My Lords, six hours on, I am deeply grateful to everybody for their contributions. I feel privileged to have been part of a succession of contributions from some of the country’s wisest and most experienced politicians and public servants, along with some of our most senior lawyers and most successful and well-known broadcasters, with their unlimited knowledge of the BBC. Together, we have created a collection of essays that will probably be the standard text for students, politicians and policymakers for years to come. We have covered the BBC’s successes: from the Proms and “War and Peace” to “The Great British Bake Off”, from “Panorama” on the Panama papers to murder in “The Archers”, and from the BBC’s Korean service to Larry the Lamb. Almost unanimously, your Lordships have supported and endorsed the conclusions and recommendations of your Communications Committee, for which I am deeply grateful.
It took us until speakers 21 and 22 for the noble Lords, Lord Desai and Lord Maxton, to add a little note of dissent. I will make one comment on the remarks they made. We felt that if the licence fee is to be replaced by a household levy, which may be a better way of collecting the resources needed, that should follow the same transparent and open process in being set as we were recommending for the licence fee itself. It might be a better system but we thought that the process should be the same.
The debate has drawn out some continuing unease that the new unitary board, if that is what emerges from the White Paper, will not be truly independent if the non-executive members are seen as creatures of the Secretary of State, and we will need to watch that very carefully. I am grateful to the Minister for reassuring us to some extent on that, and we await our debate on the White Paper, when we will be able to have a go at that.
We noted also that the report of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, is coming out in June. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, may well be bringing before us a Private Member’s Bill to put the BBC on a statutory footing and end what he regards as a ministerial charter. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, reminded us that a digital economy Bill is also coming, and that is an opportunity for us to comment further on some of these matters. But the White Paper debate itself will be significant, and we look forward to that.
The House has sent out a very clear message to any politician not to meddle or interfere with, micromanage or diminish the BBC. Long may the BBC reflect all the diversity of our nation as it informs, educates and, indeed, entertains us so brilliantly. I beg to move.