Emily Bell on the regulation game

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There is still a governance gap at the BBC - but Ofcom is not the answer, argues Emily Bell.

Even hiding in a static caravan in Brittany (skies as grey as a cat's backside and an alarming amount of rain, in case you are interested), it is impossible to escape the obligatory duty to comment on the BBC's governance arrangements.

The latest series of 'Whoops, DG, there goes my Charter', has raised the issue of whether the relatively recent construct of the BBC Trust has sufficient authority and teeth to issue the series of PSB Asbos the delinquents in White City so patently need.

Sir Michael Lyons has barely had time to slide his patellas under the mahogany when the flash flood of error and dishonesty swept away parts of the BBC's credibility.

The Trust is certainly more critical, better informed and more active than the governors were in their later days, but then, short of actually being dead, this is not a difficult achievement. But does the current system mean there is a vacuum at the BBC not adequately filled by either Mark Thompson or Lyons? Would it not be better to have a structure whereby a chairman and non-executive board played the critical friends and Ofcom wielded the lead piping?

I can see the logic of an argument which says the gap between the chairman's role and the DG's is now so wide that there is an eerie silence when it comes to a BBC representative voice detached from the operational day-to-day. But the conclusion is always that the BBC should share the common regulatory framework and come under Ofcom.

This would mean accepting that Ofcom would be 'better' at regulating the BBC than its current arrangement. Yet Ofcom has been in post longer than the BBC Trust but did not manage to prevent ITV from committing more heinous phone crimes than the BBC.

Ofcom too is under a new regime, but it is an economic regulator and by its nature reactive. It is not at all clear that this is the model the BBC would benefit from most. There is also evidence to suggest that there is within Ofcom an anti-BBC institutional bias. Even if there isn't, it is not at all clear that Ofcom, which arrived on a ticket of roll-back light-touch regulation, has sorted out what it thinks about the future of public service broadcasting.

Sir Michael Lyons has set the BBC the deadline of a year to put its house in order and this does not seem an unrealistic deadline for a review of the way the entire operation is managed, including its regulatory arm. The BBC's issues (which are issues for the whole industry) did not start with the inception of the Trust and will not end with a change of regulatory clothing. The Trust cannot fail unless it is given a chance to try first.
Emily Bell is director of digital content, Guardian News and Media.