BBC to End Its Stonewall Subscription

The BBC is expected to end its subscription to the LGBTQ diversity programme run by the self-described lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights charity Stonewall. 

The move, revealed by VICE, will see the UK’s publicly funded service broadcaster resign from the organisation’s flagship ‘Diversity Champions’ programme which ensures that “all LGBT+ staff are accepted without exception in the workplace.” Beginning in 2001, the initiative allows its recipients “access to [Stonewall’s] resources, giving step-by-step guidance on different areas of LGBTQ+ inclusion” while educating businesses on how to maintain a “diverse workplace and culture.” 

Stonewall, the largest charity of its kind in Europe, charges over 900 private and public businesses a fee in return for its services. 

According to VICE, BBC insiders said that the public broadcaster’s membership to the programme was due to be renewed in “early October 2021,” but executives at the corporation had now decided to end all involvement. An anonymous employee familiar with the BBC’s decision not to renew its Stonewall membership confirmed the move, stating that “BBC bosses feel that they can’t allow the organisation to be connected to Stonewall in any way, because the BBC needs to be ‘impartial on LGBTQ lives’.”

“So the current plan is to quietly withdraw from the scheme, by just not renewing their membership. I’m super scared about this sliding back on supporting LGBT employees.”

BBC employees who spoke to VICE expressed serious concern at what message the move would send to LGBTQ staff members, with one employee stating that working for the UK’s public broadcaster was “starting to feel like working for the enemy.”

“I’m starting to wonder what I’m promoting by being here. They’re saying that they don’t care about our welfare in the workplace, they don’t care about treating LGBT employees with respect and dignity. BBC managers need to think long and hard about this, before they commit to such drastic action. The message that this sends out to LGBTQ staff is dreadful. It says we don’t care about your rights, we don’t care about your values. It’s just ludicrous.”

Another employee said that the BBC’s current working environment was one of hostility to “any trans person or trans supportive person,” with a “deeply engrained institutional transphobia at the heart of the BBC” being “exacerbated by the promotion of anti-LGBT+ views in the name of ‘balance’.” 

On Monday, the newly appointed UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, Nadine Dorries, said that the BBC urgently needed to depart from “tokenism” and “groupthink” to best represent the views of the country as a whole. Appearing in a recording of The Telegraph’s Chopper Politics podcast ahead of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, Dorries noted that the bureaucracy of the publicly funded broadcaster was “full of people from a similar background with a certain political bias” before promising to make sure that “real change” occurred. 

“The BBC has to change. Where they fail is on impartiality - I think the BBC themselves have probably sat down and thought ‘oh yeah, we do have a bit of a problem’. It’s on access as well - how can it become more representative of the people who pay the licence fee? There's a lot for the BBC to address and we're having those discussions at the moment, but the BBC has to change. How can it be more representative of the people who pay the licence fee and how can it be more accessible to people from all backgrounds, not just people whose mum and dad work there? Even the BBC has admitted themselves they've got an impartiality problem ...  They all think the same and talk the same, and that’s what’s got to be changed. They talk about lots to do with diversity but they don’t talk about kids from working-class backgrounds, that’s got to change … The days of tokenism are over. Real change has to happen, and that’s what I’m here to make sure does happen.”