Complaint
The programme included an interview with Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary. A listener complained that the interviewer’s questioning gave the misleading impression that the Government is dependent on prior income to finance its spending. A case in point was the interviewer’s statement that money for new hospital buildings was not going to come “directly from the taxpayer”, whereas the UK Government has never directly spent money from the taxpayer, but generates money through the Bank of England as it spends. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
The interviewer’s statement was in the context of a question which cited the view of the Head of NHS England, expressed in a recent edition of the programme, that private capital investment would be needed in order to “fix our buildings”. While it might have given rise to a misleading impression if listeners had understood it as an observation about the operational aspects of public finance, it seemed to the ECU that, in the context of a question the Health Secretary about his attitude to private investment in NHS buildings, they would have been likely to understand it as simply pointing up the difference between private capital and public funds as a source of investment.
Not upheld