BBC Local Radio

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the reach of the BBC, which is a vital point. The BBC reaches an audience that a commercial radio station would not reach out to or want to reach out to. The BBC was set up to connect with precisely such people, so it is vital that the service remains.

[Mr Walker]

I thoroughly agree. As my hon. Friend knows well, the BBC’s local presence also provides a route into journalism for hundreds of people and gives hundreds of journalists the chance to work in their own communities.

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[Mr Walker]

Once again, I find one of the points that I was about to make beautifully pre-empted by one of my hon. Friends.

Before I move on to that point, there is one more issue that I want to raise on behalf of the west midlands. West midlands constituents fear that the region is being disadvantaged beyond local radio by some of the proposals in “Delivering Quality First”. They have heard of production jobs being moved from Birmingham to Bristol and Salford, production facilities closing, skills being lost to the region and creative talent moving away. At a time when many programmes are being moved out of London into the regions to emphasise the national nature of the BBC, surely it is reasonable to question shifts that appear to be damaging the position of a region as central and as important as the west midlands.

[Esther McVey]

One of the key points, which the BBC has seen for a long time, is audience fragmentation across BBC radio and television. Surely, when value for money is being looked at, the BBC should look at where its audience is. The audiences are with radio. The BBC should look for savings on BBC 3 and BBC 4 and save stations such as Radio Merseyside.

[Mr Walker]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend’s passionate and sensible point.

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[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

The BBC has had to recognise that savings must be made, as has every family in the land. The problem is that, instead of doing what needed to be done, the BBC management chose to salami-slice its operation. Instead of seeing vanity projects going, cuts in waste on real estate and cuts in stars’ and management salaries, we are seeing a series of identical slices across the board. For a television programme or channel, those slices are relatively modest and do not make a huge impact. When applied to local radio, however, those same slices make a significant difference.

As an aside, which may be a cheap shot, I could not help noticing from the figures that an Opposition Member gave that the director-general of the BBC earns, as an annual salary, almost twice the cuts that are being demanded of BBC Radio Merseyside.

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend’s reference to salami slices and cuts that are not thought through reflects the situation of BBC Radio Merseyside, which will lose one third of its staff. The BBC has not thought it through.

[Mr Gale]

The point is made. The BBC has created a plethora of channels and the management should be considering the arguments. I hope that the trustees will take the debate on board, because you can bet your sweet life that the BBC management will not listen. We therefore must go to the trustees and say, “Please listen. This matters.” It matters to the people whom everyone in this Chamber and all our other colleagues represent.

Local radio is important for all the reasons that have been stated. It is important for health and security, and it is a lifeline at times of crisis. We must reinforce the point that it is also a vital training ground for young journalists. Many people have cut their teeth in BBC local radio: Kate Adie used to work for BBC Plymouth; Libby Purves used to work for BBC Oxford; and someone called Roger Gale trained at BBC Radio London—[Hon. Members: “Where is he now?”]—and then disappeared without trace. If we allow the cuts to go ahead, broadcasting in general—not only in BBC local radio, but in national radio, in local and national television, and in all the other stations that have fed off that training process for years—will be all the poorer. Once that infrastructure has gone, it will be impossible to get it back again.

One point has not been made well enough. People listening to the debate will say, “They’ve all missed the point. We are promising them another political reporter and we will maintain the breakfast and drive programmes. We will preserve all the things that matter.” No, what really matters is the whole structure of BBC local radio. The BBC has always argued that it does not want ghetto broadcasting, saying that it will not cream off the important bits and that it has to provide a rounded programme. The people who listen to BBC local radio listen to it all, not just a bit of it. That means that the music in the afternoon, the community programmes, and people such as Jo Burn on BBC Radio Kent, who does wonderful work in the community, matter a great deal.

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[Ian Swales]

I absolutely agree. Only last Friday night I was at a charity brass band concert for Help for Heroes in Marske in my constituency, and it was introduced for nothing by the BBC Tees presenter John Foster.

[Esther McVey]

I want the BBC to think about the cuts, which will be self-defeating. Radio Merseyside could lose a third of its staff. What will be the results for accuracy of cutting so many staff?

[Ian Swales]

I agree. The BBC has an important duty to be accurate.

Another point that has not been made is that the BBC must listen to the listeners. What do they want? I think that the BBC will find that listeners value radio far more highly than some of the other services that it offers. It should reconsider the cuts. In the words of the great Joni Mitchell song, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

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[Mr Vaizey]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. I asked him earlier whether he was sitting behind me because he was acting as my de facto Parliamentary Private Secretary, but he replied that it was because it was the only seat left in the Chamber. He is right that the BBC’s commercial income needs to be reinvested in programming. BBC Worldwide is a great success. It ran into trouble in this place because of some of its decisions, but it is run by a supremely effective executive, John Smith. I gather that an additional £40 million from BBC Worldwide will be going into programming.

[Esther McVey]

I want to make a clear and specific point: let us save the local radio stations and make savings on BBC 3 and BBC 4.

[Mr Vaizey]

We will all have views on where we can make savings. I was intrigued to see that “Newsnight” alone, which has about 250,000 viewers, has a budget of £8 million.