Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP
Secretary of State for for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London SW1Y 5DH

22 July 2010

Dear Jeremy,

BBC Funding

I am writing to you following receipt of over 300 communications from constituents calling for BBC funding to be protected from cuts. I share the concerns of my constituents and urge you to consider the strength of public feeling on this issue ahead of the licence fee review process starting next year.

It is vital that the BBC is maintained as the primary public service broadcaster, free from Government interference. The BBC must remain strong and independent, funded wholly by public money. I am concerned that the BBC Trust is proposing unnecessary cuts due to Government pressure and fear that if they do not cut now, then the Government will deliver a vastly reduced settlement fee.
When budgets are cut at the BBC, journalism inevitably suffers. In November 2008 Broadcast Magazine reported that the BBC had "reduced its head count" by 7,000 jobs in the previous four years. The same article said the Corporation had targeted an additional £535m saving by 2013. These cuts have resulted in the loss of specialist correspondents and general newsgathering staff. The NUJ report that local and national news services have been hit, as have flagship programmes such as Newsnight.

I support moves to stop any inappropriate use of the licence-fee, such as overly generous executive remuneration and contracts paying top stars outrageously high salaries. There is of course a case for stopping such waste. However, there remains a need to ensure the money gets redirected and spent on protecting and innovating around the services that the BBC is famous for. It must not be forgotten that the BBC produces high-quality services that commercial broadcasters would never provide.

In addition, whilst BBC top executives are paid too much, ordinary staff are facing changes to their current pension scheme rules, to cap at 1% the annual increase in the amount of salary that can be considered towards their pension. This breaks the link between final salary and the amount received in pension upon retirement as agreed when staff entered the scheme. The majority of staff are therefore facing unfair cuts to their remuneration. Following recent press articles suggesting you are very critical of the BBC, I hope that you can reassure me that you do not consider excessive top level remuneration as indicative of the pay and conditions of the vast majority of BBC staff.

As well as preserving current BBC funding levels, I urge the Government to discourage any further concentration of media ownership which would risk damaging plurality. I also hope that the Government will support a strengthened public interest test of the impact of mergers/takeovers on newsgathering, as recommended by the House of Lords Communications' Committee.

I should be grateful for your response to my concerns and you will note that I have also copied this letter to Mark Thompson with a request for his comments.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Lucas, MP, Brighton Pavilion

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