Hansard

As the Presiding Officer mentioned, I take the slightly unusual step of speaking, in a Government debate, as convener of the Education and Culture Committee. I do so to ensure that the significance of the committee’s report on the BBC charter renewal process and, more important, our recommendations is not lost.

As the cabinet secretary and others have acknowledged, the Scottish Parliament has, for the first time, a formal role in the charter renewal process. That is important. It reflects the changing constitutional position in Scotland and a new role for this Parliament. As the committee saw during our inquiry, there is an appetite for more public engagement in the charter renewal process. It is also right and proper that the BBC is held to account by this Parliament. In our report, we make some suggestions for improving the accountability and scrutiny of the BBC. I will come to those later.

The unanimous view of the committee is that the BBC is a hugely important cultural institution. Committee members will agree with me when I say that we all want to ensure that the BBC is relevant to the people of Scotland. The BBC is the single most important contributor to public service broadcasting in the UK and, through commissioning programmes and investing in skills and training, it plays an important role in supporting the wider creative economy.

However, as our report clearly sets out, the BBC must do more to represent Scotland and the diversity of Scottish culture. It must also change the way it works with and supports the creative industries in Scotland. It is clear that the BBC itself recognises that it needs to do better. When Lord Hall gave evidence to the committee, he told us that he

“would like to see more of what we currently do centrally in London move out of London.”

He also emphasised the importance of having

“a strong and thriving Scottish production sector”.—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 12 January 2016; c 31, 9.]

As we say in our report,

“We welcome the BBC’s continuing commitment to seek to improve how it represents and portrays Scotland across its services.”

However, we consider that “significant change” is required to improve the way the BBC commissions programmes. The report makes it clear that we need to decentralise decision making and the associated expenditure.

Some members have referred to the production quota for Scotland. Concerns about that are central to the need for change. We were told in evidence that the quota rules can be subverted by production companies who relocate a small part of their operation temporarily to Scotland in order to meet the criteria. Those so-called lift and shift practices have led to suggestions that producers need spend very little of the production budget in Scotland for 100 per cent of the budget to be counted as Scottish spend and therefore set against the quota. We were also told of concerns about the commissioning process and difficulties experienced by Scottish companies in gaining access and recognition from London-based commissioners.

Those practices do not help to develop a sustainable television production sector in Scotland. In fact, they do quite the opposite. The criticisms are not new; they have been highlighted on numerous occasions. The audience council Scotland has been advising the BBC trust about them for years. The criticisms were also raised by two parliamentary committees. This Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee and Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee both recommended action to ensure that indigenous Scottish production companies benefited fully from the quota and from improved access to commissioners.

In our report, we suggest that the current quota system for regional production for the network is inadequate. It is an artificial mechanism that, as others have said, has helped, but it has not done enough to encourage a sustainable production sector in Scotland. The committee unanimously agreed that a proportionate amount of BBC spending should be guaranteed to directly benefit the creative industries in Scotland. To enable that to happen, we believe that the budget for the BBC’s network content spend should be decentralised to BBC Scotland. We believe that BBC Scotland is best placed to make judgments on how to assist the creative sector in Scotland.

Transferring that budget to BBC Scotland would make a big difference, particularly when we consider that BBC Scotland’s commissioning budget currently amounts to £35 million. Of course, that money is combined with additional production costs that allow programmes to be made. Taken together, that constitutes the local content spend by the BBC in Scotland, which is around £73 million. The fundamental point that our report makes is that there must be decentralisation of decision making, commissioning and the accompanying budgets to BBC Scotland. That will help to rebalance the criticism that some have made that the BBC is too centralised inside the M25, and will lead to improvements in the way in which the BBC portrays Scotland and the diversity of Scottish culture. It would seem reasonable to expect that, as a result, that would benefit the creative industries in Scotland by attracting, developing and retaining talent, thus helping the sector to become strong, sustainable and competitive.

The BBC has acknowledged that its commissioning practices need to change. We welcome Lord Hall’s decision to review the set-up, and we hope and expect that decentralisation will be part of the solution.

I mentioned earlier that the committee considered the accountability and scrutiny of the BBC. In our report, we suggested improvements that relate to the openness and transparency of the BBC’s practices and operations and its accountability to the people of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament. Specifically, we want the BBC to be required to provide detailed financial information about its operations in Scotland. Frankly, we found it impossible to disentangle spending in Scotland from the wider consolidated UK accounts.