Enterprise and Culture Committee, 26 Apr 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Official Report 288KB pdf

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Ofcom Review

There are three agenda items left. We can probably deal with items 2 and 4 fairly quickly. I have a suggestion about how we should handle item 3, because I do not think that we have enough time to do it justice today. I suggest that we spend five or 10 minutes on item 2, highlighting any issues that arise, and that we carry over item 3. That will give members an opportunity to give the clerks comments that they would like to be considered, and the clerks will prepare a draft paper for the committee to consider sometime in early May. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Under item 2, we will consider members' comments on the written evidence from SMG and Ofcom.

First, I have a general question, which might involve your reminding me of something that was agreed previously. Why did we opt to take only written evidence? Is there a question mark in anyone's mind about whether we should take oral evidence at some stage?

Let me elaborate. I think that where we go with item 3, on broadcasting reviews, is connected to this item on the Ofcom review. It is one thing to confine our comments to issues to do with the BBC's internal reviews, but if we are going to contextualise that subject more within the wider broadcasting changes in Scotland, we will need more than the written evidence that is in front of us, useful though that is. I want to raise that general question about process before everyone starts discussing the specifics of the written evidence.

We need to say something fairly specific about the BBC's internal reviews because much of our evidence contains a lot of detail about matters that are not covered by Ofcom's review of public sector broadcasting. We have received evidence from the trade unions and BBC management, the latter of which suggested that the committee can make a specific statement on these matters. That said, such a statement and some of the evidence that we have received from SMG might form part of our input into the Ofcom review. I am open to the suggestion that we take oral evidence from Ofcom and SMG, but I am worried about the timescale.

Given that Ofcom's 10-week consultation on the third phase of the PSB review closed last week, I am in favour of taking oral evidence from it and from SMG because many issues still need to be fleshed out. However, I am not entirely sure where we are going with this. If Ofcom has ended the consultation, is there any value in formulating and submitting a view?

I point out that I am not about to suggest an either/or proposal; I simply want to add something to the remarks that have been made.

I feel that there could be a halfway house with regard to how far we go in our deliberations. Even if we were stop short of covering some of the much wider issues that Ofcom is considering, there is still a question about what might be described as the middle chunk of issues on which our previous discussion has a bearing but which absolutely needs to be considered in context. For example, Christine May and I have raised the wider question of the BBC's traditional or historic role as a training ground in Scotland. We are limited in what we can say on that point without factoring into the discussion a greater understanding of SMG's points, which Ofcom has an impact on.

I guess that I am saying that, almost irrespective of the stage that the Ofcom review has reached, we still need a bit more context if we are going to widen out our comments, even on the BBC's internal reviews. That said, I totally accept that, from what we have heard already, we can and should say something about the various internal issues.

I suggest that members feed back to the clerks their comments on what we have heard today about the BBC, and we will ask them to prepare a paper on our view of the organisation's internal reviews. I hope that we will agree that at our meeting on 10 May, even though the agenda is already fairly packed.

In addition, we could repeat with Ofcom what we did with the Cultural Commission, from which we received a briefing—which, I have to say, not many members attended—and with which we had a dialogue. However, in this case, we could decide as a result of the dialogue whether we want to pursue the matter in more detail or whether we want to follow it up with oral evidence and think about how that would fit in with Ofcom's timescale for its formal consultation. After all, although the Cultural Commission had completed its formal evidence taking, its meeting with the committee was still useful.

I am happy to have a similar meeting with Ofcom. The only problem is that Ofcom will make its views public at some point in June, which means that the timescale is very tight. As a result, any meeting will have to take place early in May. I do not think that Ofcom Scotland has any control over this UK-wide matter and is simply locked into the timeframe.

The suggestion is that we prepare a paper on the BBC internal reviews, but that we do not regard that as the end of the matter. At that point, we will have an informal meeting with Ofcom to exchange views, as a result of which we can decide whether we can do anything useful before Ofcom reaches its final conclusion. We can also bring SMG's evidence into that discussion. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

That approach will allow us to look at the bigger picture.