Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs
- BBC licence fee: proposals to decriminalise non-payment
- Morgan rejects claim BBC being punished for anti-government coverage
- Morgan’s Q&A after BBC speech – Summary
Here are the main points from Nicky Morgan’s Q&A. The full text of the culture secretary is not available yet (it should be on the DCMS website soon), but the spiky stuff came in the Q&A.
You say the BBC needs to adapt to the new streaming era. Everyone in the BBC knows that. What I’m not clear about is why you think decriminalising, or moving to a civil enforcement scheme, in any way assists the BBC in meeting that challenge, because the view within the corporation is it weakens the BBC to the tune of £200m a year, quite possibly more. In other words, it puts us in a worse place to meet the challenge. And doesn’t that just underscore the suspicion that really what is going on here is a bit of a punishment beating for the BBC from a government who resent the attitude of the BBC as they see it during the Brexit referendum and the general election? It’s a bit of political payback.
I utterly refute that last suggestion … If you have to criminalise the non-payment of a licence fee in order for the BBC to have the funding to remain relevant, then that would suggest to me there’s something wrong with the model.
At the end of the day I don’t think it serves anybody for this as a debate to be continuing. I hope very much that, actually, the best thing would be for the co-chairs of the press lobby here at Westminster to sit down with the director of communications and to work this out because … actually what’s needed is communicating clearly to the public about the tricky issues that this government is dealing with.
Obviously there are decisions taken elsewhere about which programme [ministers appear on]. But … there is a massive amount of engagement between government ministers and the BBC and different channels, as well as all other broadcasters. So it is not that we are not being questioned by broadcasters.
Oh lovely stuff. The telegraph’s @AVMikhailova clean bowls Nicky Morgan, by asking her how, given she thinks the BBC has to “stay relevant, a consistent theme in your speech”, should the government be boycotting the today programme, even after a terror attack.
The verbatim answer, I think: “Umm, err, umm, everyone who has wanted to come here today has been welcome to come. Individual decisions taken on particular programmes and err umm err it’s not like we’re not being questioned um.”
Nicky Morgan, being essentially a decent human being, resoundingly fails to defend the indefensible.
Why she’s choosing to do this to herself we can but wonder.
The Q&A is over. But it was good while it lasted, and much more interesting than the speech itself. I will post a summary shortly.