BBC (Proposed Cuts)

Debate between Hugh Bayley and Martin Vickers

Thursday 1st December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Vickers]

I hope that plug serves my hon. Friend well in his future dealings with his local radio station, just as I hope that Peter Levy will view my next appearance on his programme favourably after my mention of him.

With the decline of many local newspapers, although thankfully not the Grimsby Telegraph, local news on BBC stations will become more important, although it is easy for them to overdo the contribution that they make to local politics. I can speak only for the Humberside and Lincolnshire area, but many years ago there was a Radio Humberside reporter at local council meetings as a matter of course. Indeed, when I was first elected to Great Grimsby borough council in 1980, there was a reporter who not only attended meetings of the full council but had the unpleasant task of even being at every committee meeting. I often used to sympathise with him as he sat through far more meetings than even the councillors were forced to.

[Hugh Bayley]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to stress the local links that local radio has with the community and the identification of listeners with their local radio station. During the catastrophic floods in York 11 years ago, I was tasked by the police silver command one Friday night, when we ran out of sandbags, with trying to find some people to come in overnight and sew additional ones. I put out public appeals on BBC Radio York, Radio Humberside and Radio Lincolnshire. Two hours later, a factory manager in Lincolnshire said that he had been called up by workers who had gone to the factory having heard the programme, so that they could open it up and sew. Within 24 hours there were 1 million sandbags. Is there not a risk that such local community service by radio—