Chamber and committees

But there is not a single person with the ability to do high-end reality shows.

Is that the extent of your role? I talked to the folk from “River City” who were here about this, but the BBC seems to have a symbiotic relationship with Netflix and other streamers, in that, notwithstanding what has been said about skills shortages, its expenditure, its experience and the capacity that it creates are very useful to Netflix and others when they consider coming to Scotland. Does it not seem sensible to try to get those different players around the table and get them to agree on some proper way of creating a stream of that talent, whether it be production assistants, camera people and so on? Is that not part of your role?

I appreciate that it might be the nature of your remit, but it seems extremely passive, with your talk of shining a light, issuing guidance, being flexible and nuance—all those things. It seems to me that playing a much more active role and trying to encourage a vibrant sector would be useful.

My last question is on sports fans in general, but football fans in particular, in Scotland being able to see matches that are important to them. That sort of thing has been declining. Aside from the lack of free-to-air matches, the coverage of Scottish football by other UK broadcasters is pretty appalling. Is Ofcom concerned about or involved with that at all?

This committee got figures in 2021 that said it was 90 per cent at that time. Leaving that aside, Mr Kerr raised the point that the tail-off of people willing to pay the licence fee was more pronounced in Scotland than it was elsewhere in the UK. I should say I told this committee two weeks ago that I had just got my licence, having moved into a new property, and then this week I got a letter saying I am being investigated for not having a licence. A strange thing, but there you go.

I will venture some reasons for that difference in the drop-off and I will be interested in your view on them. Some are small things that may seem trivial. First is the almost constant overruns of UK programmes that eat into programmes that people want to tune into in Scotland. Those are usually news programmes, but I can think of an England women’s rugby match that stopped coverage of the early parts of the Scotland-Greece football match. It is irritating when you are waiting for two or three minutes for some little conversation between a couple of presenters on a news programme down south.

The second one relates to news coverage. You do an incredible amount of news coverage in Scotland on devolved issues. You have special investigations and you marry up your radio and TV coverage to cover devolved issues exhaustively. It certainly exhausts me sometimes. You do that all the time. However, when it comes to reserved issues—and it is the position of the BBC that there are two Governments in Scotland—the coverage is completely absent. I have raised this on air, going right back to Gordon Brewer and latterly with Martin Geissler. They both had the same reason, which was that they could not get UK ministers to appear. Important issues such as high speed 2 being cut from Scotland or the overrun on aircraft carriers are not covered by the BBC in Scotland at all and that seems very partial.

The third point is on sports. I mentioned earlier that we talked to Ofcom. I have campaigned since 2007 to have Scotland football matches deemed to be part of the crown jewels, or listed events, and that has not happened. I know that that is not in the gift of the BBC, but when you did eventually get a Scottish match, the production of the programme was appalling. It was late. You missed the early part of the proceedings. There was no commentary at all. You allowed the overrun from the previous game. That was because the programme was on pitch, as was the case for the FA Cup final on Saturday, rather than being studio based.

To me—and certainly going by my mail bag—those are the reasons why people are losing faith in the BBC in Scotland. I would be interested in your views on those points.

It is useful to think about examples of what Ofcom could be, and I am thinking about Canada. I think that it was Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s dad, who said that being in Canada is like being “in bed with an elephant”, because its southern neighbour is 10 times its size and the danger of complete cultural overspill is huge. Canada had quotas for the numbers of university lecturers who had to be Canadian. A dark secret from my past is that I was a radio DJ in Canada, which sounds a bit grand, but it was on Sunday night campus radio. I was obliged to play a certain number of Canadian songs during the course of that two-hour programme.

We can contrast that with what Ofcom is doing here. We have heard lots of talk about “nuance” and “guidance” and maybe increasing it and so on, but Ofcom agreed with the BBC last year when it decided to reduce news output in Scotland by, I think, half, from 250 hours to 125 hours. George Adam mentioned what has happened to radio in Scotland. It does not feel like local radio any more. I started campaigning in 2007 to have Scottish football matches free to air. It took a long time to get anywhere, and when it did we had the absolute fiasco of the Greek match, where the sound and the covers did not work because the BBC was so out of touch with doing that. Channel 4 has no target for Scotland and you seem to be content with that. I understand that Ofcom is a creature of the UK Parliament and if the UK Parliament decides that you will be toothless, as George Adam put it, that is what you have to be and work with.

Let me ask you this. You may have covered this and it may have been in the briefing, but I could not see it. What has the BBC’s record been like on the 8 per cent spend and hours quota that it is asked to deliver in Scotland? I heard your explanation about “The Traitors” earlier, but it is not Scottish in any meaningful way apart from the venue where it is filmed. What has the BBC’s track record on the 8 per cent requirement been over, say, the last five to 10 years?

What counts? I forget what the obligation is. Is it production based in Scotland?

Covering them across the UK is not the point. The issue is about covering them in Scotland. They involve a Government that is active in Scotland and is impacting on Scottish people. You do not cover those things. I can give you 100 examples of things you have not covered—reserved issues that impact directly on people.

In the context of all the life-saving and dangerous work that the agencies do, have you had time to assess any impact that there might be of the UK Government’s decision to slash international aid in future? Will that affect you, or is that still unknown?

I think that Frances Guy mentioned that the Arab League has proposals for reconstruction that are practical and realisable, unlike the proposal to create a Gaza strip like the Las Vegas strip and so on. If that is the case, will the people behind that organisation—I do not know enough about it—not also potentially have resources to provide aid to meet the immediate needs in the meantime? Will that help to replace the moneys that are being withdrawn through USAID and so on, or is that already factored in? Are they in a position to provide immediate aid, or are they already doing that?

Thank you.