Broadcasting Programmes: Television

(asked on 12th January 2022) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to help encourage broadcasters to run more UK-originated content and programmes on television.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 18th January 2022

All of the UK’s public service broadcasters are subject to original production quotas, specified in legislation and enforced by Ofcom, which require them to allocate a minimum proportion of their broadcast schedules to original productions each year. To qualify as an ‘original production’ a programme must be commissioned by one of the public service broadcasters themselves. The Government also has a stable and generous tax relief system, where productions must qualify as ‘British’ under the cultural test. This drove a record-breaking £5.1 billion in UK screen production in 2019, much of it shown by UK broadcasters.

We want this to continue. Indeed, the government is supportive of a modern system of public service broadcasting (PSB) that remains relevant and can continue to meet the needs of UK audiences in the future. This includes making sure that viewers can continue to see themselves and their way of life reflected on screen by ensuring broadcasters show a wide range of high-quality UK-originated content. It is exactly for these reasons that the government is conducting its own strategic review of PSB, including appointing an expert PSB Advisory Panel. We will set out the conclusions from that review in due course.

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