Peter Black and South Wales West Liberal Democrats

The Broadcasting Committee's Report on the Future of Public Service Broadcasting in Wales

Peter Black: First of all, I concur with the general conclusion that this is a substantive report, and one that has been drawn from very high-quality evidence and discussion, both among committee members and from witnesses. I must say that there has been some robust scrutiny of that evidence, producing a number of excellent recommendations, which I am hopeful that the Minister will largely be able to adopt when he comes to respond to this report in the autumn.

There are a number of issues on which I wanted to comment. I concur with Paul Davies on the need for plurality in news, non-news, current affairs and drama. It is important that we do not rely on a single, monopoly provider-namely, the BBC. We must have other channels producing those programmes as well, and if it means using the £130 million broadband dividend to fund that, then we should be prepared to do so.

The report makes a number of recommendations about that money, not just to ensure that a proportion of it is used to maintain diversity in Wales, but also in considering a separate channel 3 licence for Wales, or using some of the money to set up an independent radio news service for Wales. If that money is available for those purposes, it should certainly be put to use to guarantee plurality for some time to come.

For me, the most important part of this report is its emphasis on accountability. Irene has just referred to the recommendation to set up a standing committee, and all members of the committee felt strongly that the work that we carried out over those 10 meetings, in scrutinising broadcasters, testing their assumptions and putting the case for Wales to them has not been done for some time in the National Assembly. We feel quite strongly that, given the way in which the committee structure has worked as a result of the Government of Wales Act 2006, the only way that we can maintain that level of scrutiny and accountability is to have a similar standing committee in place on a permanent basis. In that way, we can continue to hold those broadcasters to account, put the case for more equitable treatment of Wales, argue the case for Wales to be better portrayed on the networks and raise issues as they emerge, such as the King report. We can also scrutinise the annual reports of those broadcasters. For example, S4C produces an annual report and it has a meeting with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but that is about the only scrutiny that happens in relation to that report. That needs to change. The National Assembly for Wales needs to take some ownership over broadcasting in Wales.

Addressing another part of taking ownership is the recommendation that the Welsh Assembly Government should appoint the chair of the S4C Authority and the BBC trustee for Wales, and that we should have an Ofcom board member for Wales. That reflects the way in which things have changed since the Broadcasting Act 1996, in terms of devolution, the acquisition of powers and the way in which we exercise responsibility. I hope that that recommendation can be taken forward, because it would add to the level of accountability and transparency on broadcasting policy.

I have referred to the King report, which made an important contribution to the work of the committee, albeit coincidentally; it was quite handy to be able to scrutinise the chair of the BBC the week after the report's publication. The report made the point about how network news systematically ignores Wales and the devolution context. Although there was a noticeable improvement in network news immediately after the report's publication, there are still instances of where there has been no change. For example, the entire 30-minute Panorama programme broadcast on 7 July was dedicated to the English national health service, without properly setting out the Welsh context. There is still a long way to go for the BBC and other broadcasters in meeting the recommendations of the King report.

The committee's report also refers to the need to improve network production from Wales; that applies to the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV. We need to make more use of Welsh independent producers and we need programmes that reflect the life of Wales. For example, in the last few years, ITV has produced only one programme that counts as a Welsh production, namely The History of Mr Polly; I do not think that that really counts as a Welsh piece of literature.

The content of this report is timely and apt, and I hope that the Minister can take on board its content so that we can start to improve the accountability and transparency of broadcasting in Wales and across the network.