Football Governance Bill

Toby Perkins Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right: that was a tremendous match. It shows the importance of the football pyramid, and how it delights and disappoints fans across the country to see clubs go up and down.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I thank the Government for bringing forward this overdue Bill. Chesterfield has seen the worst of football, with the former owner Darren Brown ending up in jail for his crimes against the club, which almost took it out of existence. Under the ownership of the Chesterfield FC Trust, Chesterfield are now back where they belong—in the football league—after becoming champions of the national league this year. Is it not the case that what our football clubs really need is to be run by people with a commitment to those clubs and a passion for them, rather than by people who are trying to make a quick bob?

[Lucy Frazer]

To address the point about the Bill being long overdue, the Labour party said for some time that it would do something about this issue but did absolutely nothing. Since I have been Secretary of State, we have had a White Paper and a response to it, and we have drafted a Bill at speed. We have introduced the Bill, and I am delighted that it is having its Second Reading today. I recognise that the Labour party supports the Bill, and I am very grateful for its collaboration. I am very pleased that Chesterfield are in a good place. We want to see ownership that works across the field.

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[Thangam Debbonaire]

Then we really need further discussion in Committee on this issue; it is worthy of such consideration. On calculated risk taking, we need to be clear about when we are taking unnecessary risks and when there are unintended consequences of the way finance is distributed.

[Mr Perkins]

Surely football club owners should be able to spend the money they have to take such a risk. However, if they are spending money from the future, as Derby County and Glasgow Rangers did, and the risk fails in the current year, they will inevitably go bust. Glasgow Rangers disappeared altogether, and Derby County almost disappeared. Football fans do not want clubs to take that risk, and surely the regulator should be preventing that.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

My hon. Friend raises the most important point, which is about how fans feel. There should be no taking of reckless risks and there should be no jeopardising of a club’s future, and that is important. Any business owner—the hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) mentioned businesses—knows that they have to think about what level of risk they are going to take. Fans are at the heart of football, which is one of the things that makes football special and unique, and what fans want is such an important feature of our discussion.

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[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

First, I welcome the Bill. As others have encapsulated, our football clubs in this country are unique. They are institutions at the heart of their communities with long, long histories that far outlast whoever might be the chairman, the manager or the players in any period of time. That is why this regulator is overdue, and I very much welcome the work done to get us to this stage.

The regulator has an unenviable job. The number of things that people want to see addressed in football is huge. I am sure there will be all kinds of calls for the regulator to take action on things that fall outside its remit. The Secretary of State was at pains to clarify the regulator’s limited role around football. It is not about a new organisation running football; it is about ensuring that football is sustainable in the future. As my colleagues have said, this legislation has been introduced because football has been unable to break the logjam itself. It will be important for some of the remaining uncertainties in the Bill to be worked out in Committee.

Football is a business—generally a privately owned one—but it is also an institution. As we have heard from many speakers, one of the main reasons for that is that the fans remain. However, it is also a different kind of institution because of the rewards available to those who are successful and the appalling failure that happens when gambles go wrong. Many of us remember the Aston Villa versus Derby County play-off final. It was widely believed that whoever lost that game would end up going bust. Derby County, as we know, went into administration and is now in league one, while Aston Villa is fourth in the premier league with untold riches. For the sake of 90 minutes, those were the differences on the line that day. We cannot have a situation where one person’s gamble leads to that kind of success and another person’s gamble leads to the club almost ceasing to exist. We need the regulator to balance an individual businessperson having a go and the endangering of the cultural institution that is a football club, so that it is does not mean disaster if those having a go fail.

The success of the Premier League has been spoken about many times. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) was right to say that the championship is the fifth biggest division in Europe. In addition, league one is the tenth most-watched league anywhere in Europe. Right down the pyramid, this country has a thing of unique strength. My club, Chesterfield, which is in the fifth tier, attracted 10,000 fans on Saturday. Its history is informative. Darren Brown almost bankrupted the club and ended up in jail because of the way he conducted himself as the head of Chesterfield. The fans had to step forward and save the club back in 2001. Then, we had Dave Allen as chairman. He got the new ground built and got the club to the edge of league one, but found that, with every further league the club went into, the losses grew.

It is a unique business in that losses grow as the club moves from league two to league one, and from league one to the championship, so there is a perverse incentive. Until the club reaches the promised land of the premier league, the losses grow all the time. Look at some of the losses that championship clubs are experiencing—it is just appalling. Dave Allen lost interest and the club was on the verge of bankruptcy again. The Chesterfield FC Community Trust stepped forward, and the passion, commitment and professionalism that the trust board members have introduced got Chesterfield back into the football league, now with the help of the Kirk brothers—local fans who have their heart in the club. The club is looking much brighter.

The truth is that almost all our premier league clubs are owned not by people with that kind of history and passion for the club, but by foreign-owned institutions and foreign Governments who do not have the same understanding of and commitment to what football is about. I welcome the fact that the Government have introduced the Bill, which enjoys cross-party support. Now, we need to ensure that it works.

Budget Resolutions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The Chancellor’s tax plan is allowing people across the country to benefit from around £900 if they are an average earner, and we know that every time the Labour party leaves office there is higher unemployment. Last time the Labour party was in government, it left a note that said there was “no money left”.

Let me tell the House what impact the Conservative plan has delivered over the last decade. As I said, there have been tax reliefs in every Budget over the past 10 years, and every time they were voted down by the Labour party. The impact of that year-on-year investment is clear. Statistics show that more than 1 million jobs in the creative industries have been created since 2010. There has been almost a doubling of the economic value of creative industries to more than £124 billion since 2010, with exports up 210% in that time. Recently published figures confirm that the sector has grown by more than 10% since the pandemic. The Conservative party is powering one of our world-leading industries.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Minister is talking about the state of the nation’s finances in 2010, and at that point we had a national debt of £1 trillion. We now have a national debt of £2.6 trillion. Does she think that the Conservatives have sorted out the nation’s debt when it is now almost three times higher than it was?

[Lucy Frazer]

I hope the hon. Gentleman was listening when the Chancellor delivered his Budget. He highlighted that debt will be reducing next year, with the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting that we will meet our fiscal rule to have debt falling as a share of the economy.

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[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and Government Members should not groan at him for raising a problem; they should be outraged at the misuse of public money. They should be as appalled as we are that in the midst of a national crisis, when so many people rushed to danger or played their part in a national response—those businesses that shifted from their normal activity to try to help, genuinely doing the right thing for the right reasons—there were others at the same time who sought to use the pandemic to make a quick buck at our expense. It is disgusting, and the fact that so many billions of pounds of personal protective equipment was wasted—much of it literally going up in smoke—should exercise all of us. Voters can make their own judgment on why the Conservative party is still so relaxed about that profligacy, waste and fraud.

I accept the point that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) made about the importance and impact of financial events, because a narrative was spun after the 2010 general election about the global financial crisis. The Conservatives love to say it was all the fault of the last Labour Government, but I have bad news for them: the former Chancellor of the Exchequer—I had better name him, as there have been so many—George Osborne was talking recently in his excellent podcast about the late, great Alistair Darling, and he said:

“In the financial crisis, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who earned a lot of trust with the way he handled that crisis.”

Of course, it was politically expedient for the Conservative party at the time to pretend that the economy was going through so many challenges because a Labour Government had bailed out the banks, but when presented with a crisis, you do the right thing. We did the right thing then, and we would do the right thing in the future when presented with crises, as we expected this Government to do. In fact, we engaged with the Government in good faith throughout that crisis. We never imagined that people would use VIP lanes to rip off the British taxpayer. That is why, if she is the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) will go after those people to get that money back. We do not doubt her determination to do so.

The Budget was pitched as the Tories’ last roll of the dice before the general election. It was meant to be the one to bamboozle the Opposition and wow the public, but instead of starting the campaign with a bang, they are going out with barely a whimper. It was meant to bring millions of voters who have abandoned the Conservative party back into the tent. Instead, it has driven the former deputy chairman of the Conservative party out of the tent all together. After 14 years of Conservative Government, Conservative MPs are leaving because, to quote the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson):

“you can’t get a police officer to turn up to your house when it gets burgled…people are pulling their own teeth out, you can’t get a GP appointment.”

What a damning indictment of the Conservative party from a man who this Prime Minister chose to elevate to one of the highest offices in that party.

The claws came out as soon as today’s defection was announced, but they are not aimed at the hon. Member for Ashfield—no, Conservative MPs are begging him to come back. They have told “Channel 4 News”:

“The fact Rishi promoted him to Deputy Chairman and tells you all you need to know about his judgment.”

Even Conservative MPs admit in private that the Prime Minister is too weak to run his own party, let alone the country. As Lord Lloyd-Webber might have written if he were scripting a new musical for the Conservative party, they are past the point of no return and looking to Boris Johnson, saying

“Wishing you were somehow here again.”

I have to give credit where it is due: this is a Budget so bad that it has done what was previously unthinkable: it has united the warring factions of the Conservative party. They are united in agreement that it was a disaster. Before the Chancellor stood up, the leader of what is left of the Scottish Conservatives had already announced his opposition to it, soon followed by the Energy Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), who exclaimed his deep disappointment with his Government’s own energy tax. Then, the Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and a Foreign Minister, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), wrote a joint article opposing the Chancellor’s lack of investment in defence. The Energy Minister does not support the energy policy; Foreign and Security Ministers do not support the defence policy, and even the Chancellor says that he does not support the tax rises that he is imposing on working people. It begs the question: is there anyone left who believes in what this Government are doing? Government Members should feel free to intervene and leap to the Government’s defence but, sadly, they agree.

The Chancellor named several Members in his speech, presumably on the basis that misery loves company. I wonder if even the Members who made their way on to the Chancellor’s list of the damned will defend this Government’s dismal record. I extended an invitation to them earlier today, but they have not shown up. I am sure that they are busy back in the office or in their constituency writing leaflets extolling how great the Budget was.

[Mr Perkins]

Twenty-five MPs who will not be extolling how wonderful it was are the New Conservatives. The 25 Conservative MPs who support that organisation said:

“We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently.”

Does my hon. Friend question, as I do, whether those 25 MPs who want to change course urgently will vote for this Budget? If they will, how can they possibly suggest that they are changing course?

[Wes Streeting]

Who knows? I must confess I do not even know who the New Conservatives are, there are so many warring tribes and families involved every week. It is a level of reproduction that even the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson fails to match.

Turning to the list of the damned who made their way into the Chancellor’s Budget speech, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) was identified as pushing the Government to give into the shadow Chancellor’s call to cancel their planned rise in fuel duty. Where Labour leads, the Tories follow. I wonder if he will defend his Government making pensioners in Dudley £1,000 a year worse off. The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) was singled out by the Chancellor. Does she think her constituents earning £15,000 a year will forgive her for voting to pinch an extra £580 from their pockets in tax rises?

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[Mr Perkins]

I would not want my hon. Friend to miss out the consultation on banning water bosses’ bonus, which was also nicked from us.

[Wes Streeting]

The list is inexhaustible, is it not? It is just one thing after another, and then they have the audacity to say that Labour does not have any plans. If that is true, why are they swooping in like magpies every five minutes, ready to pick the next cherry from Labour’s tree?

It is just a shame that the Conservatives did not see the light earlier. Had they abolished non-dom tax status when Labour pledged to do so in 2022, 4.5 million children could be enjoying free breakfast clubs today. They could have funded an extra 3.6 million NHS appointments and operations, hundreds more artificial intelligence-enabled scanners, and 1.3 million more urgent and emergency dental appointments. The Prime Minister would have delivered on his pledge to cut waiting lists, if only he had listened to Labour. What stopped him? Why was the Prime Minister so wedded to the non-dom tax status?

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[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

This Budget demonstrates that this is a Government that exist for one reason and one reason only: if they did not exist, the Conservative party would have to face a general election. The only thing that the five families all agree on is that the one thing they hate more than facing the tough choices that their disastrous legacy has left this country is facing the harsh verdict of the British people. And so the Government limp on endlessly, joylessly, hopelessly and without any sense that they have a clue how to tackle the kinds of issues facing our country that I see at my constituency surgeries every week of the year.

This is a Budget that self-evidently fails to rise to the challenge that 14 years of Tory government have left our nation facing. Crumbling public services, growing social problems and a bleak fiscal forecast are the damning but unsurprising legacy of 14 wasted years. This is a Government who have failed by every measure. They came to power saying that they were going to cut the nation’s debt. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) knows British history far better than I do, but the earliest example of UK debt that I could find was under King William III back in the late 17th century. It took the collective Governments of the next 316 years to raise a cumulative debt of £1 trillion. This Government, in 14 useless years, have increased that debt from £1 trillion to £2.6 trillion. This is a Government that, for all their failure on public services, told us that they existed to reduce the nation’s debt.

It is not just the national debt that is rising. People are worse off. Real GDP per capita will be lower at the end of this year than it was at the start of this Parliament. Real pay has gone up just £17 a week over 13 years of Conservative government. Under the 13 years of Labour government, real wages rose by £183 a week. Office for Budget Responsibility figures show that, within this Budget, for every 10p extra that working people pay in tax under the Tories’ plan, they will get only 5p back as a result of the combined national insurance cut. The idea that this Budget is on the side of working people is simply untrue. Under this Tory Government, work does not pay.

It was interesting to spend a moment of my day today listening to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson). This is a man who just two months ago was a deputy chairman of the Conservative party. He said that under this Government the cost of living was out of hand, that people could not get a GP appointment, that there was no control on migration, that there was crime on our streets, that people could not get a police officer to a burglary and that they were pulling their own teeth out for the lack of a dentist. I have to say that there is not much wrong with that analysis, coming from someone who was the deputy chairman of the Conservative party just a couple of months ago, but there is so much more that we could say.

I see the disastrous decisions that my own Conservative council in Derbyshire is making. I have no time for the leadership of the Conservative council. I see the huge impact on parents whose children are waiting for a special needs assessment or are unable to get support with special needs teaching assistants in schools. I see the state of our roads, which are simply unfit to be driven on. I see people who are waiting for a social care assessment. I met a gentleman just today who was at the end of his tether trying to get support for his wife, who is in a terrible state. But for all the failures of Tory Derbyshire County Council, we have to come back and look at this Government’s funding of local government, because councils right up and down the country are experiencing the same, whether they are Labour, Conservative or Liberal. They are all saying that council funding is out of control.

We also see the impact on NHS waiting times, with the longest waiting times in our history. We see food bank usage becoming commonplace and we see rising child poverty. Every time I go to a school, I hear that the school has children turning up unable to learn because of hunger. This Government are so out of ideas that, at the same time they are claiming that Labour does not have a plan, they are stealing Labour policies in a whole raft of areas, whether it be the non-doms announcement, our plan on dentistry, our plan on the NHS workforce or the current consultation on water bosses’ bonuses. The thing that all those policies have in common is that they have been attacked by the Tories and then stolen by the Tories.

It is clear that this Government have neither the ambition nor the courage to tackle the issues facing our country. Our economy needs growth, but our country also needs a shot in the arm from a Government with a commitment to tackling poverty and the causes of failure that have gone unchecked under this Government. No more a country where people die on an NHS waiting list, waiting for the treatment that could have saved them. No more a country where the trains do not run and the roads are not fit to drive on. No more a country where the place someone is born is the biggest determinant of their chances in life. Change is coming, and it cannot come a moment too soon.

Channel 4

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is essential that we give Channel 4 the tools to succeed in a changing media landscape. To ignore the problem is to be in denial.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It appears that the best we can expect of this Government is that occasionally a Minister will come to the Dispatch Box and tell us they are not going to do the stupid thing that one of their predecessors had announced, so in that regard today is a day of triumph for this Government. The Secretary of State has said the status quo is not an option; will she expand on how she envisages the relaxation of the publisher-broadcaster restrictions on Channel 4 will work in practice? What does she think that will look like?

[Michelle Donelan]

We will be detailing that and it will form part of the media Bill. In the coming weeks we will work closely with Channel 4 and the independent production sector to make sure we get that absolutely right.

BBC Local Radio: Proposed Reduction in Provision

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The BBC is uniquely funded, and it needs to provide unique services. In Chesterfield we are well served by both Radio Sheffield and Radio Derby, and the quality of journalism on those stations is outstanding. It is not a public problem if the BBC is losing market share to Amazon or Netflix. Those organisations do what they do well, and the BBC should not be looking to replicate them; it should be looking to preserve those things that are precious and unique, and BBC radio is absolutely one of those things.

[Julia Lopez]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point powerfully. It is a core mission of the BBC to provide this kind of distinctive local content that relates to British people in the communities in which they live. If it is not concentrating on precisely this kind of content, there are wider questions to ask about whether it is delivering its remit in the right way.

Football Governance

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. In fact, I think I was PPS-ing that very debate, so I remember it well. He is absolutely right. As I have said many times at the Dispatch Box today, the premier league is an incredible British success story that we need to celebrate and applaud, and make sure that it continues to be successful. Nothing that we are proposing today should jeopardise that. We are asking for some changes. We have been asking for reform in football for a very long time. Unfortunately the reason we have had to intervene, and are doing so, is that the Premier League has signally failed to act at the speed that we needed. The Premier League has an obligation and a responsibility to continue to make changes, including with financial flows. However, I do not believe that anything we are announcing today would jeopardise what is an incredible success story, and the premier league will continue to thrive—I am very confident of that.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Anyone who has spoken to directors and owners of either Chesterfield football club or Staveley Miners Welfare football club will be very much aware that while there may be monstrous profits in the premier league, at every level below that there is huge indebtedness, and football as a sport requires benefactors to be constantly writing another cheque. That model is broken. I fear that what we have heard today is that this is being kicked into the next Parliament. I suspect that the premier league clubs listening to this will be reassured that they still have quite a bit of time before they are going to have their feet held to the fire. Can the Minister assure us that before this Parliament is over, in 2024 or whenever that may be, we will actually see reform on the statute book, and this will not just rely on the manifestos of parties at the next election, because it should be dealt with during this Parliament?

[Nigel Huddleston]

Both the Secretary of State and I have said previously that the intention is to bring this in before the end of this Parliament. As I say, we are working at speed on it. The hon. Gentleman’s point about indebtedness is an important one. Many clubs are currently in a pretty precarious financial state. The financial regulation that we will bring in will require much more stability and sustainability, and proof of that sustainability. That is precisely why saying, “Let’s bring this in tomorrow”, could end up having the absolute opposite impact of what we intend.

Dormant Assets Bill [Lords]

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I rise to speak to new clause 1 in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith). As the Bill has moved through this House and the other place, I have been pleased by the progress that has been made, although there is still work to be done to ensure that dormant assets are distributed and governed effectively. Colleagues will be aware that the Bill will expand the current dormant assets scheme, which was first introduced by a Labour Government in 2008. The Government define dormant assets as a financial product, such as a bank account, that has not been used for many years and which the provider has been unable to reunite with its owner, despite efforts aligned with industry best practice.

In 2008, the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act was passed to provide a system to distribute dormant assets to good causes. Currently, 24 banks and building societies participate in the reclaim fund scheme, but Labour has always intended that the dormant assets scheme would broaden the financial products to which that legislation applies.

Although the Bill makes some progress and Labour supports the need for consultation, we urge that the scheme go much further. With the right safeguards in place to find the owners of assets, unclaimed winnings from gambling, pension assets and physical assets could be considered in the future, too. While I am grateful to the Minister for his frankness throughout the passage of this Bill, I must once again put on record that while Labour is generally supportive of the Bill, we urge that further consideration be given to incorporating pension assets into the scheme. While I recognise that the Minister has highlighted that occupational pension schemes and personal pension schemes whose owners were automatically enrolled are excluded, or out of scope of the Bill, I hope that in the future those assets will receive further consideration.

The core principles of any scheme must remain clear. Attempts should first be made to reunite assets with their rightful owners before transferring them. Owners should always be able to reclaim their funds, and participation must ultimately be voluntary. Labour is also clear that any funds released to the dormant assets scheme must not be used as a substitute for Government spending. We know that the increasing cost of living is impacting so many people across the country, and this Bill presents an important opportunity to release further funding and to put right some of the wrongs. On that point, I pay particular tribute to colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group for “left behind” neighbourhoods, who have been closely focused on the importance of dormant asset funding for vital community projects in the most left-behind parts of the country.

With that in mind, I place on record Labour’s thoughts on community wealth funds, which the Minister knows I feel passionately about. In the other place, Labour secured an amendment that would have allowed the Secretary of State to include community wealth funds as recipients of funding. That amendment had cross-party support and was generally welcomed by the sector. The aim of including community wealth funds as recipients of funding is clear. The designated money would be designed to go towards social infrastructure to further the wellbeing of communities suffering from high levels of deprivation. I was disappointed and also surprised that the Government chose to remove a measure aimed at empowering communities, which is also at the heart of the Government’s well-rehearsed levelling-up agenda. That said, I welcome the Minister’s collaborative and candid approach throughout the latter stages of this Bill, and Labour welcomes the Government’s commitment to including community wealth funds as part of the first round of consultations, as outlined in the Government’s amendment 2.

We must now make sure that momentum is not lost on that important development, as community wealth funds are central to reviving so many communities up and down the country. With that in mind, central to any spend is the importance of governance and sustainability in ensuring that funds of this nature are maintained and in good health.

The Minister knows, and I believe agrees, that scrutiny of the reclaim fund is vital. That is why we have tabled new clause 1. Recent events have highlighted the need for a transparent approach to decisions made in this place and the other place, and it is therefore vital that the Government are held to account on the health and governance of reclaim funds, especially in relation to the potential for insolvency.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I endorse entirely what my hon. Friend is saying. Does she agree, given the lack of confidence in some of the decision-making processes that the Government have undertaken before allocating funds, that it is all the more reason why new clause 1 would have real public confidence?

English Football League Governance: Derby County FC

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee echoes the sentiments so powerfully expressed by the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) a few moments ago. There is a significant burden on the English Football League and on the other clubs involved to get this matter sorted out urgently, and I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments in that regard.

On the timing, a number of details clearly need to be worked through. The fan-led review’s recommendations were very detailed, and primary legislation will be required. As my hon. Friend will know, the Government need to work through a number of pressing legislative priorities. I cannot make a commitment on behalf of my colleague the sports Minister—it would be wrong to commit a fellow Minister in respect of his portfolio—but I will ask him to speak to my hon. Friend, as well as to my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), to discuss the timing.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I have to say that there will be real disappointment among Derby County fans that the sports Minister is not here to respond to this question. I understand that he is serving on a Bill Committee, but arrangements could have been made—[Hon. Members: “Here he is.”] Well, it would be good to hear from him, because with the greatest respect to the Minister responding, he has not been able to answer the fundamental question.

The Minister has spoken about the problems that Crystal Palace had previously, but one thing about this situation is different: the threat of legal action from Middlesbrough and Wycombe and the impact of commitments that may exist in the future on the possibility of a takeover happening now. Will the Minister tell us what the sports Minister is doing to ensure that Middlesbrough and Wycombe’s claims against Derby County’s previous owners do not prevent the club from being purchased? When clubs have debts in the future, they go out of existence altogether, as we saw with Glasgow Rangers and Bury; if clubs have debts in the past, it can be resolved. That is the key issue we need to hear about today.

[Chris Philp]

If I may say so respectfully, the hon. Member’s comments about the sports Minister at the beginning of his question were rather unfair: he was in a Bill Committee, taking primary legislation through Parliament, and has now arrived on the Front Bench, having completed that important task. That was an extremely unfair remark.

On the other football clubs, legal proceedings are currently pending, but I think a pragmatic solution should be found. I know the sports Minister has been in touch with the English Football League about finding a pragmatic solution. There were similar issues with Crystal Palace 11 years ago—I think it was to do with Lloyds Bank—and a pragmatic solution was found; I expect the same pragmatism to be displayed in this situation.

Finally, the fan-led review touched on some of the issues in respect of debts. When that review is implemented, it will address the issues that the hon. Member raised.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the Minister for coming off the subs bench to take the urgent question. I do not know who, when asked whether football was a matter of life and death, said it was more important than that—[Hon. Members: “Bill Shankly.”] Shankly, there we are. I think today’s urgent question proved that admirably.

[Mr Perkins]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for standing in bravely, but the petition specifically went to the sports Minister. It will be matter of huge regret that he was not able to give his perspective in response to the urgent question.

We have had statements at different times, but in the future on such matters, which are of such importance to people, can we ask the Government to try to find a way to work with the Opposition, either to delay the Bill Committee or to delay the statement, so that the Minister can be here to respond? For the sake of my constituents, who are incredibly worried about the future of Derby County FC, I feel we would have had a different response if the sports Minister had had an opportunity to respond. I do not mean to be mean to anyone, but in the future can the Government and the Speaker work together to try to ensure the relevant Minister can be here to respond on matters of such importance?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Given the nature of an urgent question, does the Minister want to come in or shall I take this?

Gambling and Lotteries

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. There are already regulations and rules if there are problems, and social and behavioural challenges, in terms of the powers that local government has. He raises important points, though; as I said, in terms of responsible gambling across the board, we intend to ensure that this review is evidence-led and looks at a whole variety of issues, including the ones he raises.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I very much welcome this review. As the statement has exposed, a huge breadth of issues need to be considered. Will the Minister say something about the extent to which the amount of gambling that now takes place online creates opportunities to gain much better information about who is gambling and for ensuring that issues that are raised by the review are targeted at those who are problem gamblers? Will he ensure that that information is more widely available?

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. Just last year, for the first time, gross gambling yield was greater online than offline, so we have now reached that cusp where more gambling in the UK is online. We should therefore be able to use technology, and emerging technology, in a far more sophisticated way, as he suggests, to make sure that we identify problem gambling and potential problem gambling. I would expect information on that to be part of this review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Following the statement I made to this House shortly before the summer recess, we are committed to introducing the telecoms security Bill this autumn, so that it will have a clear and enforceable timetable to zero for Huawei in our 5G networks by the end of 2027. Just to update the House, let me say that alongside that we will also publish our telecoms diversification strategy, and I am pleased to confirm that Lord—Ian—Livingston will be chairing a taskforce of industry experts to drive that forward.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It has come as a hammer blow for non-league clubs such as Chesterfield in the national league to discover that having taken on all the players, and facing all the costs that are normally associated with running its season, it will not now be able to bring fans in at the start of October. Will the Secretary of State take us through his plans to ensure that we do not lose all the national league clubs that are facing a very precarious financial position?

[Oliver Dowden]

I am acutely aware of the impact of our decision to postpone reopening with fans and social distance from 1 October. Having engaged with the sports, I know the impact that that will have. I think there is agreement on both sides of the House that that was a necessary step, given where we are with covid. On next steps, I am working alongside the Chancellor and sports to understand their circumstances and the detail of how the situation will impact them. Throughout all this, we have moved to reopen sports, which is why we have sports behind closed doors; to ask sports to help themselves, starting with the premier league in respect of football; and to see what further support the Government can provide. That sits alongside measures such as £150 million of emergency support from Sports England.

BBC Regional Politics Coverage

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Without being too controversial and repeating the debate we had for three years over Brexit, it could be argued that the BBC and the media generally were very London-centric, and that is why the result was different from the one expected here in London. It is not only its representing views but its representing political views that is sometimes found wanting.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, which is incredibly important. I am a great defender of the BBC and will happily defend the licence fee. I feel strongly that one of the things the BBC gives us that would be lost in its absence is regional accountability—the ability for people to find out what is happening in their local area, so that they can hold their politicians to account. The BBC risks losing that if it carries on in this way, so I support the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Does he think we should say to the BBC that if it wants to continue to justify the licence fee, it needs to protect the things that are precious about the BBC?

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Most of us—especially as we represent an area over the years—have a very good rapport with our regional BBCs. Not only do they hold us to account, but we can feed stories and things that matter to our constituents into them. These regional programmes would therefore be a great loss. Let us imagine trying to achieve that in a London-centric system—it is bad enough feeding in what we want from our given areas with our political parties sometimes, and it would be even more difficult with the BBC. It would be a huge loss, and once it is lost, it will be very difficult to regain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for securing this debate. The level of interest that there has been shows the desire across the country to protect this incredibly important institution. He was encouraged by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) to lead the campaign by setting up a Zoom call for us all to contribute to, but it seems to me that he has created a sort of face-to-face Zoom call that might be familiar to some of us who were here before the coronavirus era. It is a way for us all to get into the same room and discuss this, and that is great.

Taking up the challenge set by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), I think it is incredibly important to recognise the contribution that the BBC makes in my area, not just with “Sunday Politics”, but also with radio stations such Radio Sheffield and Radio Derby and, of course, to recognise the broader role of local media such as the Derbyshire Times and Peak FM, which ensure that, as local Members of Parliament, we are held to account and that we can communicate with our local communities and be on the receiving end of some wise and frank advice from our local constituents about the issues.

It is incredibly important for our democracy that we are not just 650 people here to serve our parties, but we are people here to serve our local communities, to hear about local issues, to be asked about those local issues and to respond to those local points. That is the role that “Sunday Politics” plays, and there is no way that a politics programme for England would be able to do that. The idea that the issues that my constituents care about in Chesterfield and the local issues in the north-east or in Cornwall are all the same is just nonsense. The local holding to account that “Sunday Politics” does is incredibly important.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that now is a particularly bad time for the BBC to be considering this move? We heard in the previous contribution about devolution to metropolitan mayors, and the like, which needs extra examination. Our response to covid has, in large part, been led by our county councils and second-tier councils, as well as by local resilience forums. Those bodies are increasingly powerful, and increasingly relevant to our constituents and the population of the regions. Now, more than ever, the BBC should be focusing on that issue, and not withdrawing from it.

[Mr Perkins]

I could not agree more. Coronavirus has brought into sharp focus the need for a local response, given the extent to which local areas are experiencing a global pandemic in different ways. In London, coronavirus hit hard up front, and there were then regional variations as it went on, and differences in local responses. Local clinical commissioning groups responded differently regarding testing and the availability of personal protective equipment, and the public must be able to learn about such issues locally, and to scrutinise and question their politicians about that response. Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box and been asked to respond on a national basis, but politicians must also be held to account for what is happening in our local areas with testing, PPE, care homes, and all those sorts of things.

[Graham Stringer]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend is as sad as I am, but over recent weekends, I have switched on the Parliament channel, and people can see coverage of virtually all the general elections there have been since television started covering them. One really interesting factor from those BBC archives is that the swing across the country in 1955 was almost uniform. In 1959, commentators were shocked when there was a slightly smaller swing to the Conservatives in the north-west—it was a big change. The four countries of the United Kingdom are increasingly diverse. Does my hon. Friend agree that that means there should be more regional coverage, not less?

[Mr Perkins]

Once again, I absolutely agree. I think it was Tip O’Neill who was credited with the phrase, “all politics is local”, and in the last general election we saw that more strongly than ever before. I represent Chesterfield, an area that, as long ago as 2010 when I came to Parliament, was surrounded by Labour seats, but there has been a big change in our area. Similarly, in the cities there has been a change in the opposite direction. I am very conscious of that point, and as colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) know, in areas where there is perhaps less representation from one party, it is particularly important that people still get to hear a voice from the Labour party, or, in areas where Labour is strong, a voice from the Conservative party. I think that “Sunday Politics” does that, and it is important to ensure that in areas where one party is in the minority, that voice is still heard in a local dimension.

As Member of Parliament for Chesterfield I have both the privilege and the slight irritation of being straddled between two areas. The majority of my constituents watch the Yorkshire version of “Sunday Politics” and regional news, but we are also covered by the east midlands region, and different people in my constituency watch different programmes. Because of that, when I have been on the two separate programmes, I have been minded of how different they are, and how they reflect the different issues that exist in West Yorkshire at one end, and Northamptonshire at the other end of the east midlands coverage. That gives me a strong sense of how different those areas are.

I would not say that my constituents appreciate my appearances, but they certainly respond to the appearances I make and appreciate that local coverage.

I noticed that the “Sunday Politics East Midlands” Twitter account has now been taken down. Someone at the BBC has made the decision, while the review is apparently still ongoing, to take down that account, to which people could go and see the coverage produced by the “Sunday Politics East Midlands” team. Recent such programmes have brought a local dimension to national stories: we hear a lot about HS2 on a national basis, but we have been able to debate what it means locally in the east midlands. Areas of the east midlands such as Chesterfield, Derby and Nottingham will be served by HS2, whereas in other areas HS2 provides a blight but will not provide a service. There is a perspective that is different from the national debate about HS2.

If “Sunday Politics East Midlands” disappears, I worry about how the people of the east midlands will learn about the latest prediction from the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) as to when the scrapping of HS2 is going to be announced. I do not know how they would ever find that out. Every six weeks or so, the hon. Gentleman comes on to tell us that it is about to be cancelled. I worry how people would find that out without the “Sunday Politics East Midlands” programme.

[Steve Brine]

I enjoy the hon. Gentlemen’s contributions; he is a big thinker on these matters. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, of which I am fortunate to be a member, is currently holding a big inquiry on public sector broadcasting. What the hon. Gentleman and everybody else is saying goes to the heart of the question of what we want a public sector broadcaster to be. Do we want hundreds of thousands of pounds to be spent on salaries for small, niche programmes on national network television? Do we want a commercial entity such as Radio 2 to be financed by the taxpayer—by our constituents—on penalty of going to prison if they do not pay? Or do we want the sort of coverage that the hon. Gentleman is talking about? Ultimately, as we lead up to the charter review—I am sure that the Select Committee’s report will feed into that and into Ministers’ thinking—the debate is really about what sort of public sector broadcaster we want to have, is it not?

[Mr Perkins]

It absolutely is. I am conscious that local media—particularly radio—are very much under threat. I have previously mentioned Peak FM, which has been a great, small local radio station in my area. It has recently been taken over by Bauer and its programming is going to go to the east midlands. We are now told that a traffic jam just outside Corby is local news; that makes no difference to people in Chesterfield. As the local dimension of the private sector media increasingly diminishes, there is an opportunity for the BBC to say, “Look, this is what we are great at. Of course we are going to compete on a national basis with national programmes on a Saturday evening, but this is what is special about the BBC.” It will lose that at its peril: if the BBC loses programmes such as “Inside Out” and “Sunday Politics”—if it loses that sense of its ability to influence things locally—it will rue the day and we will all be the poorer for it.

Other Members, particularly the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, have mentioned the extent to which there is a sense that if something happens in London, it is national news—that if there is flooding in London or riots in London, we should all care about that. We all know that when we have flooding in different areas, it gets much more difficult to get local coverage. I entirely accept the point made by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about London having local news too, but for many of us who are more distant from London, there is a strong sense that what happens in London is given greater import than what happens in our areas. We are going to have the local elections in 2021, and we all know that what happens in London will be seen as national news. The London mayoralty is of course an important national post, but there are elections everywhere, and it is important that those elections are covered too. I do not think that will happen if these programmes disappear.

I could say other things, but I shall end my speech there because many other Members wish to speak. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton for securing this debate. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will give a really strong assurance that the strength of feeling in this debate will be conveyed to the BBC, and that it will be conveyed in the strongest possible terms just how crucial these programmes are to our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is absolutely accurate, and the questions from the local journalists are often far more difficult for the Minister to answer because they are focused on the issue at hand. They do not have any of the Westminster aspect to them; they are straightforward questions. Those journalists are doing what journalists should always do, which is to ask us the questions that the listener or viewer at home wants them to ask. The journalist should be putting the question that the person at home, looking at the screen or listening to the radio, has in their head to the people making the decisions. If they are doing that, they are absolutely doing their job properly.

My final point is about some of the subjects covered, which I think the hon. Member for Chesterfield also touched on, as did my hon. Friend for Tiverton and Honiton. I will pick two examples. The first, which was a little while ago—well, it seems like a long time ago, but it wasn’t really—is flooding, which impacted different parts of the country in different ways and was something that sadly we experienced ourselves in my county of Gloucestershire. That is one set of circumstances when local reporting is at its best—when journalists get out into communities and report on the aspects of the issue that really matter to individuals.

I also agree with what the hon. Gentleman said about the coronavirus outbreak, two aspects of which are worth noting. The first is that the huge amount of very locally focused responses in our communities—through local resilience forums, county councils, district councils, volunteers, and town and parish councils—has been covered in local media outlets, including the BBC, in a way that it simply would not have been, and has not been, in national broadcasting.

[Mr Perkins]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that the local context has been different. What is also different is local accountability, because councils have decisions to make about the local response to coronavirus, and politicians have to answer for those decisions, whether they be council leaders or Members of Parliament. That is the other dimension to the point he is making.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for that spot-on intervention, which leads to my final point, about one of the things that we will now be focused on. The Prime Minister tomorrow will announce further moves, I hope, to enable us to get our economy back on track and functioning. One of the important ways to facilitate that is through the test and trace system, which is starting to be up and running, and that is being dealt with not just by the NHS nationally. There is also an important local component, in that locally based, locally employed and locally accountable directors of public health will be responsible by the end of this month for putting together a local outbreak plan to deal with the inevitable local outbreaks—I say inevitable because we have already seen outbreaks in our country and others, whether in specific localities or specific businesses. That will be absolutely critical in getting the country functioning again while keeping people safe, and those outbreak plans will be locally developed, by locally accountable officials and councils.

That aspect is important, but when the inevitable outbreaks of coronavirus happen, it will also be really important to have quality journalism to report on what has happened in a non-sensationalist, factual way, so that local people know what is going on, what the facts are, what is being done to keep them safe and what they need to do to keep themselves and their communities safe. If we were to get rid of that local reporting and accountability, the country and our communities would be the poorer for it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton should be thanked for his wisdom in securing this debate, but also for brilliantly planning it to occur on a day when he would have a little more time than is often available in an Adjournment debate, thereby ensuring what I think will be quite a full debate. I hope the powers that be in the BBC watch BBC Parliament, which is another very valuable service delivered by the BBC, listen to the clear cross-party message—that should sound an alarm with them—from both main political parties and some of the smaller parties, and think very carefully about whether, come September, they should bring back BBC regional coverage and protect it in the months and years to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I am grateful to him for having applied for and obtained this debate, because I have absolutely no doubt that the BBC will be watching it and that it will take account of the strength of feeling that has been expressed from all parts of this House. I am talking not just about the current affairs programmes, but also about the “Sunday Politics” show. As the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) pointed out, it was only last week that more than 100 of the industry’s most well-known figures, including Sir Lenny Henry, Stephen Fry, Fern Britton and Ken Loach, signed a public letter to the BBC to express their concerns over the future of these programmes and the impact that their withdrawal would have on the communities that they serve. These are programmes that have brought us first-class investigative journalism, and they are at the very core of public service broadcasting. One of the signatories of the letter was Samira Ahmed, who many of us will know having been subjected to questioning by her on the “Today” programme. She wrote:

“I was proud to be part of an Inside Out investigation for BBC Leeds that dared to tackle difficult issues around race and exploitation in the Rotherham Grooming Scandal. Now more than ever we need honest, fearless journalism that is rooted in the long-term expertise and professionalism of BBC journalists who know their local communities.”

     I agree with the  hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) that the BBC is one of the most recognised and trusted brands across the world and that it produces some of the best TV and radio across the globe. As the Prime Minister put it, it is an institution to be cherished. Whether it is the recent drama on the Salisbury poisonings or the documentary following the work of the north-east ambulance service, the BBC lies at the heart of our public service broadcasting system, producing world-class content that serves to stimulate our interest, broaden our understanding, and help us to engage with the world around us.

That understanding of the world, and the BBC’s role as our national broadcaster, has never been more important. As we emerge from the crisis caused by coronavirus, we find ourselves at a time of increasing mistrust and facing an almost daily battle against misinformation. In that world, where “fake news” has had to be added to the dictionary, it is vital that the BBC upholds the values and standards we have all come to expect. The public should be able to turn to the BBC for transparent, impartial, reliable news and current affairs.

That applies just as much, if not perhaps even more strongly, in regional and local coverage, which is the focus of this debate. In the past few months, UK audiences have been turning back to television news. In the last week of March, 79% of UK adults watched the BBC network and regional news on television—up 20% on the previous month. Since the outbreak of coronavirus, the 6.30 pm regional news programme on the BBC has often been the most watched programme on television on any given day.

BBC local radio has also played a very important role. For instance, the BBC local radio “Make a Difference” campaign, which allowed a number of people to call to ask for help, support or advice and reassurance, received over 1 million calls.

[Mr Perkins]

Given the statistics that the right hon. Gentleman has outlined about the success of this output, what does it say about the BBC’s priorities that it would even consider getting rid of these incredibly popular local programmes that are of such importance to people, at a time when it continues to make the other decisions that it does about the kind of output it has?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I fully understand why the hon. Gentleman regards that as a mistake by the BBC, and it is one that I personally would agree with him about. I will go on to set out why I think it is right that we ask the BBC to think again.

As my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Warrington South said, the royal charter sets out the public purposes of the BBC. One of these is:

“To reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions”.

It goes on to say that the BBC

“should offer a range and depth of analysis…so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues”.

Regional news and current affairs programmes are at the very heart of this particular public purpose. First, they fulfil a vital role in providing local content, which helps to sustain local democracy. A number of Members have made the point that that is becoming particularly important as we look at devolving more power to regions and local communities. It is essential that that takes place and that, at the same time, people who are holding that power are held properly to account. We all know that many of the issues affecting Plymouth will be completely different from those that impact on Hull, Devon or Coventry. It is important that all those different issues are aired properly and that politics does not seem to be only about Westminster—or, even, the London bubble.

People also want to know that they are heard, especially those from ethnic minority backgrounds and in diverse communities across the UK. They need to know that the issues that matter to them matter to us all, and they need the opportunity to engage in balanced debates and participate in the conversations that shape their daily lives. It is only through broadcasting those kinds of stories and conversations through regional TV or local radio that we can build the true picture of British life.

The second area of vital importance for local news and current affairs programmes, which has been referred to by several hon. Members, is the extremely important role they play in forming the next generation of skilled journalists. Without that training ground, some of the best known names in broadcasting today would not have had a start.

I will say a few words about each of the different areas of regional programming that the debate has covered. First, on the regional political coverage, the weekly regional political show plays a vital role in highlighting issues that may be of huge local importance but will probably never make it on to the national news. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who is no longer in his place, pointed out, those shows are often the only opportunity that Members of Parliament have to go on television to talk about the issues that affect them and their constituents. In my region, the “Politics East” programme, with which my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) will be familiar—as, of course, will you, Madam Deputy Speaker—does an extremely good job in covering political developments in the region, as well as the debates that we have here on issues that are relevant to the region. If a Member from a particular region obtains an Adjournment debate on an issue that is of extreme importance to his or her constituents, we can look to the BBC’s regional political show to at least give it some coverage.

The idea that a single politics England show could somehow substitute is wholly unrealistic, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) pointed out. The population of the east of England—from which you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I come—is over 6 million. That is more than the population of Scotland, yet Scotland is served by its own channel, BBC Scotland, which was launched in February 2019, and includes a huge amount of coverage of Scottish issues. That is not in any way wrong—it is as much a part of the BBC’s public purpose to provide that programming as it is for any other part—but it does seem to illustrate why it is mistaken for the BBC to provide that amount of coverage of the Scottish nation while diminishing, and almost removing, the equivalent coverage that takes place of the 11 regions of England.

I turn to the current affairs programme that the BBC provides, “Inside Out”. As has been pointed out by a several hon. Members, “Inside Out” has carried out a number of in-depth investigations of huge importance, many of which went on to become national stories, but probably would not have done so had it not been for the initial investigative journalism done by “Inside Out”. The example of the working practices of Sports Direct has already been mentioned; Samira Ahmed drew attention to the Rotherham child grooming case; and there was a recent programme about the impact of smart motorways. All are hugely important stories that, one has to suspect, would not have ever been revealed had it not been for the work of the journalists on “Inside Out”.

At a time when powers are being devolved to a more local level, it is all the more important that the scrutiny that a programme such as “Inside Out” provides is carried out. That is particularly reinforced given what is happening to other local media, as several hon. Members have mentioned. It is the case that both local newspapers and local radio are under tremendous threat. Sadly, we have seen a number of local newspapers shedding journalists or, in some cases, even going out of business, and that has made the BBC’s task of scrutinising and holding local institutions to account all the more important.

Local news production shows the BBC’s unique value compared with strong national and international competitors. The choice available to viewers is growing, with new entrants such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney. That makes it all the more important that the BBC focuses on the role of providing public service broadcasting, which will not be provided by those commercially oriented, market-driven companies. My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) questioned the future of the licence fee and rightly said that one of the principal justifications for the licence fee is that it funds a broadcaster which provides programming that otherwise would not exist. That has always been at the heart of the purpose of the public service broadcasting landscape, and particularly the BBC.

The BBC is uniquely privileged in that it receives public funding. It has been protected against the hurricane that has hit the rest of commercial media as a result of the loss of advertising during the covid crisis. The BBC has a protected income, and in that climate, it is all the more important that it continues to provide public service broadcasting. My view, and the general tone of this whole debate, is that regional political and current affairs coverage is at the heart of public service broadcasting.

As I say, it is not for me to tell the BBC how it should deliver the public purposes or use the money given to it through the licence fee, but I believe that regional news and current affairs are of great importance, because they are vital for our democracy, they help to train future journalists and they help the BBC and other public service broadcasters to remain relevant in this changing media landscape. I am confident that the BBC will have been watching this debate, and I hope that it will take account of the feelings and views expressed by all Members and decide to continue—indeed, strengthen—its regional political and current affairs coverage.

Question put and agreed to.