from one of them, taking soundings from other members of the Government. However, it is theoretically possible for Hunt to discard both names and chose somebody else from the field of candidates entirely.

The other fancied runner is Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, who has long been interested in BBC governance and is politically neutral ? having previously run the Audit Commission and the Financial Services Authority.

Others in the field include Dame Patricia Hodgson, the principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, Richard Hooper, the former radio regulator, and Richard Lambert, the director-general of the CBI. Hodgson was a Conservative party Parliamentary candidate in the 1970s.

There was no reply from Jeremy Hunt's office or the Department of Culture at the time of writing.

Dan Sabbagh

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