Ministers’ plans to boost confidence in the impartiality of the BBC are being used as “another opportunity to kick” the public service broadcaster, according to media experts.
In a midterm review of the BBC’s governance and regulations published on Monday, the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, said the BBC needed “to adapt or risk losing the trust of the audiences it relies on”.
The review concluded that the BBC’s complaints process did enable licence fee payers to hold the BBC directly accountable but “impartiality continues to be an ongoing issue for audiences”, as does a “lack of public confidence in the way the BBC currently handles complaints”.
The review recommends more oversight from the media watchdog Ofcom – including oversight of digital offerings such as the BBC News website. It also pushes for a new legally binding responsibility for the BBC board to oversee the broadcaster’s complaints process, while non-executive board directors will be given greater powers to challenge complaint handling.
The review did not look at how the BBC should be funded. In December Frazer confirmed that the licence fee, which funds much of the corporation’s operations, would rise by £10.50 to £169.50 a year. The BBC board, in a strongly worded statement, said the below-inflation increase would “require further changes on top of the major savings that we are already delivering”. The BBC’s royal charter – which sets out the corporation’s mission, purpose and funding model – is up for renewal at the end of 2027.
John Mair, editor of a recently published book, How Do We Pay for the BBC After 2027?, called the midterm review a “great big hard hammer, badly disguised inside a not very velvet glove”.
“Lucy Frazer’s midterm review reads like it was written for and by GB News,” he said. “The government should trust the BBC board and trust the BBC programme makers to understand impartiality. Rather than a war against the BBC, why is the culture secretary not defending the BBC as one of the great British institutions?”
Frazer said the government wanted “a strong, independent BBC” that could “thrive in the years to come as a major contributor to the nation’s successful creative industries”.
She said the changes came out of “constructive conservations” with the BBC and Ofcom. “These changes will better set up the BBC to ask difficult questions of itself, and make sure Ofcom can continue to hold the broadcaster to account,” she said. “We all rely on the BBC being the best it can be and this review will help ensure that is what the British public gets.”
Sources within the BBC said the messaging around the review was “disappointing”. They said: “Obviously the BBC makes mistakes and is continually striving to do better, but there is a lack of context here. Assertions about a supposed lack of public trust made in the midterm review are not based on evidence but largely on opinion, and that’s disappointing.”
They added that while on paper the review appeared to strengthen the hand of the board, in practice little would change as the board was already involved in the complaints process.
Roger Bolton, a former BBC executive and the presenter of the podcast Roger Bolton’s Beeb Watch, said the midterm review “doesn’t seem to amount to much but provides another opportunity to kick the BBC over impartiality”.
But the apparent strengthening of the role of the board made it “even more important” that the BBC board was representative of the country as a whole, he said: “At the moment it is top-heavy with businessmen and others sympathetic to the present governing party.”
A BBC spokesperson said “no other organisation takes its commitment to impartiality more seriously” and the organisation had plans to further improve standards.
“We know this matters to audiences and the BBC continues to be the No 1 source for trusted news, with the highest scores for impartiality and accuracy,” they said.
They said the corporation had proposed reforms and was pleased the government had “fully taken our proposals onboard”.
