Luciana Berger
Main Page: Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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.
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.