Broadcasting

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The former arts Minister, the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), does not think so, as he told us last time we debated the matter. Many of us in this House think that the idea of suddenly forcing the BBC to pay for free television licences is a complete disgrace.

[Karen Bradley]

The BBC has agreed to this through negotiations and discussions, and I am confident that the funding settlement puts the BBC on a sustainable long-term footing.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Nicolson]

That is precisely the point I made to the director-general. I asked him whether he had tested this, given that he always argued that he was paying the going rate. His answer was that he had not tested it, so his whole argument for paying people ludicrously inflated salaries fell with that one answer.

As the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) predicted, I am now going to talk about Scotland. It has been clear for a significant period of time that the BBC is not delivering for Scotland in the way that it should be. Audience satisfaction ratings show that Scots do not feel that the corporation fully represents their views and interests. Appreciation measures in Scotland are lower than the average for the rest of the UK, and people in Scotland think that the BBC is poorer at representing their lives in news, current affairs and drama, compared with people in other parts of the UK. Members do not have to take my word for that; the BBC fully acknowledges that problem.

We on the Scottish National party Benches here in Westminster and our colleagues in Holyrood and the Scottish Government are committed to high-quality, well-resourced public service broadcasting, and we want a BBC charter that allows this. Charter renewal has been a valuable opportunity to provide a framework for the BBC that enables it to maintain its important role as a public service broadcaster, to improve its performance for Scottish and UK audiences and to provide further support for the Scottish production sector and those in our wider creative industries. For the first time, the Scottish Government and Holyrood have had a formal role in the charter renewal process, following the recommendations of the Smith commission. The SNP has delivered a clear and consistent message on the straightforward changes we believe would help to transform the BBC in Scotland for the better. We welcome a number of elements in the charter, but it is vital that the BBC now delivers.

The SNP has argued that the BBC needs an enforceable licence service agreement for Scotland and a dedicated board member for Scotland. There are clear reasons for this. A Scottish board would allow BBC Scotland to have greater control over its budget and to be given meaningful commissioning powers. The charter accepts SNP proposals for the BBC to report on its impact on the creative industries for the first time, but it does not make provisions for a fairer share of the licence fee raised in Scotland to be spent in Scotland. Such a provision could deliver up to an additional £100 million of investment annually in those creative industries. We welcome the commitment to continued support for the Gaelic language, but the Secretary of State refrained from going just a little further and moving towards parity with the Welsh channel S4C for MG Alba, as recommended by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, on which I serve.

The Select Committee supports many of the wider proposals in the draft charter. We welcome the abolition of the BBC Trust and its replacement by a unitary board, although, as I suggested in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Maldon, we were alarmed to see what I will gently describe as the rather relaxed method of selection for the new chair, when Rhona Fairhead moved seamlessly from her old job as chair of the BBC Trust to her new job as chair of the unitary board. The right hon. Gentleman said that the transition period was important because, to paraphrase slightly, the transition meant that she was effectively continuing in the same job. However, Ms Fairhead herself said that it was a completely different job, which is precisely why it should have been subject to open competition, rather than having arisen from a cosy chat between her and the Prime Minister, with no civil servants present. I discovered that during a heated Select Committee cross-examination that resulted in Ms Fairhead accepting that she should perhaps go.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman had a go at the director-general earlier, but Rona Fairhead should have been screaming blue murder when the Government were forcing their settlement on her. The whole point of her post is that she is meant to be independent and able to say to the Government, “No. You will not do this.”

[John Nicolson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. That is precisely Ms Fairhead’s role and precisely why many of us found it disturbing that she had been appointed without open competition. What was the quid pro quo for getting a job such as that with no competition? She would have to be truly saintly not to feel slightly beholden to the people who had appointed her in that way.

Scotland’s frustrations with the BBC often focus on the provision of news, which is why I have led the calls for a new Scottish Six. The national news programme, “Reporting Scotland”, is treated as a regional news programme under current arrangements. It is under-resourced and cannot report on news outwith Scotland’s borders. The current six o’clock news does not work in the post-devolution age. Scottish viewers often have to sit through stories on devolved issues that are of no relevance to them, such as English health or English policing. It is a blast from the past and it needs to change.