Tomorrow's BBC: Who Governs?

Representing the licence fee payer is a key element of the Trust's work, and I cannot overstate how important the licence fee payer is within the Trust itself. Almost everything that the organisation does is viewed and debated through the lens of the licence fee payer’s interests. So it follows that, when it comes to the debate about the future of the BBC governance and regulation, I felt that it was vital that licence fee payers were given the opportunity to have a platform to talk about what that means to them.

The notion that the governing and regulatory body of the BBC should represent the licence fee payer, that it should work to ensure that the BBC is accountable to them – as the Trust has done historically – was strongly supported by panellists and members of the audience who turned up to pack out the Fyvie Hall, at the University of Westminster last week. The event was over-subscribed, with a capacity audience of over 150 people who turned up to take part in the discussion.

‘Tomorrow’s BBC: Who Governs?’  was our first charter review seminar, and its focus was to explore and unpick the differences between governance and regulation and how this should be applied to the BBC in the future. Having been the Chairman of the body that does the dual role of both governor and regulator of the BBC for nearly a year now, I set out some of my thoughts on the challenges for the future. We also called on a panel of experts from a range of backgrounds and views to give their contributions to set the tone and scope for the debate ahead.

Within the debate a number of themes emerged of interest to panellists and audience members alike. From the importance of the independence of the BBC, to how good governance is an integral part of delivering the kind of content that audiences love. You can see a film of the audience discussion with our event host Steve Hewlett below:

There were a lot of contributions about the structure of models themselves, with many people coalescing around the idea of separation of governance and regulatory functions. There are a lot of ideas out there on how this might work, which is why I am pleased that Sir David Clementi was recently asked to lead an independent review of this topic on behalf of the Government. The Trust will fully participate in this, sharing our experiences of the last eight years and our understanding of licence fee payer views.

Since this event, the Trust has responded to the Government’s Green Paper using the 40,000 responses received to our consultation. You can read our response in full.

Details of forthcoming seminars can be found here.