Public Service Broadcasting (North-East)

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One great strength of regional broadcasting is that local broadcasters understand what is happening in a region such as the north-east, and can go further in identifying issues that are relevant to local people. That is especially true in the north-east at this difficult time. Media outside the north-east have a tendency to portray the area in negative terms—perhaps rightly given the disproportionate cuts that the area is experiencing—but that does not reflect the strengths and the entrepreneurial spirit that is a feature of north-eastern culture.

Against that background, the BBC has proposed the implementation of further drastic cuts to regional provision. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has said that he is keen to support local television, but his proposals are—to be kind—not yet viable and not without controversy. There are major gaps in coverage—the city of Durham, for example, will have no local television coverage—and even in the best possible scenario, local services will not be running until after 2015. Does the Minister think that those local TV services will be complementary to regional public service broadcasting, or is he happy to weaken regional broadcasting on the basis that local TV will replace it?

If we accept the purposes and characteristics of public sector broadcasting as set out by Ofcom and if we consider the reductions in commercial regional broadcasting, the cuts to public support for local talent and the limitations of the local TV proposals, there can be no doubt that the existence of regional public sector broadcasting depends on BBC funding. However, the BBC cuts include, among other things, a 40% cut in investigative programming.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. In the past, I might have complained that Darlington, in the south of the north-east, did not get its fair share of attention in regional output. That can only become more of a problem if the north-east is put together with places such as Crewe, Sheffield, Hull and Lancaster. Great as they are, they have nothing at all to do with what it is like to live in the north-east.

On investigative journalism, first-class work has been done by people in the north-east. I am thinking of issues such as that involving Southern Cross. That is particularly pertinent to me because the company is based in Darlington.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be brief.

[Mrs Chapman]

With your permission, Mr Gray, I will just finish the point. I think that some of the things that were exposed thanks to the BBC would not have been exposed had we not had that superb output, content and journalism in the north-east.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes two excellent points. The first is that it is important to reflect the rich diversity within a region. The north-east is diverse, but it is much harder to reflect that diversity when we are looking at extended supra-regions that may cover half the country. Secondly, it is very important that investigative journalism has the scale and presence locally to be able to identify issues of great significance to local people’s lives, such as Southern Cross, and to be able to invest the right local resources in tracking down the causes of the issues and ensuring that people are made aware of them. Therefore, the cuts to investigative journalism in the north-east are particularly worrying. “Inside Out” is the last remaining dedicated in-depth regional programme on British TV, and the North East and Cumbria edition has won Royal Television Society awards for the last six years running. However, it faces cuts that will see it lose 40% of its staff.

The BBC also proposes 20% staff cuts to local radio stations. That is about 10 jobs each in Newcastle and Tees. It means that programming will be shared across the entire north-east in the afternoons and across the whole of England in the evenings.