My Lords, I shall just slip in on the back of the excellent speech on diversity from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, because this is a subject very close to my heart. I think Amendment 33, put down by the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, is very telling in calling for public service broadcasters to put forward a diversity strategy.
But I would go behind the amendment and say that, in my experience, it is often the case that public service broadcasters can hide behind a strategy, and a strategy can often be an excuse for inaction. I remember that when I first got involved in the diversity in broadcasting debate, which is now more than a decade ago, I was very struck by the fact that, when we had a meeting with the broadcasters—there were three main broadcasters in play: ITV, BBC and Sky—the BBC came in and said, “We totally get what you’re saying and we’re going to produce a strategy”. ITV came in and said something in between. Sky came in and said “We’re just going to go for 20%”—and it did go for it, in terms of people both in front of and behind the camera. So it is very important that the Minister himself gets very engaged with the broadcasters, because if they simply put strategic documents on his desk, nothing will change.
The other important part of any strategy that is legislated for in this Bill is that it brings forward proper, in-depth statistics about what is happening in broadcasting in terms of diversity and equality. On that point, I would like the Minister to update me on the Diamond network, which was the measurement standard put in place in the mid-2010s in which broadcasters had to report for every production. It gradually included the independent producers, because that was another
thing that we discovered made life more difficult, because you then had to go to all the independent production companies and bring them within the system. What has happened to the Diamond system? What kind of statistics is it throwing up that reveal what is actually happening in broadcasting?
I am fully aware that, when one talks about diversity, there may be a small element of the public—perhaps a Venn diagram overlapping with Garrick Club members—who regard talking about diversity as some sort of woke totemic point. But the point is that we live in an extremely diverse country. It is so important—and it really emphasises why this Bill and broadcasting are still so important, no matter how diverse and fragmented broadcasting has become in terms of platforms—that people in this country are able to tell their stories and see themselves represented. Equally, to echo the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, it is not just the people in front of the camera; it is the people making the programmes and making the decisions about what is commissioned. You can have as many diverse people as you like appearing in a television programme but, to be blunt with the Committee, if the people commissioning the programmes are all white, those are the stories that will get told.
As far as the other amendments are concerned, since I am on my feet, I am obviously very much in favour of the principle that the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, put forward about putting back the Reithian principles into broadcasting. But I simply say at the beginning of what will be a mammoth session of days and days of scrutiny of this Bill that I am also very deregulatory minded. It is important for the Committee to be aware as much as possible that broadcasters sit under a plethora of regulations and there must also be a mindset as we debate this Bill that we do not simply put every single issue and principle that we care passionately about—albeit I am now massively contradicting everything I have just said—into the Bill, because technology is changing rapidly, costs are rising, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, hinted, and putting a lot of people under pressure, and people need flexibility. To a certain extent we need to trust our broadcasters, for whom quality programme making is to a certain extent embedded.