Boris Johnson aide Dominic Cummings pursuing ‘vendetta’ to undermine BBC, say peers

TV and film grandees line up to accuse government of risking future of public service broadcasting

Boris Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings has been accused in the House of Lords of pursuing a “vendetta” to undermine the BBC.

The broadcaster Joan Bakewell read out a series of comments made by Mr Cummings before he entered government in which he called the BBC a “mortal enemy” of the Conservatives, and said the right should aim to end the corporation in its current form and establish a partisan TV news channel along the lines of Fox News in the US.

Citing the government’s boycott of Radio 4’s Today programme since December’s election, Baroness Bakewell, a Labour peer, demanded to know “whether or not the ongoing agenda Dominic Cummings has set out for undermining the BBC is now government policy”.

And she was backed by film producer David Puttnam, who accused Mr Cummings and the government of embarking on a campaign of “intimidation and destabilisation” towards the BBC.

Broadcaster and Labour peer Melvyn Bragg told peers that Mr Johnson’s administration was set on a “childish” policy of sending a “wrecking ball” through the national broadcaster.

The warnings came in a House of Lords debate on the day that new culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, accused the BBC of providing a “narrow urban outlook” and called on it to “reflect all of our nation, and all perspectives”.

In a speech to a media conference in London, Mr Dowden warned that perceptions of news impartiality was now higher for some commercial channels than for the public service broadcaster and said that the BBC needed to “think boldly” about its future in the context of younger generations favouring YouTube or streaming services like Netflix.

During the election campaign, Mr Johnson questioned whether the BBC’s longstanding model of funding through the licence fee still “made sense” given the growing popularity of on-demand streaming services.

And ministers recently launched a consultation on decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee, sparking claims that they were trying to take away the corporation’s financial stability.

Chariots of Fire producer Lord Puttnam, a Labour peer, told the House of Lords that the “current project to undermine public service broadcasting” was not new, but was part of a “decades-long campaign of salami-slicing and intimidation by successive Conservative governments”.

Tory administrations had sought to “take the wind out of the BBC’s sails and erode the trust it enjoys from the public”, he said.

But he said Mr Cummings’ approach to the public service broadcaster represented a “massive departure from conservatism” with its genesis in “Trumpian populism”.

Lord Puttnam accused the government of embarking on a campaign of ‘intimidation and destabilisation’ towards the BBC (David Sandison)

He told peers the BBC had emerged as the “digital gold standard in the provision of trusted information in an era of fake news”.

He added: “We are watching a well-rehearsed process of intimidation and destabilisation. We cannot allow an unremitting vendetta to rob us of the most valuable asset democracy has at its disposal.”

Lord Bragg lambasted the Tory administration’s approach towards the corporation. Referring to disparaging comments made by a senior Downing Street source, he said: “It appears this government wants to thwack the BBC. A word straight from the nursery. Over the years the Tories have a good record of thwacking.”

He added: “The declared policy of sending a wrecking a ball through an organisation that’s taken almost 100 years to evolve and is now fine-tuned to every class, age group, creed and niche in this country is childish.”

Former BBC director general John Birt, a crossbench peer, dismissed the “Netflix myth” that new subscription services made the BBC less relevant. He pointed out the broadcaster continued to account for 26 per cent of all UK consumption, compared with around 2 per cent by Netflix.

“The two organisations are not remotely comparable, neither in their purpose nor in their popularity,” said Lord Birt.

Liberal Democrat former minister Lord McNally said the licence fee should be protected from “populist ways” of weakening it.