Under the cover of Leveson the BBC will transform – and prepare for future battles

Just as the long threatened storm – in the shape of Lord Justice Leveson – is about to hit the press, the clouds are beginning to clear over the BBC – and history is not going to repeat itself with the double hit of losing both a director general and a chairman as happened in the great weapons of mass destruction cyclone, says Raymond Snoddy.

Lord Patten of Barnes has at last – some would say very belatedly – got a grip of the current crisis, which came, he says, “out of a clear blue sky.”

In a speech on Monday at the Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference – and in sardonic answers to questions – Lord Patten made clear that the fight-back has begun.

The change that the appointment of Tony Hall – Lord Hall of Birkenhead – has made is palpable.

Suddenly it was unthinkable to even ask the last governor of Hong Kong whether he was thinking of resigning as BBC chairman, and no-one did.

Lord Patten insisted there was absolutely no truth in the widespread perception that George Entwistle was a man chosen as a compliant figure to do his bidding.

There was also something distasteful, he emphasised, about Entwistle now being traduced as a hapless and inept figure. Nobody had said such things at the time of his appointment.

There is a final irony about unlucky George Entwistle.

According to Patten the 54-day DG had planned to tackle the disparate silos, the warring tribes, the lack of self-awareness and self-criticism – the very characteristics that pulled him down.

The new feisty, fight-back Patten was also on display at the Commons Select Committee this week where he reacted, in a rather techy manner, to “impertinent” questions.

The 68-year-old Patten is even prepared to contemplate a second term if asked to see the BBC through to a new ten-year Royal Charter from 2017.

A week certainly is a long time in the politics of the BBC.

Now you really can see the end of the storm at the BBC and by Easter there could be new managerial structures and personnel in place – although the sad legacy of Savile’s crimes will be with us for a lot longer.

So what happens next? Just in time for Christmas we will have the results of the Pollard inquiry into recent events, although it is less clear whether the detailed evidence will see the light of day.

“There may be consequences for some of the individuals involved,” Lord Patten pointed out almost unnecessarily.

Even if senior figures are exonerated of wrong doing in the disciplinary sense, they still may not survive for very much longer at the BBC.

Even in his first few days as DG-elect, Tony Hall has “already understood the challenge and thought hard about the team he will need around him.”

Hall may now want to skip a generation, in the same way as John Birt elevated him over his superiors to become, at the age of 35, BBC Television’s editor of news and current affairs.

But how will this actually happen when Hall doesn’t arrive at the BBC until March?

Until then the person in charge will be acting DG Tim Davie – a man at the peak of all the acting people running everything from BBC television and radio to news and Newsnight. At BBC Worldwide there is even an acting, acting chief executive.

As the person in charge, it will be Davie who has to do the sackings and the new appointments, obviously after consultations with the chief executive of Covent Garden.

Like most operas there will be plenty of blood on the stage before the final curtain comes down.

For the first time though, you can start to look ahead to the future role of the BBC and the renewal of both the licence fee and the Royal Charter.

People are starting to think about a new communications White Paper but some wonder whether one will ever see the light of day; rather like the Green Paper that was shelved in favour of face-saving, pointless seminars.

A White Paper and legislation could be a very dangerous thing in present circumstances.

Assume David Cameron decides, with infinite politeness and a peerage for Leveson, to ignore calls for statutory intervention in the affairs of the press.

The dissidents could see communications legislation as a wonderful vehicle to promote amendments introducing statutory regulation.

Just maybe, given that there are few overwhelming media issues and many other more pressing matters, it might be better to leave communications legislation for the next Parliament when things might have clarified themselves.

One thing that almost certainly doesn’t need doing is yet another change in the regulatory structure of the BBC.

As Lord Patten eloquently argued this week, the current crisis was a result of the failure of individuals. A different relationship between the Trust or Governors to management would have made no difference, he believes. After all, Governors sitting with executives didn’t exactly handle the last great BBC crisis very well.

Patten was quite brusque with Greg Dyke who argued in the Daily Telegraph that the Savile crisis was a disaster waiting to happen for a Trust separated from management. When you are removed from the captain’s cabin you shouldn’t go around spitting on the deck.

The Leveson report is just what the BBC needs right now. The Corporation is likely to be only tangentially involved and the attention of the press and the political classes will be engaged for weeks.

Under the cover of Leveson the necessary changes can be made and the BBC can move on to longer term battles against those who will use its present troubles to try to reduce the scale of the Corporation.

Then there is the Patten belief that the BBC is both over-managed and under-managed at the same time. Over-managed in terms of the large bureaucracy and under-managed in the lack of co-operation between different departments.

The plan is to cut the top-level management. It’s already come down from 3% to 2.3%.

Lord Patten thinks 1% would be quite sufficient.

That really would be an achievement, though maybe there should be one exception: Tony Hall will need a deputy, a post abolished with the departure of Mark Byford.

Someone should ultimately be in charge but the person in charge will need help.