Scottish Separation (BBC)

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Anas Sarwar]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. He implied that he was not being serious when he made the point about “Strictly Come Dancing”, but he did look rather serious. In a moment, I will reveal the figures that illustrate how popular the programme is in Scotland. Even though I do not watch it, I am sure that many others do. He also makes an important point about “The Culture Show”. We are proud of the fact that the British Broadcasting Corporation celebrates the history of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we would like to see that strength continued and not put under threat by the Scottish National party’s proposals.

It is also asserted that licence fee income will be used to support Scotland’s media and creative industries to a greater extent than is the case now. That means more spent on programmes such as “River City” and still all the UK content.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that I am asking him to give way and not to dance. Let me unpack that bit about the BBC’s input in Scotland. As a public sector broadcaster, the BBC supports independent production companies. Has he had any indication of what the impact will be on that? BBC shows that are produced in Scotland, which inject money and skills into the Scottish economy, can only be supported by that national level.

[Anas Sarwar]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. Scotland’s creative industries support more than 60,000 jobs and contribute £5 billion to the Scottish economy. Across the whole UK, 43% of all commissions for independent television producers come from the BBC. In Scotland, the network commissions are the main source of revenues for independent production companies, and that will be put under threat by these proposals.

In Scotland, we are used to the SNP making things up as it goes along, but from this evidence it is not even good at that anymore. It is inconceivable that the quality, quantity and breadth of output could be maintained with just 10% of the current available resource. In the First Minister’s speech to the Edinburgh international festival in August, he laid out his plans for the SBC. He gave the example of Denmark and Norway. Let us compare their licence fee rates. For Denmark, it is £264.27; Norway is £277.94; and the UK is £145.50. That is 40p per day across all formats. Radio costs 6p per day for all programmes and all channels. TV costs 24p per day for all channels and all programmes.

The SBC proposals include commercials and a higher licence fee. Some might ask whether there is any evidence of interest from Scottish viewers in the programmes that I set out earlier. I am happy to set the record straight. The figures show that Scots take a keen interest in UK output. Despite the dislike of “Strictly Come Dancing” expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), some 910,000 people in Scotland watch the programme every week. That is 39% of the audience share in Scotland. Some 750,000 people watched “Frozen Planet”, which is 28% of the audience share. “Match of the Day” English premiership highlights pull in 262,000 viewers, compared with 186,000 for “Sportscene” highlights. Perhaps that is because the Rangers fans are not able to watch their great team in the premiership, which is a source of great pain for me personally. However, we should not worry because the First Minister told Jeremy Paxman in an interview recently that SBC will purchase from the BBC the likes of “Newsnight”. In that very statement, he actually makes the case for the BBC—we Scots already purchase “Newsnight”, and every other TV and radio programme, and it is called the licence fee. Why on earth would we want to break up the BBC then spend money buying the exact same programmes back again? Is that just because it is called the British Broadcasting Corporation?

Sadly, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is not in the Chamber today. In fact, there is not a single SNP representative present. Perhaps they are too busy thinking about 16 and 17-year-olds being able to vote or about how to gerrymander the Electoral Commission proposals. What they should be doing is engaging in the debate about the future of the country.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman, the SNP’s broadcasting spokesperson, exposed the true face of the Yes Scotland’s positivity when he said in March this year that the BBC is the institutional enemy of the party’s drive for separation. “Institutional enemy” are his words, not mine.

The hon. Gentleman went on to claim that the SBC would spend £75 million a year importing popular UK programmes, which viewers could then view for free in Scotland. However, the ability to purchase is yet another assertion, not a fact. It is another statement rooted in myth, not in reality.

Setting aside my concerns about any Minister—especially Alex Salmond—dictating the schedule of a broadcaster, he will simply not have the funding to do so. When he makes the assertion on “Newsnight” that we would purchase output from the rest of the BBC, he does so on the basis that the funding would be available to do that and that an independent, free-from-Government-control broadcaster would choose to do so. Both assertions are false.

It is also ridiculous and fanciful to make the claim that nothing would change. Let us examine the claim that the SBC would be able to use the money that it had to purchase programmes. Is there any indication of what it would cost to provide, say, the current package of sports or news for Scottish viewers? This year alone, the BBC will spend £479 million on sport, so we would have no British Open or Grand National and—I can see the SNP breaking out in a cold sweat at the mention of the word—no Olympics in Scotland, and certainly no red button coverage.

The BBC will spend £390 million on news, so there would be no coverage of the US elections or the Arab spring. It will spend £116 million on children’s programmes, so no CBBC, no CBeebies and—I understand of particular relevance to the Minister— no “Nina and the Neurons”. The BBC will spend £336 million on factual programmes, so no “Frozen Planet” and no David Attenborough in Scotland.

The Scottish Broadcasting Corporation’s budget would be, at best, £300 million. The BBC spend on sport is £479 million a year; on news, it is £390 million a year; children’s programmes, £116 million a year; and factual programmes, £336 million a year. So, after spending on buying the BBC programmes that it wants, the claim is that that would leave at least £100 million to produce quality programmes in Scotland. That is roughly equivalent to a single HBO mini-series: a series of “Game of Thrones” costs $60 million to make; “John Adams” cost $100 million; and “The Pacific” cost $200 million. Even then, that is one hour on one night a week. What about the other 167 hours that the SBC would need to fill? That exposes the quality gap of the proposals.

The impact also spreads to the BBC website and the iPlayer. Internet users in the Republic of Ireland, France, Germany and the US do not have access to the website output and iPlayer that the Scots do, for one simple reason: they are not part of the United Kingdom. So Scots would have no access to the existing output: no radio, no iPlayer. Scots would have access to the international iPlayer, but when we compare the two, a quick glance shows what is missing. Also, the international iPlayer has a subscription fee—an additional cost to Scots. Of course, there is no mention of that in the separatists’ proposals.

Web content would be geo-blocked, as it is in every other foreign country, but there would also be other losers from the SNP proposition: Scotland’s creative industries. There are 100 TV production companies based in Scotland, and 15,000 people are employed in the industry. “Waterloo Road” alone, a fantastic production for the BBC, represents a £10 million a year investment and 200 jobs.

Let us consider the current spend in Scotland: it has 8.4% of the population, 8.7% of total licences, and the SNP’s Scottish Broadcasting Commission recommended 8.6% of spend should be local. However, 9% of BBC TV production spend is now in Scotland. High-profile productions such as “Question Time” and “The Culture Show” already happen in Scotland. Scotland has a proud record in the cultural and creative sector, fantastic festivals and world renowned actors. I must mention the tremendous regeneration in my constituency in Glasgow on the Clyde. The BBC capital investment in its Pacific quay headquarters is approaching £200 million. That is a real success story for Scotland, but it is all at risk from the SNP’s plans.

Not only Scots would lose out; the rest of the UK would lose out, too. There is a licence fee freeze until 2016. On top of that pressure on BBC income, losing Scottish licence fee income would mean an off-the-top cut of almost 10% in BBC income. That risks decimating the organisation. The position put forward by the SNP is not only not credible, but downright misleading.

In summary, the proposals mean a higher licence fee; loss of the iPlayer; more adverts; fewer popular programmes; and fewer channels. It is yet another gulf between the rhetoric of the SNP and the reality of what their proposals mean for Scottish viewers, producers and the wider creative industry. Instead, what we need in Scotland is to look beyond the narrow constitutional debate and to continuing to use the collective strength of the United Kingdom and the BBC to support the industry, attract investment, create jobs and wealth, invest in both our present and future talents, and develop the quality programmes that we can enjoy here in Britain and also export around the world.