Cuts announcement prompts discussion about a new way of funding the BBC

Martin Shipton

The licence fee is increasingly being spoken of as an outdated way of funding the BBC.

Staff at BBC Wales were shocked at the scale of cuts announced by the national broadcaster this week.

Interim director general Rhodri Talfan Davies, formerly the director of BBC Wales, announced cuts of up to 2,000 jobs – almost 10% of the workforce – in a bid to tackle “significant financial pressures”.

The BBC needs to make £500m savings over the next two years, and the axing of entire channels or services has not been ruled out.

A BBC Wales source told Nation.Cymru: “Quite a few people left under a voluntary redundancy scheme about 18 months ago. Everyone is aware of the financial difficulties facing the BBC, but nobody expected cuts of this scale such a short time after the last round of redundancies so recently.”

Talfan Davies told Radio 4’s Media Show: “We need to look at everything, and at a scale of £500m inevitably there are going to be some big and some difficult choices, but we do need to step through this carefully.”

He said the broadcaster would give more details later this year about how its services would be affected.

“For audiences, the job in hand now over the next three or four months is to work through how we make those changes without damaging the services that we know are critical to the BBC across radio and television and online,” he said.

He also acknowledged that the job cuts would be “really difficult news” for staff.

‘Brutal job cuts’

Laura Davison, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said the plans for “more brutal job cuts are wrong, damaging and will cause uncertainty and distress for workers at the BBC”.

She said: “These cuts severely undermine the BBC’s ability to fulfil its purposes: providing quality journalism and programming that informs, educates, and entertains.

“Plans for further cuts follow years of real-terms budget reductions and relentless cost-saving measures which have impacted core parts of the corporation. This can’t go on. The BBC cannot provide quality journalism without the talented and experienced workers who make it possible.”

A former senior BBC executive who spoke to Nation.Cymru on condition they were not named said: “One thing that’s inevitable is that after these cuts, fewer programmes made in Wales will be screened across the network.

“One of the problems is that while over 90% of the UK population watch or listen to programmes broadcast by the BBC or read stories on the website, less than 80% are paying the licence fee. A lot of people don’t realise how much they use BBC services and how much they get out of them. It used to be the case that failing to pay the licence fee was a criminal offence, but that’s no longer the case. A lot of the people who were being prosecuted and fined were single mothers and that wasn’t a good look. Now it’s a civil matter.”

‘Political attack’

The former executive said it was time for the UK Government and the BBC to discuss another funding mechanism for the broadcaster: “The economic policies of Liz Truss pushed inflation up to 10% and costs rose for the BBC as for everyone else. But the licence fee didn’t rise by the same amount and that has caused serious problems,” they said.

“At the same time the BBC has been under political attack from some members of its own board, leading to the departure of the director general Tim Davie. There are people on the board who have a political agenda, including some who have no history in the broadcasting industry at all.

“The BBC is seen as a national broadcaster, and that applies to BBC Wales too. Because of its status as a national institution, it’s been responsible for funding things like the national orchestra. It’s questionable whether that should continue to be the case.

“The BBC’s Charter is up for renewal at the end of next year and it’s important that there’s a discussion about how the BBC is going to be funded in the future. In my view the licence fee system as it stands is unsustainable.”