Broadcasting

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree, and it will ultimately be for Ofcom to decide whether the BBC is meeting that requirement. I do not think it should be applied to every individual programme, but each channel should be able to demonstrate that it is markedly different from an equivalent commercial channel. That should apply to radio as well as the mainstream TV channels. That is a significant change.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

When the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State, did he ever look into the disproportionate amount of money distributed to the regions in comparison with London? I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows that some of the regions are very concerned about that.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I understand that, and there are particular regions—and indeed nations—that feel underserved and hard-done-by. In my view, the BBC made a good move in transferring a lot of its production and facilities to Salford—I was in favour of the establishment of the Media City in Salford—but that was not sufficient for the BBC to then sit back and say, “Right, we’ve done our bit for the English regions; we don’t have to worry any longer.” The west midlands has felt underserved, as has been debated in this House, and I have no doubt that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), speaking for the Scottish National party, will talk about the provision of the service, and indeed employment and production, in Scotland. This is a live issue, and I believe the BBC needs to do more.

I want to touch briefly on two particular policy developments that I promoted and remain keen on. The first is the public service content fund. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) talked about the underspend on the provision for broadband and what will happen to it. I hope it will go to establish the public service content fund, which will provide programming in areas that are currently underserved, of which children’s television is certainly an example. It will be administered outside the BBC.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Nicolson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about BBC salaries, and I shall say more about that later. They are ludicrously inflated at senior levels. The director-general often says, “We pay these huge salaries because that is the going rate in the outside world.” The BBC does not actually know that, however, because nobody ever wants to put it to the test by leaving a senior post in the BBC. They know that they will never achieve such high salaries in the outside world. I asked the director-general if he had ever conducted a study on what his senior staff got when they left the BBC and went into the industry outside. He told me that he had never conducted such a study.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that in any other business, whatever it might be—even local government—those outside salary levels would be tested. The market is always tested when setting salaries.

[John Nicolson]

That is precisely the point I made to the director-general. I asked him whether he had tested this, given that he always argued that he was paying the going rate. His answer was that he had not tested it, so his whole argument for paying people ludicrously inflated salaries fell with that one answer.

As the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) predicted, I am now going to talk about Scotland. It has been clear for a significant period of time that the BBC is not delivering for Scotland in the way that it should be. Audience satisfaction ratings show that Scots do not feel that the corporation fully represents their views and interests. Appreciation measures in Scotland are lower than the average for the rest of the UK, and people in Scotland think that the BBC is poorer at representing their lives in news, current affairs and drama, compared with people in other parts of the UK. Members do not have to take my word for that; the BBC fully acknowledges that problem.

We on the Scottish National party Benches here in Westminster and our colleagues in Holyrood and the Scottish Government are committed to high-quality, well-resourced public service broadcasting, and we want a BBC charter that allows this. Charter renewal has been a valuable opportunity to provide a framework for the BBC that enables it to maintain its important role as a public service broadcaster, to improve its performance for Scottish and UK audiences and to provide further support for the Scottish production sector and those in our wider creative industries. For the first time, the Scottish Government and Holyrood have had a formal role in the charter renewal process, following the recommendations of the Smith commission. The SNP has delivered a clear and consistent message on the straightforward changes we believe would help to transform the BBC in Scotland for the better. We welcome a number of elements in the charter, but it is vital that the BBC now delivers.

The SNP has argued that the BBC needs an enforceable licence service agreement for Scotland and a dedicated board member for Scotland. There are clear reasons for this. A Scottish board would allow BBC Scotland to have greater control over its budget and to be given meaningful commissioning powers. The charter accepts SNP proposals for the BBC to report on its impact on the creative industries for the first time, but it does not make provisions for a fairer share of the licence fee raised in Scotland to be spent in Scotland. Such a provision could deliver up to an additional £100 million of investment annually in those creative industries. We welcome the commitment to continued support for the Gaelic language, but the Secretary of State refrained from going just a little further and moving towards parity with the Welsh channel S4C for MG Alba, as recommended by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, on which I serve.

The Select Committee supports many of the wider proposals in the draft charter. We welcome the abolition of the BBC Trust and its replacement by a unitary board, although, as I suggested in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Maldon, we were alarmed to see what I will gently describe as the rather relaxed method of selection for the new chair, when Rhona Fairhead moved seamlessly from her old job as chair of the BBC Trust to her new job as chair of the unitary board. The right hon. Gentleman said that the transition period was important because, to paraphrase slightly, the transition meant that she was effectively continuing in the same job. However, Ms Fairhead herself said that it was a completely different job, which is precisely why it should have been subject to open competition, rather than having arisen from a cosy chat between her and the Prime Minister, with no civil servants present. I discovered that during a heated Select Committee cross-examination that resulted in Ms Fairhead accepting that she should perhaps go.