Meeting of the Parliament 16 June 2011
Like the minister and many others who have spoken in the chamber today, I welcome the huge improvements that have been made to Scotland’s digital infrastructure over the past 25 years. The pace of change has been breathtaking, and the ability to stream digital content—whether audio, video or even cloud computing applications—has certainly changed how we all live and work.
Many members will remember not only dial-up internet access, but black-and-white television. Speaking as one of them, I am firmly of the opinion that we must support innovation to drive even better digital services across our country. The motion that is before us today mentions many of the innovations that are on-stream, such as BBC Alba, which has joined the absolute mainstream ubiquity of Freeview—as Ruth Davidson and others have said—and the digital switchover that has happened in my constituency very recently.
The motion refers also to the pilot of superfast broadband in rural areas, which would bring many of the innovations that I mentioned in my opening remarks to virtually the whole of Scotland. Alongside that comes the call for a Scottish digital television network and another bid for the transfer of powers.
There is a great deal of agreement among members on the aspiration for more plural media in Scotland. It is a fair and desirable aspiration, but the question remains about how we would achieve that greater choice and content for Scottish citizens.
The creation of a Scottish digital channel has a great deal to recommend it. It would be a Scottish channel that would have Scottish content and be a proving ground for new talent in front of the camera and behind the scenes. As the cliché goes, what’s not to like?
The Scottish Broadcasting Commission estimated that a digital channel would cost between £50 million and £75 million, which is a tidy sum at any time, let alone in these financially straitened times. The SNP Government has considered various ways of funding that aspiration, but it keeps returning to the concept of taking money from the BBC licence fee to pay for such a channel. I do not think that that is a sensible way forward. It would be wrong to diminish BBC services for the creation of a new channel. The BBC has already experienced a substantial cut in its budgets, and we have all seen the redundancies and cuts here in Scotland. The changes to “Scotland at Ten”, for instance, might mean a slightly earlier night for MSPs as the programme is largely pre-recorded, but there is no doubt that the cuts that we have already experienced have had a deleterious effect on some aspects of political coverage.