A truly independent BBC must be owned by its licence fee payers

Monday’s deal between the BBC and Government to hand the Corporation responsibility for funding TV licences for over-75s is just the latest in a series of decisions in which license fee payers have found themselves sidelined. These changes will have real implications for the services we pay for, and the quality and types of programming we can expect. Ironically, many of these changes have been justified in terms of independence and accountability – the same values that these sorts of backroom deals put at risk.

Given the significant amounts of money that the BBC is entitled to collect via the license fee, accountability matters. And at a time when money is tight, it’s quite right that MPs and Ministers should take an interest in ensuring that their constituents get value for money, and that the BBC is delivering on its obligations.

But independence matters too. At its narrowest, this means editorial impartiality. But more fundamentally, it means ensuring that the BBC has a long-term funding settlement that enables it to deliver what is asked of it, without constantly looking over its shoulder or having its license fee used as a piggy bank.

The current settlement offers the worst of both worlds. Even as the BBC is subjected to increasing levels of political interference, 25 million licence fee payers find popular services such as BBC3 withdrawn and local radio stations closed, with few formal means of recourse. And while some of its most vocal critics may be disingenuous, few believe that the licence fee – a flat tax in a multi-channel age – is sustainable in its current form.

Instead, the BBC needs a model that makes it more answerable to those who fund it, but which underscores its independence from the political institutions that it is asked to scrutinise. To secure its independence, license fee payers, not politicians need to own the BBC.

Under plans developed by the Co-operative Party, the BBC Trust – created in 2006 as the voice of license-fee payers and widely seen to have failed – would be re-established as a Members Council. The current appointed trustees would be replaced with ones elected by the country’s 25m license fee payers. They would be joined on the Council by representatives of BBC staff and other stakeholders and a limited number of government-nominated members, ensuring that that all key interests are taken into account.

A mutualised BBC Trust would provide a genuine mechanism for informing, and directly consulting and engaging with citizens. It would provide a medium through which TV licence holders could express their views on the services that the BBC provides and a focus for ensuring that its links with viewers remain strong.

The Member’s Council would continue the current Trust’s role of setting the overall strategy of the corporation and scrutinising editorial, financial and regulatory issues, with the Executive Board retaining its current role of managing the BBC’s day-to-day output.

Such a settlement would give the BBC the freedom it needs to provide innovative and challenging programming and, through its current affairs output, to hold the government to account.

But crucially, a mutual model would ensure the BBC’s long-term sustainability. No longer a one-way street, it would give ordinary listeners and viewers a guaranteed voice in exchange for their money. Doing so would go a long way to secure the legitimacy of the license fee – insulating the Corporation from future political attacks and safeguarding its role in our national life for a long time to come.

Karin Christiansen is the General Secretary of the Co-operative Party