BBC Pay Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Julie Elliott
Main Page: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)Department Debates - View all Julie Elliott's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Matt Hancock
Yes, I agree incredibly strongly with that. The local news, and local TV and radio, are a vital part of what the BBC does. As we devolve more and more power locally, they are more and more important. I am very glad that the BBC recently announced that it was not going ahead with the cuts it previously proposed to local radio. Those cuts were completely unnecessary because the BBC has a very generous licence fee settlement. I am glad that it is now going to strengthen, not weaken, that local provision.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his new position and look forward to his first outing in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I want to put on record my praise and respect for Carrie Gracie for what she said yesterday: she is an outstanding woman. This is not about equal opportunity, as the Secretary of State has said many times that it is—it is about equal pay for work of equal value, right across the organisation. This has been known about for six months and the BBC has done nothing. It is illegal not to have equal pay. What are the Government going to do to bring pressure to bear on the BBC to act?
Matt Hancock
I agree that it is about equal pay for equal jobs, as I said right from the outset, and of course that underpins equal opportunity. On what we are going to do, the first thing we have done is brought in transparency. We are going to see what the BBC says in the next few weeks, when it will publish more on on-air presenters, and we do not rule anything out.