BBC Charter: Regional Television News

Rob Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

Before we begin the debate, I should tell Members to feel free to remove jackets if they wish because of the temperature.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the BBC Charter and the closure of regional TV news programmes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. When I was 15, I wrote to BBC Radio Oxford to say that it should make programmes for teenagers. Its reply offered me the chance to make those programmes myself. Thus began my career in broadcasting. After I had graduated, I worked for BBC News for seven years before moving to Channel 5, where I stayed for another eight years. I declare an interest: I have a background in broadcasting and spent a considerable period working for the BBC.

One of the things that made BBC Radio Oxford great when I was there was its connection to the audience. Its presenters, reporters and producers knew the local area, understood the local issues and related to the local people. That is the case now for the Oxford television newsroom, which each evening produces dedicated programming in “South Today”. The title sequence shows the names of the places that feature: Abingdon, Bicester, Brackley, Buckingham, Didcot, Witney and, of course, Aylesbury, my constituency. The Oxford programme has a dedicated presenter and a dedicated team of journalists who produce dedicated programming for their local audience, yet that programming is under threat.

At the end of May, the BBC announced that it will

“end the local TV bulletins broadcast from Oxford on BBC1 at 6.30 pm and 10.30 pm on weekdays.”

From November, regional coverage for the area will be merged with the “South Today” programme broadcast from Southampton. Instead of there being TV news for my area, the BBC says it will be

“strengthening its local online news services.”

The BBC has decided to do the same with its bulletins produced in Cambridge—scrap the TV programme and put the local news online instead. I know there are colleagues here today who are affected by that decision.

The BBC has a unique and privileged place in our country. It is funded by a licence fee that is imposed on everybody who owns a television set, irrespective of how much they earn and how much BBC output they watch, listen to or read. In return for that funding model, the BBC is governed by a royal charter that sets out the corporation’s responsibilities. The charter lists the public purposes of the BBC, and this is the first among them:

“To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens.”

The debate is not the place to discuss how fully the BBC complies with everything set out in that paragraph—there are certainly different views about how well it complies with the requirement to be impartial, for example —but I draw the attention of the House to certain key elements of the first of the public purposes of the BBC. Those key elements are to

“provide… news… to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom”,

enable all audiences to

“engage fully with major local… issues”

and offer material

“not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers”.

I submit that, with its proposal to close the Oxford edition of “South Today” and the Cambridge edition of “Look East”, the BBC is failing to comply with those charter requirements.

The BBC needs to continue providing local news in the way people want to get it, because others have ceased to do so. Many local newspapers have closed in recent years. In August 2020, Press Gazette reported that, according to its analysis, 265 local newspapers had shut since 2005. Just last month, a report entitled “Local News Deserts”, published by the Charitable Journalism Project, set out a stark picture. It said:

“The current local news landscape of the UK is unrecognisable compared to 25 years ago…Average daily print circulation for the local regional and local press in 2019 was around 31%...of 2007 figures…The loss of revenue from print sales and the migration of advertising online has brought about successive shocks to the business model of local news. It has led to multiple title closures, redundancies, the ‘hollowing out’ of newsrooms, office closures and centralisation…Most local journalism is no longer written by separate editorial teams associated with a specific title.”

The report says that people

“want a trusted, locally based, professional and accessible source of local news, that reports and investigates local issues and institutions…provided by journalists local to their communities.”

The chairman of the project wrote in his forward:

“The collapse of local reporting is a slow-burning crisis in Britain.”

He pointed out that the income that kept local newspapers afloat in the past will not return.

That, then, is the picture for local print journalism, but it is not just newspapers that are leaving town. In September 2020, Aylesbury’s much loved and very widely respected commercial radio station, Mix 96, effectively closed down. It was subsumed into a new regional station called Greatest Hits Radio (Bucks, Beds and Herts), owned by Bauer. The dedicated team who had served Aylesbury with news, current affairs and local information were no more. The studios in our town have closed. Bauer promised that there would still be coverage of Aylesbury stories, but there are far fewer than there were. The reporters who lived and worked locally have gone.

Of course, I recognise that the way we get our news is changing. Many of us use our phones, for example, to see updates on Twitter or Facebook, but there is still a sizeable audience who want to get their local news from a local television programme, and that is especially the case for older people. Indeed, the BBC itself says that 75% of the viewers of “South Today” are over the age of 55. While many people in that age bracket are highly digitally savvy, plenty of others are not, and they should not be cut off from what is happening in their local area. They should still have access to information about local news. They should still be able to see their local politicians being held to account on their television screens.

Instead, with its latest proposals, the BBC plans to subsume the news from Aylesbury into a programme from Southampton. Frankly, stories about sailing and the coast are not terribly relevant to one of the most inland towns in England. The simple truth is that people in Witney do not have a great deal in common with people in Winchester. News about the havoc caused by HS2 in Buckinghamshire is not very high on the agenda of those who live in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. The BBC is proposing to create a TV region that simply has no geographical identity. The result will be even lower audiences, as people tune out from a programme with stories to which they simply do not relate. This matters.

The broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, also highlights the importance of television as a source of news. Its most recent report on news consumption says:

“TV remains the most common platform for accessing local news.”

In addition:

“Use of TV is most prevalent amongst the 65+ age group, while the internet is the most- used platform for news consumption among 16-24s…BBC One remains the most-used news source across any platform”.

It is twice as popular as the BBC website and app: the figures are 62% for TV, 31% for online and app. Yet, the BBC wants to close its TV programmes, and put the content online.

The BBC says that when it closes its Oxford and Cambridge TV programmes, it will devote more resource to its local radio stations. But Ofcom says that fewer than half the population now use the radio for news—it is just 46%, whereas 79% use television. Again, the BBC is knowingly cutting programmes from a platform it knows is used and relied upon.

Some may say that this Government’s decision to freeze the price of the BBC licence for two years has forced the corporation’s hand. It is true that the BBC will have to make some cuts in some of its expenditure, but not in this case. The acting director of BBC England told me in simple words, “This isn’t about savings. I haven’t got to save a single penny.” In the correspondence I received from the BBC to tell me that it was planning to close the Oxford programme, it is confirmed:

“The BBC will be maintaining its overall spend on local and regional content in England over the next few years.”

Let me repeat that: the planned closure of BBC Oxford’s “South Today” programme is not driven by the need to save money. Instead, the British Broadcasting Corporation wants to shift more of its output online and away from television.

Having been a journalist and always wanted to hear two sides of the story, I went to the BBC to ask it to put its case. When I asked what evidence it had that people in my local area wanted to get their news online instead of on screen, I was told it would take some time to gather all that information from various sources. That was from the director who had made the decision to close the service. I was a bit surprised that he did not have the facts at his fingertips and could not immediately tell me the justification and why he felt that it was needed or desired, so I waited for a mass of evidence to arrive from various sources.

After 10 days, I got one page. It could not be said to provide the compelling facts that I had eagerly awaited. First, it set out some raw numbers. The BBC said that the average number of viewers for “South Today” was considerably lower in 2022 than in 2020. In 2020, however, all regional news programmes experienced a big increase in viewers because of the pandemic—a point proudly emphasised by the BBC in its annual report—so it is somewhat disingenuous to take that specific high point as a comparator to justify cuts now. Indeed, the BBC told me that the decrease in viewing of regional news programmes is happening more slowly than the decrease in viewing of other programmes.

On my one page of evidence, there was a single paragraph that could perhaps be said to touch on digital versus traditional ways to get local news. It said that the BBC’s own qualitative research showed:

“Amongst older respondents (55+) there has been a long-term trend away from traditional platforms (especially print media) and towards online sources, most significantly Facebook.”

The BBC added:

“This is supported by Ofcom data which reveals over 55s are as likely to access news online as through radio or print. This group expects to be able to access tailored local news online.”

Those listening closely will have heard two references to print and one to radio, but the word “television” is not mentioned in the evidence that the BBC provided to support its decision to cut a television news programme. It certainly did not say that older viewers were switching away from TV news, let alone that they wanted to do so and get their local news online instead. In fact, it says that of the weekly visitors to BBC News Online, 37% are aged 55 or older—in marked contrast to the 75% aged over 55 watching “South Today”—so there are serious concerns about older people being able to get easy access to increased online local news. I should also mention that there is a threat to the jobs of those who have dedicated years of their lives to producing high-quality local TV news. They have not been guaranteed new posts, and they should not be forgotten.

The BBC is a British institution. It does a great deal of good for our country, and I am very proud to have worked there. Its role providing news and information is crucial to our democracy, but with its plans to cut dedicated news programmes on television in the Oxford and Cambridge areas, it will reduce access to local news and information for many people. For the reasons I have set out this morning, I believe that contravenes its charter requirements, which is why I say it is not simply a day-to-day operational decision for the BBC, but a matter for this House and the Government. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rob Butler]

I am glad to have had the opportunity to raise concerns in the House of Commons about the BBC’s axing of the Oxford edition of “South Today” and the Cambridge edition of “Look East”, and to set out why I believe that is in contravention of the BBC charter. Axing those dedicated programmes will make a fundamental difference to the way in which people in the areas around Oxford and Cambridge find out what is happening, why and who is responsible.

There has been remarkable cross-party support from hon. Members for local journalism from the BBC. Those who have spoken today did so with a common sense of purpose and of valuing the BBC. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) highlighted the BBC’s investigative news at local and regional levels, and the disappointment in his local area, which there is in mine, over the plans to close the programmes that we have been discussing, as well as the irony of the BBC turning away from a fast-growing sub-region. A similar point could be made about Aylesbury, where tens of thousands of new homes are due to be built in the coming years.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) for his kind remarks about our shared background in broadcasting. He highlighted the significance of local investigative journalism and pointed out the lack of impartiality among other online sources of news.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) illustrated the impact of cuts to local BBC services in his area, vividly describing what happens in local communities when those services are cut. I hope that might give the BBC pause for thought.

From time to time, I shared a TV studio with the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson). I do not share all his views on the BBC or many other issues, as he would expect, but I note that he had an experience similar to mine in preparation for today’s debate of struggling to get meaningful answers from the corporation.

Labour’s spokesman, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), underlined the significance of regional programmes in forging an identity. It is important to say in this conversation that local news reporting is a significant grassroots part of the BBC. It is a shame that it is being squeezed.

I am pleased to see the Minister back at DCMS, and I was glad to hear his support for regional news and that the BBC needs to consider whether local news really does meet the needs of local communities. I accept entirely his point that day-to-day operational decisions are for the BBC, not the House or the Government, but my concern is about the BBC’s compliance with the royal charter. Those concerns remain, and I hope BBC management will reflect on today’s debate. The BBC does some excellent work, and I hope that that excellence will perhaps stretch to its capacity to listen to its audiences, listening to Members who have spoken today, and reversing its decision.

I thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I thank all Members who have spoken today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the BBC Charter and the closure of regional TV news programmes.