UK government will not be swayed by ‘political persuasions’ for next BBC chair

The UK culture secretary has promised not to be swayed by “political persuasions” in selecting the next BBC chair but urged the broadcaster to be mindful of rules around impartiality as it was “on occasion biased”.

Lucy Frazer told the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee on Tuesday that she wanted to ensure “the broadest field possible” of candidates for the job in order to “recommend the best possible person” following the resignation of Richard Sharp.

Ministers have been urged to ensure that the appointments process is transparent and to stop choosing candidates with obvious political allegiances, after Sharp, a Tory party donor, was forced to quit in April over potential perceived conflicts of interest.

“I will not be taking into account their political persuasions one way or another,” said Frazer, adding that no decisions had been taken on the licence fee, which funds the BBC, ahead of a review into the subject.

However, she urged the corporation “to understand its duties in relation to impartiality as well”, noting that a midterm review of its operations would cover the matter.

“I think that the BBC on occasion is biased,” Frazer said, while declining to give examples. “There are often complaints about the BBC.”

Her remarks to the Commons committee followed a warning by a senior media executive that public service broadcasters, such as ITV, faced an “existential threat” from commercial demands made by US tech groups to carry their programmes over the internet.

PSBs are concerned that the government’s draft media bill does not set out sufficiently clear rules enforcing a fair commercial relationship between them and online TV platforms owned by large US tech companies.

The legislation, now going through parliament, is in part designed to help them to better compete with leading streaming services such as Amazon Prime. One of its aims, for example, is to ensure that viewers can easily discover PSB services such as BBC iPlayer and ITVX on smart TVs and to make them “prominent” on streaming platforms’ systems.

But giving evidence, Magnus Brooke, ITV’s director of strategy, policy and regulation, warned that online TV platforms could apply commercial terms set at a global, rather than UK, level.

He said that such a move could lead the companies to demand more than 30 per cent of revenues from broadcasters, as well as control over important customer data and relationships with advertisers.

“That is an existential threat to PSBs,” said Brooke, arguing that provisions in the bill to ensure that broadcasters could cover their costs was not the right approach because of the need for commercially funded networks to make money.

The legislation gives Ofcom a dispute resolution function, allowing it to intervene if PSBs and streamers cannot reach mutually beneficial commercial deals.

Brooke said the bill needed to give the watchdog “enough strength and discretion . . . to get us into a place of a win, win in the way that we have with a Virgin or a Sky”.