TV Licence Fee

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alan Brown]

I do not pretend to speak for the entire public. I am expressing a view, but it is one shared by many other people. It might be a political view, but politicians clearly have different views, and there are always two sides to an argument. I recall Ian Davidson calling “Newsnight Scotland” “Newsnat” and having a pop at the then presenters. It could perhaps be said that when the BBC annoys those on both sides of an argument, it is doing its job. I am not saying that the entire public share my view, but it is shared by many people who have the same kind of political allegiances.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

With regard to the point made by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), in a study published by the UK Government around the time of the White Paper on the BBC, in 2016, Scots gave a score of 5.8 on general favourability towards the BBC, which was the lowest of any UK demographic.

[Alan Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. It certainly makes the case and is a strong rebuttal to the previous intervention.

I am trying to reach a conclusion, which all hon. Members will be grateful for. As I said, I have highlighted many issues with the current TV licensing system and the operation of the BBC. I do have sympathy for those who have called for the scrapping of the TV licence, but I am also well aware that we need to be aware of the Trojan horse aspect of some of the other vested interests, such as the Murdoch empire. We certainly want to allow true public broadcasting services to be able to continue and thrive—I mean that sincerely—so to that end, I appreciate that the TV licence still serves a purpose. However, as I started by saying, reform of the enforcement process is required, and as per the recent observations of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, the licence fee cannot continue indefinitely as a funding model for the BBC. Certainly a different model will be required at some point in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate, particularly the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones). I am pleased that there seems to be a consensus across the House that we should retain the licence fee, and that that is the model we should adopt. Along with the hon. Member for Warrington North, the hon. Members for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), for Solihull (Julian Knight) and for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) also made that case, and I include my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), who was eventually dragged, albeit kicking and screaming, to the pro-licence fee side of the debate. I am particularly pleased about that because the Scottish National party fully supports public service broadcasting and believes that the best way to finance the BBC is through the licence fee. Let me be absolutely clear about that from the outset.

We believe that the retention of a strong, well-financed, high-quality public service broadcasting sector is in the best interests of the people of this country. Public service broadcasting makes up an essential part of the television, radio and online landscape. However, we have serious reservations about how the BBC operates, in relation to the enormous gap between the money raised and the money spent in Scotland. We will continue to argue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun did, that the interests of Scottish viewers and listeners would be best served by powers over broadcasting being devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Although we welcome the new BBC Scotland channel due to launch late next year, we have expressed, and will continue to express, grave concerns about the budget for the new channel, which I believe will be completely unsustainable going forward.

Scotland has been the victim of an historically low ratio of money raised to money spent by the BBC in Scotland. As well as having a hugely detrimental impact on our creative industries, it has without doubt eroded public support for the BBC in Scotland. It was therefore not a huge surprise that the report published last year by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport showed that Scots had the highest dissatisfaction rates anywhere in the UK, with viewers in Scotland consistently being the most critical and least supportive of any group, regardless of where they live, their age or their social group.

I have absolutely no doubt that those figures reflect the depth of feeling that many had after the 2014 independence referendum. It would be something of an understatement to say that the BBC did not cover itself in glory in the eyes of many yes voters in Scotland. Members will be relieved that I am not about to reopen that debate this afternoon, but what is absolutely irrefutable is that many Scots felt that their views and opinions were not fairly represented by the BBC throughout that campaign. The anger felt during the referendum has not gone away. Judging by the most recent figures, for many Scots the trust they had in the BBC has not returned.

The hon. Member for Warrington North said that evasion rates were very low, but it is worth making the point that rates in Scotland are almost twice as high as those in England and Wales. They are the highest of anywhere in the United Kingdom. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun said, that is not the same as people taking a principled stand by not watching live television and therefore not having a licence.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the same survey found that only 37% of Scots felt that the licence fee offered good value for money. Again, that is the lowest of any of the nations of the United Kingdom, and who could blame them for feeling that? In the financial year 2015-16 the BBC raised £320 million from the licence fee in Scotland, but spent just over half—54% or 55%—of that revenue on programming in Scotland. That is a ridiculously low figure, particularly when compared with the other nations of the United Kingdom. Almost three quarters of the money raised in Northern Ireland was spent in Northern Ireland, and an astonishing 95% of the money raised in Wales was spent in Wales. The BBC’s director-general, Lord Hall, was forced to concede that for Scotland, 2015-16 was “not a good year”. Indeed it was not, but neither was it an isolated year. For years the funding gap between what is raised and spent in Scotland has been unacceptably wide.

I wholeheartedly concurred with the sentiments of John Archer, the award-winning producer and former head of music and arts at BBC Scotland, when he argued recently that all the money raised in Scotland by the BBC should be spent from Scotland—not necessarily in Scotland, but from Scotland. He said:

“Scotland would still be paying its fair share towards the programmes that are made elsewhere and screened in Scotland. But Scotland would decide what is made here.”

[Deidre Brock]

I declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group for the BBC, and as a huge supporter of public broadcasting. I certainly welcome the commitments made to the nations of the UK during the charter renewal process, but does my hon. Friend agree with independent producer David Strachan’s comment about the importance of the BBC making programmes for Scotland and about Scotland? That is core to those commitments.

[Brendan O'Hara]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Tern TV, which Mr Strachan is heavily involved in, is one of the numerous examples of excellent independent production companies making excellent content for Scottish viewers. I wish them all the best for the future, because there is absolutely no reason why we cannot have high-quality, high-value network productions featuring Scottish stories, told with Scottish voices, made in Scotland and using the incredible talent that BBC Scotland and our independent production sector has.

To be fair, BBC Scotland recognises the problem. A spokesman recently said:

“We recognise that there’s a deficit in programming in Scotland; there’s no doubt about that”.

Everyone seems to accept that there is a problem, but how we deal with it is another issue completely. We had dared to hope that there was light at the end of the tunnel earlier this year, when the Culture, Media and Sport Committee—encouraged and cajoled by the redoubtable Mr John Nicolson—unanimously backed the idea of a bespoke Scottish “Six O’Clock News”. Trials were run, hopes were raised and rumours were rife before being unceremoniously quashed: the fabled “Scottish Six” was not happening. What emerged from the detritus, however—a new Scottish channel—seemed very exciting. It was as if the BBC had said, “You wanted a Scottish ‘Six O’Clock News’; we’re giving you your own channel.” It was immediately welcomed, because the SNP had been urging the corporation to do it for many years. Back in 2009, the Scottish Broadcasting Commission made the case and calculated that a new channel would cost around £75 million a year. That figure is less than half of the shortfall between what the licence fee raises in Scotland and what is spent in Scotland.

So far, so good. The new channel was warmly welcomed by the Scottish Government and across the Scottish political spectrum. Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, said:

“It’s vital that the new BBC Scotland channel has complete commission and editorial independence, and is provided with the funding needed to match ambition.”

Therein lies the rub. The simple fact is that the ambition of the people involved in creating and delivering the new channel simply has not been matched by the funding on offer from the BBC in London. In 2009 the cost of a new channel was calculated at £75 million a year. The new venture is being offered £30 million a year, with £7 million ring-fenced for news.

As someone whose career before arriving in this place was as a television director and series producer, I can say without fear of contradiction that an annual programme-making budget of £23 million is simply not enough to make a quality product. I reckon that the average hourly spend for the new channel will be £25,000. To put that in perspective, for the last series I made for BBC One from Scotland, my spend was £220,000 an hour. That was almost 10 years ago. I have absolutely no doubt that the people employed to deliver the new channel will be extremely able—indeed, I have worked with many of them—but they are not magicians.

What does the BBC director-general expect of the new channel? He told the Select Committee last week that he would judge it on the standard of content produced and that high production values cost money and high broadcast standards are not cheap. He cannot have both. We cannot make cheap television and demand high standards, so my question to him is this: how many of the programmes made for the new channel, as currently funded, does he expect to get a network outing on BBC1?

Scottish viewers rightly demand quality. After all, we pay for it through our licence fee. I do not believe for a minute that they will accept cheap low-production value TV simply because it is Scottish. It has been said by many people, both inside and outside the BBC, including by people with long experience of working in television, that this channel, with its current funding model, has been born to fail. I sincerely hope that that is not the case, but I fear that with such a low programme budget and with no current slot on the electronic programme guide confirmed, the Scottish content faces being ghettoised and people will turn off, allowing the BBC at some point in the future to throw up its hands and say, “We tried, but there simply was not the demand for a Scottish channel.” That is why people fear that this entity was born to fail.

As I said earlier, I and my colleagues welcome the channel, but as it stands the proposed funding model makes it unsustainable, so I urge the BBC leadership to look again at the funding model for the channel and fund it properly, thereby allowing the BBC Scotland staff and the wider Scottish indie community to—as the head of BBC Scotland, Donalda MacKinnon, said—“make something precious”, because that is how it should be. BBC Scotland has the expertise and the staff. The Scottish indie sector is more than capable of delivering high-quality programmes. All that the BBC leadership in London has to do is provide them with the adequate funding to do it. If they do not and the venture fails, there will be a lot of very angry people: viewers, independent producers and BBC Scotland staff. Scottish licence fee payers have been short-changed by the BBC for long enough. This is their chance to redress that. I urge them not to throw away this chance by failing properly to invest in Scotland.