I return to the idea of quotas.

This will mortify my children, but I have never watched “The Traitors”. Last night, on my family’s WhatsApp group, there were 32 different interactions about the latest episode. My kids and their partners are all obsessed by it, but I have never watched it. I hear the objections to its being imposed on BBC Scotland and now being used by the BBC to justify what it does here, but it is hugely successful and is being exported all over the shop. The point was also made that “River City” will be finishing, which is another issue that the committee has discussed.

I am not sure that there is a huge deal of confidence that Ofcom will do the right thing in holding the BBC to account to ensure that there is more Scotland-based activity. Is there an agreed standard in the industry for what people would like to see as quotas for Scotland? Is there a way of defining the quotas, or are people happy with the current definition that is used, as long as it is used well, which might be the case with Channel 4 but not so much with the BBC? Is there a proposal that people in the industry agree would serve Scotland well?

I do not know whether it still does this, but I have mentioned before that Canada had a requirement whereby, whether on radio or TV, a certain proportion of output had to be Canadian. That was because it is right next to the powerhouse that is the United States. That seemed to be accepted by everybody. Within that, I think that it also had French-language quotas, but I could be wrong. The French, too, are very good at that. Would hard quotas not be a good thing for Scotland?

I took it from your answer to my second question that there would be no merit in trying to put together an offer that was inclusive of all the different interests in Scotland that could be marketed to appeal to international companies? If that is the case, I am more than willing to hear it.

On your point about our having the technicians and so on, the committee has previously heard, in a different inquiry, that that is under real threat, because “River City”, for example, is ending, with the result that the benefits of that long-running drama will be lost. Am I right in saying that you are not concerned about that, because you think that the offer that we have is the right one?

I have just two questions. One of them is on STV, but the first one relates to the discussion that there has been on whether Sky might be taking over ITV.

This might not be central to our questioning so far, but I am interested in Ofcom’s view on the absolutely atrocious “Press Preview” that is on Sky every night, in which you get a vaguely leftist or Labour-supporting journalist and an avowedly right-wing journalist to give their unbiased views on the unbiased print media to an unbiased interviewer. How that serves Scotland or anywhere else, I do not know. Has Ofcom ever looked at that or taken a view on it? Given Cristina’s previous experience at Sky—I do not know how long ago that was—I am interested to hear her view.

I go back to my original point that we are concerned about broadcasting in Scotland, but I appreciate that you are coming at this from a journalist’s point of view, so perhaps that was not the right question to ask you.

I will have a look and will get in touch if I can find an example.

I understand that, but my point was about staff involved in broadcasting, such as camera people, sound recordists and so on. Perhaps it was the wrong question for you.

My final question is about some points that John McLellan made. I represent an area that includes Clackmannanshire and part of Stirling. In the area, we have the Alloa & Hillfoots Advertiser, which has no reporters in Alloa that I am aware of. I think that it is run in Dunfermline as part of the Johnson group and much of its content is done by a reporter who uses AI to generate it. I am not being critical of that, because that is the way that things are going to some extent.

My question is for each of the witnesses. Is broadcasting in Scotland aware of and, as far as it is possible to be, ahead of the way in which AI might impact on it? How is AI being treated?

Although I lament the fact that the Alloa & Hillfoots Advertiser has no local reporters, it might well be forward thinking to have somebody use AI in that way. Are there other examples of how AI is being used in broadcasting? I will go to John McLellan first.

I am talking about journalists as well.

I am sorry that our time seems to be curtailed; in my view, this is one of the most interesting panels that we have had and I do not say that to just any panel. Given what the convener has said, instead of asking all the questions that I intended to ask, I will make a few comments, and I am keen to hear the response to them.

I agree with Professor Beveridge. I am a supporter of public sector broadcasting; I believe that the licence fee has a real role and that educating people about its purpose is important. However, the question is whether the BBC is best placed to perform that function. Two points have come out so far: first, the extent to which the BBC is relevant and, secondly, the extent to which it is trusted. The last point that Professor Happer made was really interesting but also worrying. Indeed, young people these days might be reacting to what the previous generation has done and now look at public sector broadcasting, teachers or parents in a way that they have not done in the past. Most of us talk to school classes, and we hear them say that they are struggling to find out where they can get information that they can trust. They are particularly worried about disinformation. I am not sure whether it is part of the curriculum, but we get asked a lot of questions about that.

On the question of trust in the BBC, I will give a few examples of why there might be a lower take-up of licences in Scotland. We have mentioned the 2014 referendum, when we saw an influx of people from the rest of the UK—the serious people who came up to do the coverage, some of whom were Scottish. The level of ignorance about the situation in Scotland—I am thinking of one very high-profile Scottish journalist, in particular, although they had been based in England for a long time—was appalling.

I have put the point to the BBC on a number of occasions that it continually says, “Scotland has two Governments,” and yet it will not scrutinise the UK Government. Obviously, if there is a budget happening, it will look at that, but I would note as an example that there is a lot of coverage these days about ferries in Scotland—for fairly justifiable reasons—and yet there has been no coverage whatsoever from a critical point of view of two aircraft carriers that were built for double the budget and which came in well over time. Those boats were built in Scotland and the costs were paid for by Scottish taxpayers as much as by anybody else. I have challenged both Gordon Brewer and Martin Geissler on this in the past, and their answer is that no one will come on to discuss those things, which seems to me to be an abdication of responsibility. The question of trust is, I think, very important.

On a minor point, BBC news programmes are meant to stop at a certain time to allow the Scottish version to come on, but they frequently overrun. When I raised this with the BBC, its appalling response was that, “Yeah, sometimes something happens.” That is not what I am talking about; the programmes overrun routinely, which shows contempt for the programme coming after. However, the BBC seems unwilling to respond to that.

As for accountability, things got so bad here that the Scottish National Party group in the Parliament invited Tim Davie to come and speak to us. It was quite unusual for someone like that to speak to a political group, but he had done it routinely for Tory and Labour groups at Westminster. He quite happily admitted to us that every day of the week in London, he would have senior Labour and Tory figures banging down his door, complaining about this, that or the other. That does not happen to the same extent in Scotland and, if it did, it would not carry the same weight. The question of accountability is important, and I do not think that the BBC is accountable in Scotland.

It was Professor Happer, I think, who asked about the extent to which the Parliament or the Government in Scotland are listened to. My view is that they are not listened to at all. Of course, the big issue is that, when the devolution settlement happened, it was made sure that broadcasting stayed a reserved matter. There is a reason why that was done, as we have seen over the years.

I really believe in the BBC, and always have done, but we are, to some extent, just dancing on the head of a pin. The first comments that were made this morning were about the print media, which I note is accessed by only 12 per cent of the population. YouTube has also been mentioned; more people—I do not know whether it is more young people or more people in general—will, when they put on the TV, go to YouTube, not to the BBC or any other channel. Therefore, we are, as I have said, dancing on the head of a pin. We are talking about huge trends, and it is hard to see how they can be resisted. The best course of action is to be more accountable, more trusted and more relevant.

Finally, on the point of relevance, something that we are seeing not just with the BBC but with other channels—Sky is probably the worst—is that, when they have a news review, they get in some vaguely leftish journalist and some vaguely rightish journalist in order to have balance. I have seen a couple of examples of this on Sky. Everyone routinely slates the Scottish Government, because all three involved in the programme, including the presenter—Anna Botting is an example—have happily agreed to do so, and there is no right of reply. That is the kind of coverage that we are getting at a time when only 12 per cent of the population read the print media. The emphasis is disproportionate—not only that, but the fact is that broadcasters take their lead from the print media. The longer that the BBC and other broadcasters are not trusted and are not deemed to be relevant, the more dangerous their position gets.

I know that I have made a number of points, but I will finish on this one. Professor Happer, I know that you did not say it this way, but you suggested that young people—or, indeed, teachers or parents—might go more to public sector broadcasters, because there is nowhere else to go. That is really dangerous, because the broadcasters’ sense of complacency gets worse. They know that people are guaranteed to come to them because of the absence of a better alternative. That is a really dangerous position.

I suppose that my questions are about credibility, accountability, relevance and the way in which the BBC is trusted. I know that the BBC has made some attempts with fact-checking approaches and so on, but the fact that it is now so London-centric is, I think, driving the disaffection felt by people, especially young people, in Scotland for public sector broadcasting.

I know that there was a lot in there, but I would be happy to hear the panel’s comments. Are you stunned?

On the subject of bias, there was a junior researcher in the BBC who had stood for the Labour Party years before. There was a huge hullabaloo when that was discovered, as if it was an example of bias, and yet on the other side, you have Andrew Neil, and the guy—I forget his name—who is on the board of the BBC, who was appointed by the Tories. The bias and the double standards are appalling.

To go back to Professor Happer’s point, surely that is the biggest opportunity for the BBC in Scotland. If it can establish the trust and the relevance that it should have, that is its best defence against some of those other issues.

My final question, since we are short of time, is for Professor Higgins. It is about the cultural aspect, which we have heard quite a lot about in previous discussions, from George Adam and Neil Bibby in particular. It is about the impact of what STV is doing and what the BBC is doing in cutting “River City”, and the extent to which that has cut off a route for people to get into TV production, apart from anything else. I do not know what the other term for soap is, but it is a continuing thing. It is long term, which means that people can be trained up, knowing that there will be jobs there, so “River City” going is a huge loss.

Billy Sloan and Iain Anderson being given the chop from Radio Scotland makes no sense to anybody I know. It makes no sense for it to do that. It is a question of the cultural impact.

I once revealed to the committee that, as a student in Canada, I was a campus DJ and over there, you were obliged to play a certain number of Canadian songs by Canadian artists every hour, just as the Canadian universities had to have a certain number of professors and teaching staff who were Canadian. The reason for that was what Trudeau called the elephant that lives next door; they wanted to protect their culture. Is there a role for that in Scotland at all?

My questions are about broadcasting in Scotland, which is the subject of our inquiry. We sometimes get very involved in what is happening elsewhere, such as in the rest of the UK and in print media, but the inquiry is into broadcasting in Scotland.

Catherine, my first question is for you. One of the big sources of frustration for people is when the ITV, BBC or Sky network coverage—in other words, the UK-wide coverage—tells them that the health service is getting a certain amount of money or that something is happening regarding mobile phones in schools, but that has nothing to do with Scotland. You are in a unique position, as you straddle the border. Do you bite back at the bosses in London when ITV does that? How do you cope with it in your area?