Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will hold discussions with the BBC on ensuring that the programmes it commissions reflect the views of people from across the UK.

As a public service broadcaster that matters hugely to public life, the BBC must be responsive to viewers and listeners and tell inclusive stories about the lives of all people, in all parts of the UK. Under the current Charter, the BBC has an obligation to ‘reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions’. The BBC is operationally and editorially independent of the Government in determining how it meets that obligation, and it is for the independent regulator Ofcom to hold the BBC to account.

As part of the next Charter Review, the Government will engage with the BBC and others to consider how to ensure the BBC thrives well into the next decade and beyond. This will include discussions on a range of important issues and will start a national conversation to make sure the BBC truly represents and delivers for every person in this country