An MP who once insisted on wearing body armour while on a walkabout with police meeting citizens in her Peckham constituency might be expected to have difficulty with the concept of public accountability. So it is with Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party.
Harman has found fault with a government proposal to give the National Audit Office (NAO) more oversight of the BBC’s spending. That is to say, oversight of the more than £3bn that the media giant takes from those TV viewers who seek its permission of watch TV regardless of whether or not they wish to pay.
Harman’s comments followed criticism of the BBC for rewarding departing senior managers with £2m more than they were entitled to. She suggested that strengthening the NAO’s ability to investigate such abuses could undermine the independence of the media giant as the NAO reports to parliament. She said that it could lead to “political interference”.
The BBC has shared with the monarchy the status of a holy institution that it’s apologists would protect from too much public scrutiny. By conflating bias-free editorial independence and freedom from public accountability they have allowed the state-sponsored media business to misuse the money it extorts from the people while favouring the friends of its chiefs, to harass those citizens who do not have a licence to watch TV, to promote its own points of view most notably a love of monarchy, which it has described as one of the things that is “great about Britain”, and to produce a large amount of poor programmes.
In a democracy we should be able to rely on our legislators to hold to account state institutions that have a coercive power to take the people’s cash from their pockets. Harriet Harman did not need body armour for protection from the people of Peckham. But those people deserve protection from an MP who will not support their democratic rights.