Waiting for Lunchtime

BBC execs more powerful than MPs?

Are senior executives more powerful than MPs? It sounds a ridiculous question, but apparently that's what a small number of Conservative MPs believe.

A couple of days ago my MP, Nick de Bois (he's a Tory) mentioned on Twitter that he was prepared to support an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons which calls for an annual vote via the internet "on the BBC's programmes, the level of BBC operational activity and administrative overheads, salaries, and on the standards of BBC programmes".

These were (and still are!) my primary disagreements with the proposal:

• If you ask people in general what they want from any kind of public service, the answer is usually "as much as possible". If you ask them how much they want to pay for that service, the answer is nearly always "as little as possible". Therefore putting budgetary decisions of any kind of public service to a public vote will inevitably result in a sharp decline in that organisation's budget.


• Determining the budget for an organisation the size of the BBC is hugely complex, which is why the Licence Fee agreements between the BBC and Government often take many months to conclude. The recent stitch-up between Jeremy Hunt and Mark Thompson doesn't negate this point.


• Television programmes take a long time to plan, film and produce. Any organisation making them needs to have some idea of its budgets, not just for the current year, but for at least the following one. Leaving the licence fee to be determined annually at the whim of an electorate would make the BBC un-runnable.


• Even if you think the idea in this EDM is a good one, there are many public and pseudo-public organisations which could have their finances determined in this way. Why are BBC employees being singled out? Why not also vote for the "salaries and administrative overheads" of the police; judges and the court service; social workers; teachers. Or ... how about this ... MPs?

The EDM has been proposed by Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow. Mr Halfon is also on Twitter so I struck up a brief conversation there with both MPs on this subject.

Eventually I got Mr Halfon to admit that his idea wouldn't apply to all BBC staff, but only to "board and celebrities". Well the BBC Executive Board is less than a dozen salaried people, and the majority of "celebrities" who appear on TV shows are contracted freelancers and not actually employees of the BBC. They negotiate their fees individually, usually via their agent. So Mr Halfon's idea is half-baked at best.

But, more importantly, I tried to get both Mr Halfon and Mr de Bois to agree that if it's important to have an annual vote on the salaries and programmes of the BBC (because it's a public service), surely it's even more important to have an annual vote on the salaries and policies of MPs (because they're public servants, and far more powerful).

Initially both MPs fell back to the tired old "oh but you have the opportunity to sack us every 5 years" claim. But that's not the same thing at all as an annual appraisal, and I've never seen a General Election ballot form with "how much do you want your MP to be paid?" on it.

Despite a little bit of pushing (not much, I admit, I got bored with it very quickly), neither Nick de Bois nor Robert Halfon would agree that MPs should have their policies and salaries put to a public vote every year. However they both seem to agree that senior BBC officials should face such a vote.

My conclusion is that both these MPs believe that senior BBC executives need to be kept in check more than MPs do because they must think the BBC staff are more powerful than MPs. So there you have it, two Members of Parliament who are in completely the wrong jobs. They presumably went into politics to be able to change things in this country, but they both believe that it's easier to change things as (say) the Director of Audio & Music at the BBC, than as an MP.

posted by Iain @ 06:34