Met Office

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Ben Bradshaw

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Streeter. I thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for securing this important debate. He and I have a close mutual interest in the weather on the weekend of 7 and 8 November. As he may be aware, I am lucky enough to be president of Didcot Town football club, who for the first time in their history have reached round 1 of the FA cup. I am delighted that their first opponents, because they are bound to win, will be Exeter City on that weekend. I hope he will join me in the lavish corporate box at Didcot Town, having cycled from his Exeter constituency on what I hope will be a fine and sunny day, but who can tell? Maybe the Met Office can.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) spoke about her and me appearing together for the third time, but she left out the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), who is also part of the group. Looking at the three of us, I call to mind the great words of the bard:

“When shall we three meet again

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

I cannot answer the first part of that question, but when I do know I will ask the Met Office to answer the second part.

We are lucky to have the Met Office, but it does not provide the weather for every television channel. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, MeteoServices provides the weather for Channel 4, and it has a distinctive approach. The weatherman for Channel 4, Mr Liam Dutton, achieved notoriety for faultlessly pronouncing the longest place name in Wales, which, as I do not need to remind hon. Members, is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll- gogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch—I have almost certainly mispronounced it, but I may be the first hon. Member to read it into Hansard.

The right hon. Member for Exeter made it clear that he is proud of the Met Office, as we all are of the UK’s national meteorological service. The Met Office is an internationally renowned organisation based in his constituency, and it provides highly skilled jobs and international connections. It is a massive asset for the south-west, which is why I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) here. No doubt you have your own interest as a south-west Member of Parliament, Mr Streeter. Everyone in this House knows how committed the Chancellor is to science and a knowledge-driven economy. The Met Office is a fantastic example of that, which is why we have invested a significant sum in its new supercomputer; I will return to that towards the end of my remarks.

The right hon. Member for Exeter has corresponded with me, tabled parliamentary questions and secured this debate because he is interested in the BBC’s decision not to shortlist the Met Office in its procurement process for weather forecasting services. That procurement process is still under way, but it has come to light that the Met Office is not on the shortlist. The current contract with the Met Office is therefore due to end in autumn 2016. That is a commercial decision for the BBC to take, and it is interesting that when we disagree with decisions made by the BBC—not me personally or as a Minister—we feel free to comment. I live in a world in which people are constantly telling me to keep my hands off the BBC, but I have no intention of interfering with its commercial decisions. It is true, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central mentioned, that the BBC is undergoing a charter review, and we are obviously considering a range of options for its future, but it is important that we keep in mind its editorial independence and its freedom to make sensible commercial decisions. The BBC has a duty, and has always had a duty, to conduct its business in a way that delivers value for money for licence fee payers.

On the wider question of what kind of weather service the BBC will provide in the future, it is of course crucial that consistent information is available, particularly on severe weather, and that those warnings reach the people most likely to be affected. I reassure the right hon. Member for Exeter that in the next few months all parties concerned will continue to work with the BBC to ensure that Met Office severe weather warnings are clearly and consistently communicated to the public, because the Met Office will continue to provide the official UK forecast, official guidance and warnings as the single authoritative voice during high-impact weather events, such as storms, gales and flooding. We expect the BBC to continue carrying the Met Office’s national severe weather warnings—that applies to all broadcasters, regardless of who provides their day-to-day weather forecasting—and to ensure that those severe weather warnings are consistent with any wider forecast issued at the same time. Indeed, the BBC has made it clear that it will continue to use the Met Office severe weather warnings.

As part of that new approach, the Met Office is developing a new public weather media service, which will be made freely available to all broadcasters and will ensure that Met Office severe weather warnings reach the maximum audience effectively and efficiently. The public weather media service is due to be ready by July 2016, before the current contract expires, so that it can be incorporated into whatever new service the BBC chooses to contract.

The Met Office public weather service is a critical component of the UK’s resilience infrastructure. It provides the public with the information that they need to make decisions and protect themselves and their property from high-impact weather. An important part of the service is public weather advisers—Met Office experts who provide advice and guidance to local emergency planners and responders and who are greatly valued by all who work in that area.

The public will continue to benefit from Met Office expertise through a wide range of other channels, including other national and regional TV, radio and print media outlets and the Met Office’s website, mobile app and social media channels. It is important to clarify that the civil contingencies secretariat, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Met Office are working together on the public weather media service.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I am pleased to hear that the civil contingencies secretariat, BIS and others are working with the Met Office on that. I do not know whether the Minister slightly misunderstood my point about consistency. It is not about the consistency of severe weather warnings, which the BBC has agreed to continue broadcasting from the Met Office; it is about consistency between those and the general weather forecasting that the BBC might purchase from a different provider.

TV viewers and radio listeners could receive different information in general weather forecasts from the information issued by the Met Office, or the information provided by the Met Office to Government. The Minister says that such inconsistency will be addressed. We have heard the BBC give that assurance before, but it has not explained how it will resolve that potential inconsistency.

[Mr Vaizey]

As I thought I was explaining but will try to make clearer, my understanding was that the public weather service will be freely available to all media outlets. The work that the civil contingencies secretariat, BIS and the Met Office are undertaking now will ensure that when that service goes live in the summer of next year, it will be able to be incorporated into the BBC’s more general weather. In effect, the public weather service is about severe weather warnings—gales, storms and flooding, as I said earlier—and it must be incorporated within the routine weather forecast: for example, whether it will rain tomorrow in East Dunbartonshire, or be cloudy or sunny. I am confident that that work will ensure that those two effectively separate parts of weather forecasting will be consistent and incorporated, not only by the BBC but by other broadcasters.

I will take this opportunity to address some of the other points raised by the right hon. Gentleman. It is not the case that Ministers were informed by the BBC of its decision. The Met Office informed the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills after learning that it was not on the shortlist for procurement, but I do not take any umbrage at the BBC’s not having informed us. As I said, it is a commercial decision for the BBC.

Are we getting value for money? Are we effectively paying twice for the service? It is important to understand that the Met Office was not giving general weather service free of charge to the BBC; the BBC was paying for it. Procurement is under way for the weather service that the BBC will use in future. That is commercially confidential, but I do not see how it can be argued that we are paying twice, given that the BBC is currently paying for a weather service from the Met Office and will pay for a weather service from another provider next year.

I know that there will be concerns, particularly from a constituency perspective, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned. As far as I understand it, the Met Office contract with the BBC is a small fraction of its total turnover, and I am not aware of any knock-on effect in terms of redundancies or job losses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bradshaw]

I am very gratified that the Minister is extolling the virtues of the Met Office; indeed, he almost seems to be making a better case than I did for the BBC continuing its relationship with the Met Office. Before he closes, may I invite him at least to assure hon. Members and I that he will go away from this debate and just talk to his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office group responsible for civil contingencies, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to ensure that they are aware—if they are not already aware—of some of their officials’ concerns, so that Ministers can help to encourage the process that he referred to earlier, of addressing and resolving some of these genuine concerns about resilience and national security?

[Mr Vaizey]

I absolutely give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance; I will ensure that the points he has made in this debate are taken seriously and that we absolutely clarify for him exactly what the public weather media service will provide, although the answer may not completely satisfy him. I will also seek assurances from the civil contingencies secretariat and BIS officials that they are content with the arrangements, as it were, whereby the BBC is in effect contracting with another provider for what I would call its commercial weather service, which provides the day-to-day weather service that we all watch at the end of a news bulletin, whether that is a national or local news bulletin, as opposed to the more important severe weather warning work that the Met Office does.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Ben Bradshaw

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I know that my hon. Friend, who is standing to be the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, is an aficionado of the Turner prize, as well as many other cultural events. He will know—I do not need to tell him—that Derry/Londonderry benefited from a huge range of events, from the BBC and other cultural organisations, and I expect Hull to benefit in the same way.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not answering this question, because only a couple of months ago, when he was the Chair of the Select Committee, he authored an excellent report highlighting the scandal of the imbalance in funding for the English regions compared with London. Now that he is in a position to implement it, will he?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am afraid that this is the second time that Opposition Members have asked for the Secretary of State to respond. Unfortunately, they have to put up with me, and I apologise for that. I am pleased that the chief executive of the Arts Council took note of the excellent report put forward by the Select Committee. As a member of that Select Committee, the right hon. Gentleman should be aware that civil servants now pore over these reports as though they were sacred texts.