SHREY CHANDARANA (L6)
On Tuesday 7th March 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman announced the UK government’s latest attempt to solve the problem of illegal immigration into the UK. It’s a key issue in the UK, and an attractive one for a Conservative government to solve, considering it was a crucial part of the argument to vote for Britain to leave the EU in 2016 (with 65% of those who voted to Leave in 2016, having shown their support for the Conservatives in 2019), but the announcement of the bill has been controversial, with not only the government but also the public broadcaster, BBC being brought into disrepute.
Now, if you’ve seen the exact wording of this announcement you’ll see why there has been such a large public backlash to the introduction of this bill. Specifically, the main selling point of this potential law is that people who arrive in the UK illegally will be detained and then removed within weeks of their arrival. They will also be banned from returning (as posted on Rishi Sunak’s Twitter account, ‘you will be banned from ever claiming asylum in the UK’). Even more concerningly, in fact, is the fact that any modern slavery claims from illegal immigrants will be disqualified (as posted on Sunak’s Twitter account, ‘you will be denied access to the UK’s modern slavery system’). Of course, the latter statement especially could have been the victim of some improper wording, and it wouldn’t be the first time in the recent past that Rishi Sunak has made a silly mistake (let us not forget the moment when he asked a homeless man if he worked in business), but it is equally concerning that this was posted online and publicised on various news sources.
And of course, the general public were not the only ones concerned about this Immigration Bill. Former football player and current host of the BBC’s flagship football programme, ‘Match of the Day’, Gary Lineker, was equally aggrieved and tweeted ‘We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s…?’ Now, as a rule of thumb, drawing parallels with a mass genocide is probably not the best idea, although it is clear that these immigration laws were more to the radical side of the political spectrum.
We could go back and forth in the dissection of the content of Lineker’s tweet; an article by David Tollerton written in the Independent discusses a perhaps more appropriate comparison of two events, which is that both of them seem to play into the fear of letting a mass amount of people enter, and although the UK did indeed allow 10,000 children into the country, they were one of many countries that agreed to avoid loosening restrictions that stopped persecuted Jewish German citizens from immigrating (and therefore making this comparison does require an uncomfortable review of the UK’s actions in the run-up to World War 2), discussions over the Immigration Bill itself appear to have almost been superseded by the consequences for Gary Lineker and the BBC as a whole, and this is largely down to the BBC’s decision to remove Lineker as host of the edition of Match of the Day which was broadcast on Saturday 11th March 2023 until they ‘had reached an agreed and clear position on his use of social media.’
Now, the rule that Lineker broke is featured in the ‘Individual Use of Social Media’ which is part of their editorial guidelines and can be viewed online. The relevant clause of these conditions is that ‘there are also others who are not journalists or involved in factual programming who nevertheless have an additional responsibility to the BBC because of their profile on the BBC. We expect these individuals to avoid taking sides on party political issues or political controversies and to take care when addressing public policy matters.’ Herein lies the problem with Lineker’s comments. He is the highest-paid employee of the BBC (with his salary of around £1,350,000 being almost £400,000 higher than the second-placed host of the Radio 2 Breakfast Show, Zoe Ball), and, having hosted the BBC’s flagship football show Match of the Day, he is undoubtedly tied to the BBC in the public sphere, and therefore it is easy to see why his comments were concerning for his employees.
Impartiality is an important concept for the BBC, considering its role as the public broadcaster of the UK. They are funded by the licence fee, a tax paid by the majority of citizens in the UK (around £160). The licence fee generated £3.8 billion in the 2021/22 financial year. Due to this public funding that they receive, the BBC is therefore required to be impartial, and this extends to their employees due to their public connection with the broadcaster. Of course, this doesn’t stop politicians from both sides of the opposing sides of the political debate from labelling the BBC as favouring the opposite side of the political party, and the broadcast regulator Ofcom has reported that they receive many complaints on the impartiality of the BBC (5,429 in 2019). In fact, a 2018 poll by BMG Research tells us that only around 37% of the public actually thought that the BBC was impartial (and considering the number of complaints has almost trebled since then, it is possible this percentage has decreased since then).
At this point, you may be wondering why there has been such a backlash to Lineker’s suspension. Of course, many of these were down to the inconveniences that came from the lack of presenters for Match of the Day, or indeed many of the BBC’s sports programmes that aired on the 11th and 12th March 2023, but some are more nuanced and it is worth interrogating points of view. For one, the current chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, is currently caught up in questions over his appointment due to his involvement in helping then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson secure an £800,000 loan in late 2020. He was then appointed as the chairman of the BBC in January 2021. Sharp has said that he simply connected Boris Johnson with his distant cousin Sam Blyth, who would be appointed to act as a guarantor, and that he firmly believes that his role did not represent a conflict of interest. However, this situation is still concerning as it can be very heavily insinuated that Sharp took his role for reasons other than his own merit. Furthermore, this is concerning for the Gary Lineker situation, because he was suspended for expressing negative political views towards the very same party that Sharp is alleged to have very close links to. This has led to another can of worms for the BBC, with calls from various political figures such as Ed Davey, who is the current leader of the Liberal Democrats to be sacked, whilst Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer commented that his position was becoming ‘increasingly untenable.’ In addition, the controversy surrounding Lineker happened in the same week that it was announced that an episode of David Attenborough’s new documentary, Wild Isles, will not be broadcast on BBC One, which looks at the decline of nature in the UK. The Guardian believes that this is due to it covering the idea of rewilding, which aims to restore and protect natural processes, which is controversial in right-wing circles. Although the BBC has claimed that this episode was always set to be separate from the rest of the series and be available on BBC iPlayer only, it can again be seen as the BBC ‘pandering’ to the right wing.
Furthermore, there are numerous examples of where other BBC stars who have made political comments. Star of The Apprentice Lord Sugar heavily encouraged his followers to vote Conservative in the 2019 general election and has also posted photoshopped images of him sitting next to Adolf Hitler. Game show host Richard Osman said in 2019 that he believed that the Conservatives wanted to sell the NHS off ‘bit by bit,’ and TV Chef Nadiya Hussain declared Theresa May as a ‘monster’ in 2018 after she ordered an air strike in Syria. All three of these people are associated with the BBC as much as Gary Lineker is, and therefore it is indeed concerning that it was felt that the views of these three were not associated with the corporation itself, unlike Lineker, so of course, many of the public are wondering what the difference is between these events, which has led to scrutiny of Richard Sharp’s role, especially as Lineker himself was allowed to give a speech on human rights in Qatar just before the 2022 World Cup began last November, which surely went against these impartiality rules.
So, what are the long-term consequences of these events? Well, the government will continue to try to pass the Immigration Bill, despite concerns that it could clash with the European Convention of Human Rights (which the UK remains signed up to despite them no longer being a member of the EU). Lineker has been reinstated as of Monday 13th March 2023, after a weekend of disruption which saw various presenters such as Ian Wright and Mark Chapman refuse to fulfil their commitments on BBC One and BBC Radio 5 Live in solidarity with Lineker, despite the lack of an apology from the former Leicester football player (although director general Tim Davie denies a back down from the BBC). Meanwhile, the BBC will persist to be brought into turmoil as they aim to attempt to stay impartial whilst also pleasing the 91% of adults in the UK that access their content every week. Many politicians will question their impartiality and the advantages of the current licence fee system as their usual provision becomes increasingly outdated, and of course, many members of the public will threaten to cancel their TV licence at every given opportunity (with a very small number acting on this promise). But as the institution fights to stay relevant whilst also fulfilling its public charter to secure the funding that they require for high-quality content, this controversy serves as a perfect microcosm for the challenge that they face, and that challenge is one that is almost impossible to counteract.
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