BBC (Proposed Cuts)

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, but I shall come to what is happening to BBC West Midlands.

A drama can have a greater impact and provide greater understanding of a topic; one has only to watch “Later…with Jools Holland” to see this country’s tremendous musical creativity; and in both television and radio, exploring the boundaries of our world and helping us to make sense of it is one of the cornerstones of what the BBC does.

What concerns me most as a west midlands MP is the proposed decimation of BBC West Midlands, which has a unique 90-year history of both factual and drama programme making. It is home to some of the most excellent programmes, such as “Countryfile”, “Coast” and “Gardeners’ World”. A long time ago, I made a programme that came from Pebble Mill—“Network East”—and I remember the expertise of the staff. They edited a piece on the Chelsea flower show at 7.50 pm for transmission at 8.00 pm. One can find such professionalism and dedication to the job across the whole of the BBC. As many hon. Members from the west midlands will know, when we go on the “Politics Show”, a remarkable woman—is there not always a remarkable woman?—does our make-up, acts as floor manager and provides the hospitality at the end of the programme. I am not sure what else she can include in her job. Perhaps the BBC will expect her to be a camera operator as well. That is the nature of her commitment and the commitment of the other people who work there.

The £15 million that is spent on the region is worth £28 million to the local economy, not to mention that Birmingham is the country’s second city and the geographical heart of England. That as well as skilled jobs such as journalists, researchers, engineers and producers could be lost. The pitch is that 150 skilled jobs in the area could be lost.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

If the west midlands is the heart of England, Kent is the garden of England. Is the hon. Lady aware that Radio Kent, which provides many of my constituents with an excellent service, has longer listening hours throughout the week than any other BBC radio station? That is why it is vital to retain top-quality programmes and stations for our constituents.

[Valerie Vaz]

The hon. Lady serves her constituents well by making such an important point and I hope that the BBC is listening to her. It is not only the skilled jobs that will go; the local news dimension and the cutting edge digital production will be lost. Once lost, such skills will never be regained.

The west midlands is one of the most diverse areas. When BBC operations moved from Pebble Mill to the Mailbox, Mark Thompson said that great cities such as Birmingham were central to his vision of the BBC. None the less, it is the future on which I wish to focus. In the midlands, there is a different a pool of talent from that in London. Broadcasting there offers opportunities for a first step in the media. Outreach work is carried out across the midlands and includes projects such as BBC News School Report, the International School and the university of Birmingham sports partnership in which, hopefully, it will be recognised that women can play sport and that there is a gender balance to be achieved.

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[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

In joining colleagues to make the case for local radio, I want to focus on three points. First, the cuts being made to local radio are unfair and disproportionate. Secondly, they will have not only an immediate impact on service but a long-term effect that could threaten the very future of local radio. Thirdly, echoing a comment by the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), these decisions are being made by a London-based management who appear not to understand the nature of their service or listeners outside the capital.

I want to illustrate these points with reference to Radio Sheffield, which is a successful station that broadcasts from the heart of my constituency and throughout south Yorkshire and which is listened to by 244,000 people every week. That equates to a remarkable 19% penetration of its potential market. On average, those people listen to Radio Sheffield for eight hours every week. I have to declare an interest as a regular listener of Radio Sheffield too. I shall declare another interest: I also listen regularly to Radio 4. I recognise, however, that Radio 4 has a significantly smaller audience across the country than the 7.5 million people who listen to local radio.

[Tracey Crouch]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one reason people are so loyal to their local radio stations is the variety they provide: there is the heavy speech content in the morning, followed by a variety of music, plugs for local events and so on in the lunch-time and afternoon shows, followed by the interesting speech content mix in the drive-time shows. That variety means loyal listeners.

[Paul Blomfield]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the variety and local roots of those different strands of the local radio offer.

It is important not only to consider the aggregate total of people who listen to local radio but to take note that one third—2.5 million people—of those people do not listen to any other BBC station and that, as the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) pointed out, almost one fifth listen to no other radio station at all. Yet while the Radio 4 budget is being protected, local radio across Yorkshire is facing cuts of about 18%. What does that mean for Radio Sheffield? The current 16 hours a day of local content will be almost halved, to nine hours. From broadcasting local content every weekday from 5 am to 10 pm, we will have two local slots, one in the morning and one in the early evening. The afternoon will be filled with regional programming—joint shows with Radio York and Radio Leeds—and from 7 pm, evening local radio will effectively become, as was pointed our earlier, “Radio England”, which is complete nonsense when it comes to local radio. The loss of medium wave will bring an end to language programmes for ethnic minority communities, which are highly valued and attract a significant local listenership. We are also facing shared sports commentary, an issue to which I want to return in a moment.

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[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who, along with many Members, has made a fantastic speech. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this important and timely debate. Many Members in the Chamber today took part in the Westminster Hall debate that was so over-subscribed and well attended, and, likewise, the topic has come up time and again at many Culture, Media and Sport question sessions over the past year, so our opportunity for a debate today in the Chamber is a timely one.

We have heard from many Members about the different casualties of the Delivering Quality First review, none more tragic than the 2,000 people throughout the BBC who will lose their jobs as a result of it. I, too, will focus on the impact of the review on local radio—and in particular, on BBC Radio Merseyside.

It is clear from every contribution so far that all Members and the public rightly cherish the BBC, which is a source of national pride because of its quality, role in our public life and commitment to educate, inform and entertain, but it is clear also that the BBC faces a huge challenge. The licence fee freeze until 2017 is the worst in its history, and, given that it has to shoulder the costs of the World Service, it is obvious that many difficult decisions need to be made.

Unfortunately, the BBC has exacerbated those difficulties by producing a set of reductions that are, in some part, fundamentally unfair: unfair because local radio faces a disproportionate cut while larger budgets are protected; unfair because local radio provides a true community service to an audience who rely on it; and unfair because the cuts will mean an end to local news-gathering and locally produced content.

The 39 BBC local radio stations throughout the UK are a unique and popular part of our media landscape, and severely reducing their output would be a huge loss. Throughout the UK, 7 million people listen to their local BBC radio service, of whom 2 million listen to no other BBC radio station. As well as being popular, BBC local radio is also value for money for the listener, costing on average 3.2p per listener hour, compared with BBC 1 on television, which costs 6.7p per viewing hour, and BBC Radio 3, which costs 6.3p per listener hour.

All in the House have seen the value of their local BBC radio station when it has come to emergencies—we heard examples of flooding—or to the disturbances this summer. BBC Radio Merseyside played a very important role in informing the public of where they should and should not travel and of where the disturbances were, and in dispelling some of the myths that popped up on social media sites.

If BBC local radio goes, we will lose a vital service that reflects, celebrates and affirms countless local identities.

[Tracey Crouch]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Luciana Berger]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not, because I am conscious of the fact that one more hon. Member would like to speak before the winding-up speeches begin.

The feeling from those I talk to who work at the BBC is that local radio is being set up to lose its audience, so that it can be scrapped completely at the next licence fee settlement. I sincerely hope that that is not the case, because as a Liverpool MP I see the real value of local radio every day. That is why I have been campaigning against the cuts and why over 1,500 people signed a petition that I had on my website, which I presented to Parliament a couple of weeks ago. For many people, BBC Radio Merseyside is the voice of the city, and it is home to some of its most famous institutions, including the Roger Phillips show and the Billy Butler show. It is also hugely successful. It is the most listened to station outside London, with over 300,000 listeners who, on average, tune in for a staggering 16.2 hours a week. Yet the station will be one of the worst hit by the changes and will see its staffing funding reduced by 20%. Radio Merseyside is already run on a shoestring compared with the larger BBC services. Worse, as the majority of expenditure at the station is on fixed costs such as buildings, any budget reduction of this size cannot be made without a disproportionate loss of locally produced shows and cuts in jobs.

Given that, it is rather strange that no cuts will be made to Radio 4, which has an annual budget of £99 million—it is more than twice the size of the largest commercial station in the UK. With 66% of the licence fee spent on television, it is hard to understand why funding for BBC 1 has been cut by only 3%. I do not believe that it is impossible to find savings from these significantly larger budgets. For example, “You and Yours” is a show on Radio 4 that is aired for one hour a day, five days a week. It is a very informative programme, and I enjoy listening to it when I get the chance. However, there are more people working on that one radio show for five hours a week than there are in the entire staff complement at BBC Radio Merseyside. Is the BBC really saying that it cannot find any savings from that programme, or from its other larger radio stations or television stations? To me, it does not add up.

Alongside the reduction in funding, another planned change is the sharing of local radio programmes between groups or clusters of stations, so that at certain times of the day, instead of having individual local programmes, stations will share programmes with neighbouring city stations up to 50 miles away. Other Members have spoken about the impact that that will have in their localities. In reality, it means that there will be no local programming for large parts of the week. Localness is the DNA of local radio—the clue is in the title. Once one dilutes this service, one fundamentally changes the relationship between the provider and the listener—the licence fee payer. Local radio may be seen by senior managers as a quick and easy way to cut costs, but the listeners, who are primarily aged over 55 and in the lower socio-economic groups, and for whom local radio is not only a friend but a lifeline, do not agree. Local radio programme-sharing was tried in parts of the north in the early 1990s, and it failed to connect with audiences and to attract listeners, particularly in areas with a strong local identity such as Merseyside and Tyneside. It is true that many stations in the midlands and the south of England have been sharing programmes for some years, but they are seldom the stations with huge listening numbers.

BBC senior managers will talk about “value for money” from the licence fee. I agree that that is crucial, but the planned cuts are not equal in impact. The impact on local radio will almost certainly cut much deeper, with the likely loss of broadcast journalist jobs, including reporters and producers, reducing news coverage and programmes. Local radio therefore gets a double whammy—fewer local programmes and huge job losses, resulting in a much reduced news and information service. This comes at a time when other local news providers such as newspapers have been frantically reducing staff as they struggle to cope with the effects of the recession and influx of web-based news services. It seems that the BBC is keen to reduce service in the one area of the market where there is a discernible gap.

The BBC has said that the consultation on the Delivering Quality First proposals will be a genuine one. I have written to the BBC about this, as have many of my constituents and many Members here today. I hope that senior managers will listen to what the public are saying. To be fair, the BBC has a strong tradition of doing that, and I expect it to continue. Some press reports suggest that the BBC might be listening to the calls from various Members and that in the coming days we might see something of a U-turn on the cuts to local radio. That would surely be welcomed by all of us, as the current proposals are unfair and the BBC should rightly think again. I sincerely hope that Members on both sides of the House will support the Backbench Business Committee motion.

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[Ms Harman]

Let us hope that Mr Thompson is reminded of that spirit and that he listens to the words of my hon. Friend and hon. Members on both sides of the House.

The BBC Trust should respond to the motion and review its proposals. I know that the BBC’s room for manoeuvre is tight, but like other hon. Members, I urge it to think again. It should also think again and put right, at no extra cost, the men-only shortlist for BBC sports personality of the year. Is the BBC really saying that there are no sportswomen, or that sportswomen do not have any personality? Is it any surprise that it has come about given that the panel of people who draw up the shortlist includes representatives from the magazines Nuts and Zoo but not, unsurprisingly, from Grazia and Marie Claire? This is clearly a matter that the BBC needs to think about again.

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for her generosity in giving way. I support everything that she says about the BBC sports personality of the year. As a sportswoman and someone who coaches girls on a regular basis, I think that it is important that the BBC looks at its overall coverage of women sports. Rather than imposing positive discrimination so that women get on to the sports list, we should raise the profile of women’s sports so that they can be shortlisted on the basis of merit.