Review

Pay-walled Broadcast tells us former BBC DG Lord Hall has refloated a plan for an independent body to determine how much money the BBC should get, to ‘depoliticise’ funding negotiations. 

Since the days of Thatcher, politicians have sought to control the BBC through its purse strings. Even under Tony Blair, his Chancellor George Gordon Brown instructed the BBC to match 'savings and efficiency targets' set across the Civil Service. Once the OBR classified the licence fee as a 'tax' and part of 'public spending' George Osborne sought not only to freeze it, but offload other Government obligations in licence-fee payers' direction.

If the BBC is to be 'a public service', it's core funding should come out of either general taxation, or council tax, or a levy on broadband. And an independent body could work - the pay review bodies of the past 40 years provide a reasonable starting point for a new structure.