Welcome to this meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Today is the final oral evidence session of our BBC royal charter review inquiry. We are joined by the right hon. Lisa Nandy MP, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and Robert Specterman-Green, the director of media and international at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. You are both very welcome—thank you so much for joining us. Before I begin, I remind Members to declare any interests at the point they ask questions. I will kick off, Secretary of State. We had the BBC in to see us last week, and we asked them about some of the new responsibilities that the Green Paper suggests they take on. It suggests new public purposes—things like technology and innovation, and maybe countering misinformation and disinformation. They effectively said, “Yes, it is a great idea, but we need the funding.” That is a fair challenge, is it not? If you are asking them to do more, you cannot expect them to do it for the same or less money. Do you think that you can secure the funding model that meets your ambition in the Green Paper for the future of the BBC?

Yes, I do, but I think it is a challenge. It is a fair challenge to the Government, and it is also a challenge for us to meet this moment, but I have been really clear that we are determined to do it. The BBC is in a challenging position at the moment. I watched your session with the chair and the new director general a couple of days ago. They outlined it in starker terms, and I do not need to repeat it here, but you have the challenge of the funding model at a time when all public service broadcasters are struggling with reduced advertising revenues. For the reasons that Matt Brittin outlined, the challenge of commercialisation is very great. You have changing viewing habits as well, so the BBC, as it always has throughout its 100-year history, is having to adapt and innovate for that new world, particularly on the technology front, which means investment. It is doing it at a time when fewer people are paying the licence fee and against a backdrop where, over the last 15 years or so, the licence fee has been more often frozen than not. I should say that that has not happened under this Government, as we took the decision to raise it in line with inflation, even in the cost of living crisis. A lot of unfunded concessions have also been made that the BBC has had to meet. A brief intro to the challenge we have is that we are doing all this against a backdrop of huge consolidation of major players in the broadcasting landscape. The BBC is our biggest intervention in the creative industries, but it faces an environment in which scale really matters. The challenge is great, but we intend to meet it and to make sure that the BBC is adequately and sustainably funded through this charter.

Does the Treasury know that?

The Treasury and I have had a number of discussions about this, some of which have been very pleasant and some of which have been slightly more robust. I think there is a shared belief across Government, including the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, that the BBC is one of the most important institutions in this country. I would say it is one of the two most important, alongside the NHS. If the NHS is responsible for the health of our people, the BBC is responsible for the health of our democracy and our nation.

I do not know whether you have had a chance to see some of our other evidence sessions, but some people argue that the BBC should be smaller and that it tries to do too much. We asked Mr Brittin whether the BBC could be smaller, and he said that you could have a BBC that did less, but it would not be able to live up to its current remit. What do you think? Is the BBC trying to do too much?

I followed the discussion about “Scooby-Doo”—I think it was Natasha who started it—which took up a fair chunk of the Committee’s evidence session. There are fair challenges to the BBC about when it should be competing with commercial broadcasters and whether that is a good use of public money. Instinctively, I am where the BBC’s current leadership are on this question. I think the BBC is not just the last resort to compensate for market failure. I take the Committee back to the Reithian principles of inform, educate, entertain. The BBC is as much a shared civic space as our town centres and church halls. Those civic spaces have been lost over recent years, and they need nurturing. The BBC brings people together, as no other public broadcaster is able to do, through shared national moments such as the VE commemorations, which were the most watched of all time, Remembrance Sunday and other big national moments—we have the world cup going on at the moment. That is something worth treasuring and protecting, and you cannot do that if the BBC is there solely to compensate for market failure.

This all sounds really impressive. Some have suggested that the Green Paper was a bit unambitious in that it took some of the funding options off the table, and it immediately said it did not want to look at the scope of the BBC. Do you think the Green Paper started off on the right foot by being open-minded and generally accepting of the challenges that the BBC faces and the changes that will be needed to make it ready to face the challenges of the future?

We very deliberately took an approach in the Green Paper that was as open as possible and that closed off as few options as possible. I believe that the BBC belongs to the whole nation, and people have to feel that level of ownership. We have just touched on the falling numbers of people who are paying the licence fee. That is an existential threat to the BBC, so we have to take the public with us; they have to be able to drive that change. It was right to be fairly open in that approach. What I would say, and this may come through in today’s evidence session, is that in recent months I have had discussions with many members of this Committee and other parliamentarians, including my opposite number, Nigel Huddleston. I have talked with the outgoing director general, the interim director general, the incoming director general and many BBC staff up and down the country, including through the NUJ and Bectu, and I have talked with the public. I now have a much clearer sense of what we will be proposing through the White Paper, which will be much clearer about our vision for the BBC. I would be really happy to share some of that with the Committee today.

Excellent. Let us talk about the current situation of the BBC, which you just mentioned, and the fact that 94% of adults use the BBC but only 80% of households are paying. That is an issue that, at first glance, will require some fairly substantial reform to the licence fee. Are you considering expanding the scope of the licence fee to include watching content from streamers and video-sharing platforms on any connected device?

That is one of the options under consideration. You will remember that we committed in the Green Paper to retaining a reformed licence fee. We ruled out a new tax on households, because of the cost of living crisis; we ruled out general taxation, because of the risk of political interference; and we said that there would be no levy on streamers. I had an open mind about this when I came into the job, but I have since come to the view that this is an ecosystem. The likes of Netflix invest in the UK because of the BBC, but in return that is good for the BBC and for the creative industries as a whole. We think that a levy on streamers would deter that investment and harm the ecosystem, including the BBC. Other options are available, however. One, as you said, is expanding the scope to video-on-demand services and platforms. There are also options around commercialisation, which you touched on with the new director general. I guess the final option that we are considering is that we could well end up with a mix of those different options to varying degrees. Instinctively, I think there are limits to commercialisation. There comes a point with commercialisation where the BBC ceases to be the BBC, so I think that has to be approached with caution, but I know the BBC could do more to exploit its commercial revenue. Again, to take you back to the original challenge you posed to us, it will depend on there being up-front investment to realise the benefits.

Let me take you back to those first couple of options: expanding the scope of the licence fee to include watching on the streamers or the video-sharing platforms. That sounds quite straightforward, but it could be quite complicated. How do you imagine that this could be monitored and enforced?

We are looking at a whole range of options at the moment. The director general’s view is that a household levy is much simpler, and it is much simpler, but it is also potentially more regressive. At a time when the cost of living is biting for a lot of people, I think a new tax on households is too challenging to ask most families to accept, so we are looking at a range of options for how we could potentially expand the scope. For example, we could add a charge to people’s streaming subscriptions, which would be paid by the consumer. We could have a staggered approach, which has been suggested to us, where someone might pay a small additional amount if they had a streaming service, rather than the full licence fee, or we could expand the scope to everyone who has one. We could ask them to pay extra as part of their subscription, but we could then task the BBC with having targeted concessions for those who need them or who use BBC services less. We could also potentially cut the cost of the licence fee for everyone, if we were to expand the scope. A whole range of options are on the table. Every time I get into any kind of discussion about the licence fee or how the BBC is funded, it sparks a whole range of news stories that the Government have come to a conclusion and have a secret plot to enact it. I stress that we have not. We are genuinely having an open conversation with the public, Parliament and the BBC.

If you were still charging the licence fee and then an additional cost on streamers, there would not really be any incentive for people to pay the licence fee, as they would just pay the extra amount to the streamers.

I think that would be an either/or. For example, we could add an additional amount on to a streaming subscription, or we could say to people who have a streaming subscription, “You need to pay the licence fee.”

I see. Assuming that a reformed licence fee is the outcome, who is going to be responsible for communicating that to the public? If you look at the figures, 94% of adults use the BBC but only 80% of households pay for it. That suggests a 14 percentage-point gap between the people who think that the BBC is worth paying for, or the people who do not understand that they are watching BBC services. That needs to be communicated, so whose role is it to tell the public that the licence fee has changed and that more households might have to pay?

As I said, there are two main places where that has to happen. First, if we are changing the system through the charter and asking people who were not previously in scope of the licence fee to come within it, it is our responsibility to go out, make the case and win the argument. The second group of people who are responsible for that are the BBC themselves. They need to do more to communicate what people get from the BBC, not least that, if you watch any Netflix, Amazon Prime or Apple TV show, it is likely that at some point you will be watching something that has been made with the support of BBC infrastructure, or by staff who have been trained by the BBC. At some point, everything in the creative industries in this country comes back to the BBC. I think the BBC has to do more to communicate that. Finally, I think that people have to believe in what they are getting. That is why we went out with a very broad consultation, and it is why we have done and are continuing to do a lot of work around the country. In the end, the BBC will last for as long as people are willing to support it. We have to make sure that the things that the BBC is providing are the things that people love. That is why, when I first became Culture Secretary, I did my first visit to MediaCity to meet Hacker T Dog, who hails from Wigan—one of Wigan’s finest. I wanted to reset the conversation and remind people of some of the things that we all love about the BBC. I appreciate that Bitesize is a little controversial in this Committee, but children’s programming at the BBC more generally is something that the whole country believes in, values and wants to protect. It is incumbent on us to make sure that we support those things through the charter, so that people are not just being asked to pay but are getting what they need from their national broadcaster.

We met the same dog, didn’t we?

He gets around. One more thing from me: what are the intended timelines for implementing the outcomes of the charter? Some of it is quite technical.

The public consultation on the Green Paper has concluded. We are working through the responses we received—over 120,000 of them. We are looking to firm up the White Paper by the end of this calendar year. We will then need to present a draft charter, which has to be debated in Parliament before, ultimately, it is adopted by His Majesty the King in Council. We need to conclude the whole process by the end of 2027, because that is when the current charter expires.

Some of the suggestions in the Green Paper that we have talked about during the inquiry, such as funding changes or new digital functions, are quite complicated. Would they be ready to go by the end of 2027, or would there be a gradual implementation?

There are two responses to that. There are choices about what you might put in the charter and what you might put in the framework agreement that sits alongside the charter, which is a document that allows you to get into a bit more detail about the delivery and implementation of some of the charter provisions. Then, of course, there is always the choice of staggering and sequencing when, for example, new provisions might come in. We would need to work through that when we finalise the charter and the framework agreement. By its name, the framework agreement is agreed with the BBC, unlike the charter. There is a debate, a conversation, that could be had there.

Secretary of State, I am going to try to push you for absolute clarity on one point, which has already come up today. In the Green Paper, it was clear and explicit on page 71 that you were discounting the idea of funding the BBC either through general taxation or through a household tax—we might debate the difference between a household levy and a household tax. In your interview on Radio 4 more recently, you said something a little different. You said something again today rather more nuanced. I know you also say that if somebody asks you about an option and you refuse to rule it out totally, everyone says it is ruled in. Given that you did explicitly rule it out in the Green Paper, can you give not just the Committee but the sector clarity about whether the principle of a household levy—although it may be designed in different ways—is or is not under consideration?

I guess that part of the confusion about this is that different people in this debate seem to use the same terms to mean different things. We have ruled out three things: a levy on streaming companies, which I talked about; general taxation, which I think we are clear about; and a new tax on households. That would essentially be a flat tax—a bit like council tax or something like that—or just a charge per household, where you ask people to pay a new tax in order to fund the BBC, instead of the licence fee. I do not think I said anything different on Radio 4, because I have been clear about that in my mind for at least 12 months, if not longer, but what we have tried to do—

Forgive me, but I think you said: “I can tell you, hand on heart, that we have made no decisions about this.”

We have made no decisions about how we are going to fund the BBC, apart from ruling out those options. I think I did reference on Radio 4 the fact that we had ruled out some options, but I am not sure I was explicit about what they were. But the position that we outlined in the Green Paper remains. We have ruled out those three specific options; we are looking at other options.

Okay. Does the thing hinge on the difference between the word “tax” and the word “levy”?

I am not sure that it does. What we do not want to do is to charge households more for the BBC across the board, through what you could call a new tax or levy. We do not want to do that—we ruled that out specifically—because we are in a cost of living crisis and we think that would be too difficult. The difference between that and the option that I was just discussing with the Chair, about expanding the scope, is that there are people who currently rely on and use the BBC but may not think or know that they do. They may, for example, use the BBC website, listen to BBC radio or watch shows on streaming-on-demand services that were made with BBC money, BBC staff and BBC infrastructure. I think that is a fair option to consider, but like I said, we genuinely have not come to a conclusion about whether it is the right option.

How would you respond to the suggestion that, in trying to add up all these things—the traditional kind of TV licence base, plus video on demand, other platforms and adding a fee to streaming subscriptions—what you are trying to do in effect is come up with a formula that includes every household in the country? Would it not be simpler, administratively and from a cost perspective, just to have a charge on every household in the country?

Except that you get different households, don’t you? You then would be in a situation where—

You could still have exemptions.

You could still have exemptions, yes, but one of the things that that would catch is that you would have an older person who lives alone and is on a very low income paying the same as a family where you have two very high-income earners and several people watching. I do not think it is the same. Essentially, the problem that we are trying to crack is that the BBC has to be adequately funded, and although the vast majority of us use it, fewer and fewer of us are paying for it. That is the challenge that we are trying to solve. Once the BBC is gone, we will regret it. This charter is the most important of its kind, because we have ducked the question about how to put the BBC on a sustainable footing for too long. I am treading with care here, because we genuinely have not made the decision about this, and there are genuinely no easy solutions to it—if there were, this Committee and others would have come up with them by now. We have to be clear about what we are trying to achieve: a situation in which the BBC is sustainable and can continue not just to survive but to thrive, and in which those of us who are using it are paying for it.

Why did you make the decision about a streamer levy before the Green Paper was printed?

Because I was asked about it several months ago, and I was concerned that not to be clear about this would deter investment into the UK. Something quite magical is happening in the UK at the moment. Some of the biggest streaming companies in the world are here, investing in very large numbers not just in London and the south-east but right across the country, partly because of British creativity and partly because of the BBC, but also because everybody is on the hunt at the moment for locally rooted stories with universal appeal, and the UK is brilliant at that. That, in turn, is having an incredible knock-on effect in jobs, growth and opportunities in every nation and region. I was concerned that the lack of clarity around that would deter that partnership and investment.

Do we know for a fact that the prospect of putting a surcharge on people’s subscriptions would not deter that investment, even if the net effect on the revenue of the streaming company was the same?

We are modelling that at the moment. We do not have certainty about any of these options at the moment.

Have you had discussions with them about that and their preferred option?

Yes. The streamers can speak for themselves, but I think they would be reluctant to see additional charges on their consumers and additional charges on their businesses.

Thank you.

I will talk a bit about advertising, although this touches on the financial case. You mentioned earlier how important the NHS is to the nation’s health—I completely agree—and the BBC’s importance to democracy, the nation and statehood. How do we invest in the BBC? It is a challenging time in advertising. There is already a model there with regards to UK TV. Do you see that as a potential avenue to increase advertising income for the BBC?

I think the director general put it very well when he talked about the hammer blow that the BBC’s moving into advertising would strike to other public service broadcasters, and I share that view—the words “hammer blow” are mine, not his, but that is my view. Advertising revenues are falling. Our public service broadcasters are really feeling the pinch. If you look at the consolidation across the broadcasting landscape and the need to protect and preserve distinctly British content, our public service broadcasters matter now more than ever, and that is not just about the BBC. I think advertising is the wrong approach for the BBC, because it is the wrong approach for the wider public service broadcasting ecosystem. I also think, specifically in relation to the BBC, that advertising changes the nature of the organisation, because the incentive is to chase ratings rather than to inform, educate and entertain. I would be concerned about the distorting impact that introducing advertising to the BBC would have on its nature. I think we would lose the thing that is most precious and distinct about it.

You mentioned earlier expanding the scope. There is a challenge in how we face that and how we do it. Have you considered the historical content on iPlayer?

There are a couple of things on this. First, I was interested in the discussion that you had with the BBC about the role of iPlayer and whether it can be broadened to reflect more public service media content. We have already seen a really positive agreement struck with S4C to ensure that more of its content is seen on iPlayer, and discussions are ongoing with Channel 4. I think that would be a really positive thing. Secondly, on revenues, there are a number of ways in which the BBC thinks it can increase its commercial revenue. One of those ways, which I do not think was discussed in any detail at your previous evidence session, was the use of the BBC Archive. The BBC is sitting on a treasure trove of footage from times gone by. There are challenges around the rights to that and in how it can be used and licensed, and I know the new director general is keen to overcome them. We have discussed with this Committee the role that AI plays and the challenges that it poses to the creative industries, but there is also the potential, through the creative content exchange, which we are pioneering here in the UK, for the BBC to use its archive to help drive AI systems by making that content available for a fee through the creative content exchange. That in turn raises money for the BBC to be reinvested in creative content and helps to improve those AI systems. There is a potential win-win there if we get it right. Again, to come right back to the beginning of this conversation, all this rests on the BBC having sufficient income to be able to invest in the short-to-medium term in order to realise the benefits of that.

Last week, the DG mentioned, and you have concurred, that organisations such as Disney are able to monetise their historical back catalogue. I understand the issues around rights, but at the moment we are not doing anything with them. Even just 10%, 15% or 20% of the back catalogue that is rights free, or that the BBC owns the rights to, could create additional income for the organisation. This is not so much a question but an observation that you have concurred with the director general. We would certainly like to see that. We have talked about “sweating the assets” a number of times, in terms of meeting the challenge of advertising.

I have discussed this with some of the staff at the BBC. It is not just the challenge around rights; there are also challenges around the BBC’s current archiving system, which needs to be upgraded, and even around just finding the right footage and the right programming. When you have the funding challenges that the BBC has had—the director general said that it has lost over £1 billion in income over the last decade—investment in things like archives inevitably goes first, because you never start with popular programming. We have to solve that as part of the charter. Your comparison with Disney is well made. We have to make sure that we can get the BBC on a similar footing.

Can I quickly nail you down on advertising and BBC audio content featuring adverts on third-party platforms such as Apple Podcasts? Have you ruled that out?

No. You obviously have commercial parts of the BBC that operate in a different way. I share with the BBC leadership a caution around extending advertising across the board to BBC programming, for all the reasons I gave and because of the impact on the ecosystem. I talked earlier about the need to bring the public with us; people have to believe in the BBC—it has to be their BBC. If people were asked to pay a licence fee and then saw adverts, as they would on other channels, they would be entitled to ask what they are actually paying for and why they are paying extra. For that reason, I think that moving the BBC into the same realm as Channel 4 or ITV, say, is a problem.

But you cannot rule out having adverts on audio content on third-party platforms?

I think I am right in saying that, Robert?

Yes. As I think has come through in this discussion, we are very mindful of working through what the impacts would be on the BBC itself and on the broader ecosystem. This ecosystem is held in a certain balance, and we are very conscious of the risks of rocking the boat, given the challenges facing the whole sector at the moment.

Can you just give me a yes or no as to whether you have ruled it out?

We have not ruled it out.

Okay, that is helpful. Thank you.

Secretary of State, what is permanent about a permanent charter?

Every 10 years, when we come to renew the charter, there is an existential question about the BBC’s right to exist. If, for whatever reason—God forbid—I decided not to renew the charter, the BBC would cease to exist through that process, and at the end of 2027, it would be no more. We would not accept that for any other institution of its importance; we do not accept it for the Bank of England or the national health service. When I said that this would be the last charter of its kind and that the BBC would be put on a permanent charter, I meant that its existence would not be up for question. What will still be debated, discussed and agreed through the charter process every decade are the terms of the BBC. Its remit, structures and funding arrangements will be questions for future Governments to negotiate with the BBC and for Parliament to agree.

So, in practical terms, there is no difference.

In practical terms there is no difference, except that the BBC’s right to exist will no longer be called into question every decade.

With respect, Secretary of State, without funding it would not exist, would it? Without funding objectives, there would be no BBC.

It is perfectly possible for a future Government to come in and cause enormous vandalism to the BBC, but that is the nature of democracy, frankly. It is not for this Government to determine what a future Government or Parliament decide.

We have been trying to nail down—not only with you but with others—a phrase that has come out and that everyone is saying: permanent charter. We are trying to understand what that means and what would be different in practical terms. I think there would be no practical difference. Is that fair to say?

I do not think that is right, actually. They can speak for themselves, but the BBC leadership make the case that this is an extremely unsettling process for the whole institution to go through every decade, because their right to exist is on the table, and I do not see any reason why it should be.

And they don’t think it would be unsettling if you were just renegotiating the entire budget? Would that not be unsettling?

Of course it would be, but that is for future Governments and Parliaments to decide. As a Government, we are certainly not proposing to do that. Damian, you have to recognise that this is an historical anomaly. The BBC came into existence 100 years ago to ensure that Britain was at the forefront of a new form of technology—wireless technology. There was a great deal of tension with Fleet Street, who saw this as quite existential for them, and the charter process was negotiated on that basis. I think we all, as a nation, now accept that the BBC is a permanent, much-valued and much-loved part of our landscape. We are correcting an historical anomaly to prevent the sort of disruption and upheaval that we see every decade.

Thank you, Secretary of State; every time there is a statement or an UQ you always say how important the BBC is to the national story—that is reassuring. The axe is swinging and all these brutal cuts are coming, which you have acknowledged. You met with Matt Brittin, and there are worries about staff morale. Have you had meetings with unions?

Yes, I have recently met the Bectu and NUJ leaderships, as well as their workplace reps across the BBC. I am concerned about the cuts that were announced, and I have raised those concerns directly with the director general—although, admittedly, they were made and decided before he took up his post. I find it somewhat strange that the cuts were decided before he took up the post, but after he had been announced. I am particularly concerned because, through the charter process, we intend to build on the work that Tim Davie did to build out the footprint of the BBC across every nation and region of the United Kingdom. We intend to devolve more commissioning power and ensure that the BBC becomes what ITV was originally formed to do: be the engine of the nations and regions and ensure that every part of the country is heard in our national conversation. The direction of travel of the cuts seems to be slightly at odds with that.

It seems like they have a lack of financial planning. It is almost like the black hole that nobody saw, if it is that severe. I think it is one in 10 jobs, and more cuts are being announced in September. Which of the funding obligations that the Conservative Government put on the BBC would you be prepared to reopen? They always sold freezing the fee as a populist thing, but if you are financially planning, you want a rising income, so it is good you have done that. The licence fee payment for over-75s now comes out of the BBC budget. In theory, that is kind of a welfare thing. Could there be some give on that? The other thing, which I have asked you in the Chamber before, is the Conservative argument that national insurance rises are a bit protected for big public service employers, such as schools and hospitals. Is there any way we could look at that?

On the first question about the concessions, I want to be crystal clear with the Committee that we are not going to remove the over-75s concession. That is currently funded by the BBC. We do not have an alternative way of paying for that from Government, so that responsibility will remain with the BBC, to be found out of its existing budget. I recognise the challenges that you have posed. We have tried to alleviate that by making sure that on each occasion—I think there have been two—that I as the Secretary of State have signed off the licence fee amounts, we have lifted that in line with inflation. I think that has only happened a handful of times over the last 15 years, but it has happened in every year under this Government. We have also increased the amount of FCDO funding to the BBC World Service by 42% since we came into office. I recognise that the situation facing the BBC is not sustainable. We have to fix that through the charter, but we have pulled every lever at our disposal to help alleviate the situation for the BBC in the short term.

As you say quite often, soft power is one of the selling points of the BBC. People trust it all over the world. On the unions, what is your position on having workers on boards? There is not really a permanent space for Bectu, NUJ and all the others.

Through this process, I am keen that we remove the political appointments from the board. I think that has damaged the public perception of the BBC. Having met Bectu and NUJ reps, I can tell you compellingly that it has damaged staff confidence in leadership. We envisage a stronger role for the nations and regions, not a weaker role. The problem I have with the current system is the political appointments, not the fact that the nations and regions are represented. NUJ and Bectu made a strong and compelling case for having workers from the BBC on the board. We will almost certainly pursue that.

If the Government do not appoint the non-executive BBC board members, what process would that be replaced with? Who would appoint them? How would they emerge?

We are still discussing this with the BBC and others, but I will share with you my initial thinking on this. It is right that the Government continue to appoint the chair, because there has to be some level of accountability through Government back to Parliament. It is not lost on me that, in the many crises that the BBC has had in recent years, it has been me who has been called into Parliament in order to account. It is therefore very important that there continues to be some link, but there are four political appointments on the board currently, which I think has caused some serious damage to the BBC’s reputation. I make no comments about any of the individuals who hold those roles—

I think we can guess.

No, I want to be really clear that I have worked with all four of those individuals, and I have no problem personally with any of them. The problem is the system whereby the Government appoint all those post holders to the board itself. One of the ways that we can address that is having workplace representatives on the BBC board for the first time in its history. I cannot emphasise strongly enough the gulf between what I hear from BBC employees and the account that I am often given from BBC senior management, including the board, but also the senior executive team. It is really stark. For a healthy organisation, that is one way that we can address that. Secondly, I have wrestled a lot with the question of accountability. Every time I appear in front of Parliament, questions about the lack of accountability of the BBC come up from Members from all parties. I originally looked very closely at proposals made by Tessa Jowell and Francis Maude and some of my predecessors about mutualisation. The example of the National Trust is quite a cautionary tale. The direction of travel that we are moving in as a Government is to strengthen the accountability within the BBC to the nations and regions to make sure that there is a level of internal challenge that does not currently exist.

Previously, there was the old model of regional consultation boards. It might be worth looking at bringing that back. Again, we are all licence fee payers. Like you say, we feel a bit frozen out. It does not feel completely transparent or that we know what is going on. The chair of the BBC said he would support the licence fee being set by an independent body. There are worries around it, and if the polls are right and we get a Farage Government, it would be good to have an independent body setting the licence fee to safeguard all the things we treasure and value about the BBC. What are your views on that?

We have not looked at that, and as far as I am aware, the BBC has not put that to us as a proposal. My instinct is that there has to be a level of democratic accountability around the licence fee. It is not something that we ask people to pay, but something that people have to pay—not just to watch BBC services but to watch television itself. I would be cautious about removing accountability to the public at a time when most people feel there should be more of it.

What if—this is blue-sky thinking—we built in an independent body that was constituted in the right way? Because at the moment, it is not clear how it would be done.

Like I say, I haven’t had anything from the chair on that, nor any suggestion that he would like to see it, but if there were a compelling proposal around it, we would of course look at it. Independent bodies can look at, for example, the financial situation of the BBC, but you have to be mindful of the context of us having had a cost of living crisis in this country for nearly two decades—certainly since the financial crash, and in some parts of the country for longer. Political considerations also come into this. Like I said, to take the public with you, you cannot ask people to pay more at a time when they do not have more. In the end, that is a political decision, which has to command the support not just of the Government of the day but of Parliament. I understand the anxiety around there being future Governments who may not necessarily be favourably disposed towards the BBC, but in the end, that is democracy.

Thank you very much for that. It has been exciting to hear about employees on boards. You said that we need to ensure that it is their BBC and that they believe in it, and that we need to build out. What more could the BBC do to persuade audiences who may not see the BBC as relevant that it is there for them?

The BBC has done some really good research on this. There are certain audiences that it does not reach in particularly large numbers, who do not see themselves reflected in that story—most obviously, young people. By that, I do not mean that young people do not watch or engage with the BBC: I have an 11-year-old who watches “Newsround” every day and uses Bitesize—although I know that is a bit controversial. Damian Hinds indicated assent.

There are different opinions.

There are rightly different views in our democracy. The new leadership team is very keen to do more to reach and to make good programming for young people, and to work with other public service broadcasters, such as Channel 4 and Channel 5, which already do this very well. For me, the most stark challenge for us in this country is that how you feel about whether this country is working for you or is getting better very much depends on where you live. Far too many of us, depending on where in the country we live, do not see ourselves reflected in the story we tell about ourselves as a nation. That is partly because of the changes to ITV, which used to tell that story from the ground up, in every nation and region. It still does a very good job on lots of things, but a gap has emerged, which the BBC, under Tim Davie’s leadership, has started to fill. Going back to the discussion about structures that Rupa and I were having, we have looked at whether to bring back regional boards in the BBC; that is one option under consideration. I am not messianic about particular structures, but I want to see commissioning power being devolved to every nation and region, so that those nations and regions decide what content is made for themselves. A little while ago, my counterpart in the Scottish Government, Angus Robertson, raised with me the instance of “The Traitors”, where people were bussed from London into Scotland to make distinctly Scottish content, and were then bussed back out again. I guess the message to broadcasters from those of us who do not live in London and the south-east is that we can see you, and we can see when it is not distinctly Scottish, northern, or eastern region content. We want to see our lives, stories, communities, accents and experiences reflected in the broadcasting that we have. The BBC does a very good job at that, but, in my view, far too much of its commissioning power is still held in Broadcasting House.

Do you think that its current strategy of building creative hubs in Salford, Cardiff and Digbeth is doing enough to bring about economic growth and connect better with audiences and local people through employment opportunities within the BBC?

They have made an astonishingly good start. A core part of Tim’s time as director general was to build out that footprint. I think Matt Brittin talked to you about the stuff that he had seen happening in Cardiff. The way that the BBC has been able to be the catalyst for a golden age of programming in Cardiff and the surrounding area is genuinely mind-blowing, but I would like to see us go much further and much faster. In particular, I would like to see the commissioning power devolved to the nations and regions, not least because there are a lot of brilliant indies in this country. I think he talked to the Committee about Bad Wolf, but there are lots of brilliant indies who really do drive that locally rooted storytelling with universal appeal, which every major streamer and investor is on the hunt for. Those indies have struggled a lot in recent years. One of the reasons that they struggle is because, if you want to be commissioned as an indie, you have to try to convince somebody hundreds of miles away in the capital city that you have a great story. You have to get on a train to London, and oftentimes, your meeting will be cancelled at your own expense. You have to bid and pitch for that commission, and then you have to hope that somebody is enlightened enough to understand the value of that story in a part of the country that feels, sounds and is very different. We are missing a trick here. The BBC has always been at its best when it has been a first mover, which has helped to unlock things that others then step into. That is one area where we could do far more.

With that in mind, do you think that the headquarters of the BBC should remain in London?

I have long thought that it should shift north. That would be one of those moments where the BBC showed itself to be the first mover, a bit like the work that was done at MediaCity all those years ago, which really has been a catalyst for a completely different broadcasting ecosystem, with opportunities opening up for people across the country, a different mindset and way of thinking, and more internal challenge within the BBC. I think back to the glory days of ITV, when Granada Television in the north-west, which you know well, was in its ascendancy. That and local newspapers were the place where working-class kids from towns like Wigan and Bury could get their entry point into the television industry and go on to become some of the best in the world. The BBC still does a lot of that, but, for most young people growing up in towns like mine, those opportunities just do not exist anymore, and we should be ashamed about that as a nation. This charter is one of the ways that we can set that right.

Will that be something that you push for?

I would be very keen to see the centre of gravity in the BBC move to MediaCity, and I cannot really see any compelling reason why not.

To supplement what the Secretary of State has said, I think the other part of the answer to your question is not just what the BBC makes and the decision-making processes that result in what it makes, but how it then makes that content available and how it distributes that content. We are seeing the BBC do more on iPlayer, and they have just reached a new partnership with YouTube. They have to go to where the audiences, particularly those younger people that you mentioned, go to find their content, to ensure that it is accessible and considered relevant.

On that point, it is about being with rather than going to, isn’t it?

I agree with that. You heard a lot in the evidence session from the BBC leadership about the strong recognition that they have to be more accessible. When they are making great quality content that reflects the lives of broader audiences, those audiences have to be able to find it, which I think is the point that Robert is making. The area where we have the most work to do is in making sure that the content is genuinely driven by those communities and the people in them. As I said, under Tim’s leadership, the BBC made a huge start in increasing its regional footprint. What I want to do through this charter is to move not just the people and the funding, but the power as well.

Very quickly, on working-class representation, sometimes it is all well and good moving where stuff is, but you still lack getting more people from working-class backgrounds involved. What else can be done to make sure that we get more working-class representation in the BBC, and at all levels?

This is something that I discussed with BBC staff. As well as the meetings that I have had with Bect and NUJ reps, I had discussion groups with BBC staff in different parts of the UK, asking them specifically how we can help. I got a very clear message that there is a challenge getting into the industry, and we will continue to work very hard to encourage young people from a very early age and to open up opportunities for them to go into the BBC, and for the BBC to continue to do the outreach that it does very well—certainly in the north-west, where I am an MP, it does a stunning amount on that. The really big challenge that they identified for us, and I do not have an answer for you today, Vicky, but it is something that is exercising me greatly through this charter process, is what happens once you get in and through the door. Often, especially being working class—but other groups as well are underrepresented—it is about knowing how to advance. So much of the TV industry is so casualised, it depends on who you know and what you know—if you do not know what to wear, if you do not know when to push and when to hold back, if you do not know who to talk to, and if you do not have the confidence or the networks to be able to ask, that is when you hit a glass ceiling, and that glass ceiling, that class ceiling, comes very early on. That is what we have to change. I wish I could say I could solve it for you today, but it is something that I would love to talk to the Committee about more.

Very briefly, in defence of working-class kids in London who ended up working in telly, I can assure you that we still exist down here. The point I want to push on is that I appreciate that the BBC and the charter is what we are discussing, but in the context of the wider media landscape, could more pressure be put on the new media companies to locate outside London, given the conversation about young people growing up in towns and cities across the country traditionally needing a big organisation like the BBC to make a breakthrough? YouTube is now democratising that a lot, and young people are able to create content in their bedrooms and to find a voice internationally without having to rely on gatekeepers, as previously. Perhaps there is wider thinking about how to make those spaces open to people. That might be an easier conversation.

I really agree. Look, Natasha, I am not saying that there are not huge challenges for working-class kids in London in breaking into industries like the TV industry, but what strikes me is how often young people who want to break into the industry have to move to London, because 88% of the TV and broadcasting industry is concentrated in London and the south-east. Their housing costs then become completely prohibitive, so if there were not enough barriers already, they face the perfect storm. There are other challenges there that we need to crack. Could other companies do more? Yes, absolutely. I do not think I have met anyone in the broadcasting industry over the past two years without saying, “What are you doing to help break open these opportunities?”, and, “What are you doing to invest in other parts of the country?” I have to say that with some of them, it is an absolute open door, and I guess I would cite Netflix as an example. The people at Netflix really believe that the stories that they need to find cannot just be found in one part of the country. I said this the other day, but I will say it again: any country can make TV shows about posh boys playing gangsters, but not every country can make “Gavin & Stacey” and “Derry Girls”, and so it does really matter that they have a footprint outside—it matters for them, not just for us.

May I quickly ask you something, Secretary of State? We took evidence from Dino Sofos from Persephonica. I do not know if you had the chance to see that, but we found it quite compelling. He said he wanted to turn the BBC building in Sheffield into a radio theatre north and to include studio space that the private sector could hire to use the space for recording podcasts, skills training and genuine work experience. As Bayo said earlier, one of the themes of our questions across these past few weeks has been about sweating the assets. Do you agree that the BBC should think more creatively about how it uses its existing city centre buildings in ways like that?

Definitely. One thing I heard recently from one of the staff I met as part of the engagement exercise was that she is the only staff member who works in their building. It is not open access to the public any more. They used to have school groups coming in. The BBC still invests hugely in things like choirs and orchestras and so on. But they used to have a lot of that—it used to be a very porous building that could be used for the community and commercially, but they do not even have a receptionist any more. There is literally nobody to go and open the door. I suppose this comes back to the exchange I just had with Rupa and my concern about the cuts. The ability to do that depends on there being a regional footprint. If the BBC decides over the next few months to make huge cuts to its regional footprint, all of those possibilities suddenly become null and void. I welcome this inquiry, because this is a moment to pause and say, “Are we moving in the right direction or do we need to think again?

The other thing you mentioned was the independent production companies and Bad Wolf, whose majority stake is now owned by Sony. That is happening quite a lot: the independents are being bought up by the big international companies. There is one thing that independents have said would help them enormously to keep working in the UK. A lot of TV filming is going to eastern Europe and other countries in Europe because of tax incentives. As a Committee, we recommended tax incentives for low-budget British films and high-end TV, but that is still big chunks of cash. They say there should be tax incentives for the lower budget TV production, which would keep many more jobs, opportunities and skills and what have you here in the UK. Have you had conversations with the Treasury about that?

We have ongoing conversations with the Treasury about tax incentives. In fairness to my colleagues in the Treasury, they are very alive to the tax credits regime; we were one of the first, if not the first in the world, to implement that. It is what has helped both the film and TV industry to flourish. That is why we moved very quickly in Government to introduce the independent film tax credit. In every spending review and Budget, I have had conversations with the Chancellor and Chief Secretary to the Treasury about how we keep our tax credit regime competitive, because, as you rightly say and as we recognise as a Government, other countries are moving fast and we need to remain competitive in order to keep up. On that specific measure, we have not made any announcement, so I am not in a position to give you an answer on that today, but it is something we are aware of.

The Government have suggested putting research, development and innovation central to its public service activities in order to drive growth. What do you want the BBC to do that it would not otherwise do?

I think the director general talked quite a bit about this, given his background—about the need for the BBC to innovate to be able to reach wider audiences and collaborate more. I think he talked about developing the iPlayer so that it can host more public service content. I have talked already about the use of the archives and the scope to do more with them. It is not for the Government to dictate how the BBC should innovate and stay at the forefront of changing viewing habits and changing technology, but we are very supportive of their ability to do that. For 100 years, the BBC has been at the forefront of new tech when it comes to communications. If I’m honest, that has stalled somewhat over the last decade because of the funding pressures that the BBC has faced. That is one reason why we are keen through this charter to set them on a sustainable path so that they can invest and make sure they remain at the forefront of that new tech and not pulled along in its wake. Natasha, I think you prompted an exchange on the Committee with the director general about Project Kangaroo and the missed opportunity there. We do not want to be in a situation where you have some of the best minds in the world looking at innovation and new tech in the BBC, but they are unable to do it because of regulation or—probably more likely nowadays—lack of funding. We are having that conversation with the director general at the moment.

Coming back to the point about tech and innovation, what are you looking to do? You are having conversations, but can you elaborate on how you can encourage partnerships in those areas?

I have pressed the industry, particularly the public service broadcasters, to do more to collaborate and to innovate together. There are some signs of that starting to happen, particularly in discussions between the BBC and Channel 4. You will have seen in our recent TV Green Paper that we are very keen to see much closer collaboration between the public service broadcasters and content platforms such as YouTube. We would rather that that was voluntary—that they worked together to achieve it. Much was made of our view that, if we have to provide prominence to public service broadcasters to achieve that, we will, but what was lost a bit in that discussion is that there is a way for, for example, the BBC and YouTube to bridge the gap between them. At the moment, the BBC will say, for example, “We can’t tailor our content well enough towards young people because we don’t see the information and the evidence that YouTube has that helps us to tailor that content adequately.” YouTube will say, “Frankly, there is more that the BBC could be doing to understand those dynamics and to drive it.” I think there is scope for them to move much closer together on that—for some information to be shared, and for the BBC to invest more in tailoring its own content, having greater audience reach and achieving the outcomes that we all want to see. With the TV Green Paper, we are trying to help to solve those problems. You will be aware that the challenges for ITV in that regard are different from those of the BBC. The BBC is not reliant on advertising revenue, so it does not have ITV’s challenge, which is that it invests a lot in its content. The model that YouTube has does not allow it to recoup the cost from that. There are different challenges for different public service broadcasters, but we think that there is scope for them to move much closer together, which will enable more people to see high-quality content and drive more views towards those content platforms.

Secretary of State, I would like to focus on editorial standards and how they feed into trust in the BBC. The Committee has had to question the BBC about the failure to maintain high editorial standards on a number of occasions, on issues including the Gaza documentary, the Glastonbury coverage, the “Panorama” documentary about President Trump and the BAFTA awards. Matt Brittin has made editorial excellence a key priority and he has already appointed a deputy to support that work. How confident are you that the BBC will get better at addressing editorial mistakes before they become major scandals?

I won’t relitigate the issues around Gaza, Glastonbury, the “Panorama” documentary or the BAFTAs, except to say that it was not a particularly comfortable position for me to be in as Secretary of State: to have to challenge the BBC very publicly on some of those things. I would not have done it if they had not, as a leadership, been far too slow to recognise the problem, to grip the challenge and to deal with it. The Chair of the Committee was right to say that the lack of speed with which the BBC acted increased the severity of the problem in many of those cases. I feel that, in the latter days of the outgoing director general, the board understood the challenge to the BBC, the damage that it has done to the BBC reputationally and the need to grip it. The incoming director general was absolutely right to appoint a deputy to help to ensure that the highest and most robust editorial standards are upheld. I have seen evidence of workplace culture changing as well so that people feel freer to speak out. I think that having workplace reps on the board will help with changing the culture. It is not for me to pronounce on this as the Government, or even for this Committee. Instead, the public will have to make their own minds up. A number of absolutely appalling cases have emerged since the four that you described. I suppose that there is a question as to whether we are seeing more of this because there is more of it happening or because the culture has changed and people are speaking out and so it is coming to light now in a way that it did not previously. Certainly, there is a very live and recent case that has appalled everybody. In the private discussions that I have had with the BBC on that case, I am much more confident than I have been at any point in the last two years as the Culture Secretary that they are moving with speed and taking the appropriate action to make sure that it cannot happen again.

What do you think the BBC still needs to do better?

Culture change takes time. I think that it has shown leadership over recent months with the efforts made around workplace culture, supporting whistleblowers, zero tolerance and taking action in a number of cases. Based on my observations, there is still a challenge in two areas. One is around the commissioning of third parties to produce content; you will recall that that was a particular problem in the case of “MasterChef” and the Gaza documentary. I think it has also potentially been a problem in the more recent case that has come to light. That needs to be gripped because if something is going out on a BBC channel, it has to meet the highest standards. The other area, which I alluded to earlier and where I think there is still work to be done, is on staff in the BBC feeling heard, valued and empowered. I am going to share something with you that one of the reps said to me when we met: she did not feel that there was any meaningful way to make her voice heard or make things change in the organisation. That is quite stark. It is something that I have shared with the senior leadership. I know that the incoming director general takes that very seriously, but it would be wrong of me to come to this Committee and not acknowledge that that is how some of the staff are feeling at the BBC at the moment.

When you shared that, did you feel that they were taking it on board and they were actually going to do something about it?

I did, but of course the proof is in whether things change and the staff across the board believe that things have changed. That is a very difficult thing to achieve at a time when you are announcing large cuts, particularly to staffing. This charter process is going to be incredibly important in resetting that. We obviously need help of the BBC leadership for that to be reset. I believe that they are sincere in wanting to do that, particularly the new director general. I was particularly impressed that he spent the six weeks in the run-up to taking up the post out in the country—not just meeting senior leaders, but also making a point of meeting staff on the frontline who are making the programming and delivering the service.

Samir Shah has introduced changes, including reforms to the renamed editorial standards committee. Do you think that those changes are enough to address concerns about impartiality and public confidence in the BBC’s editorial accountability?

It is too early to say. I think that the appointment of a deputy director general is a positive step forward and that the leadership is very sincere about getting this right. The incoming director general told me, and I think he said this publicly, that it was his absolute first and No.1 priority, and I believe him in that. I am hopeful that things will improve, but it is a bit early to say.

We did not get to interview the new DG on this Committee. I have been on different Committees for ages, and I remember the prisons guy coming in when I was on the Justice Committee. Usually, we have a role. I just wondered how exactly he was appointed. Was it you who had the final say or was it the board?

Just to correct you, we only get in the chair before they are appointed.

Yes, so I am asking by what process Matt Brittin was appointed. People have written into me about this. I forgot to say that I am ex-BBC staff and members of my family still work there, as do loads of my mates. They are all a bit mystified. How did this guy emerge?

I have no role in that process at all. It is for the chair of the board to select and for the board itself to approve. The chair is obviously free to discuss it with me, and we had conversations over the course of that appointment, but I appoint the chair of the board; I do not have any role in appointing the director general. I think that is right; it gives a level of protection against political interference, which is important.

I guess it is this transparency point again. Sometimes these people just emerge, and you do not know how. It looks like the EGSC—the editorial guidelines and standards committee—came out of the last charter renewal in 2017, so it has not always been there. When James Harding from Tortoise Media spoke to us, he called it a “star chamber”. It is a tiny thing—four people—that decides on new standards for the whole BBC, which is an enormous, mega-corporation. There seems to be a complete lack of transparency there. If you saw the minutes or broadcast from last week, I have been saying for a couple of weeks that it is totally unprecedented for a public organisation as big as the BBC to have an editorial plan for one political party—their plan for Reform voters. They will not reveal this, and people are saying I should just FOI it. If they will not reveal it, I can write to them again and ask. Is there a worry that this tiny committee, where Robbie Gibb—I have said that name for the first time—

The first time today.

—but other witnesses have said it. I do not need to say it every week, and you said there are four people, so I am guessing he might have been one of them. Is it not concerning that such a tiny cabal controls editorial standards for such a huge organisation and that you get things like this bloomin’ dodgy dossier with cherry-picked examples? It looked like they were all giving jobs to their mates: “You can be an adviser. You can be the person who cross-checks.” Is that not a bit concerning?

These are questions for the BBC. It is not for the Government to decide what a broadcaster, whether public service or otherwise, broadcasts or to decide the editorial decisions that they make. As I said to Liz earlier, I found it very uncomfortable to have to publicly challenge the BBC, but I will do so where there are questions of public safety for particular groups of people in this country, where there are issues about the treatment of women, and where trust in the highest editorial standards and public confidence in our national broadcaster is being dented. But it is quite a high bar for me to reach to intervene in that way. I would push back a little bit. Throughout its history, the BBC has constantly had to think about how it properly and best represents a changing nation. Thinking about the debates that were happening in the ’60s and ’70s, you had a wave of immigration that had changed the face of what it meant to be British, you had women playing a bigger role in public life, and you had working-class kids who had bigger expectations of the role that they would play. If you look back at that period, the BBC was constantly embroiled in challenges about how it understood that nation and told its story. It rose to the moment, but it took some time and it was not without controversy. A lot of the challenges levelled at the BBC nowadays—about how to sustainably fund it, how keep it free from political interference, and how to best represent the whole nation as it evolves and changes—are not new. They are as old as the BBC itself. I would also say—perhaps I should have said this earlier as a counter to some of the things that I was saying about trust—that the BBC does produce some of the most extraordinarily high-quality content in the world. It is and remains the most trusted source of news, not just here but in many countries all over the world, including in the United States. That is something to be prized and celebrated. While I have been tough about the serious failures that have happened in recent years, the reason is that I think the vast majority of BBC content is of incredibly high quality. Nine times out of 10 the BBC is getting this right, and it undermines the good work and the trust in the institution when it does not.

I don’t want to appear a BBC basher—people on the left usually aren’t—but when you have a prolonged period of people on the right in government, then they can stack it. That is why your words are so welcome—to depoliticise. As I said, a lot of the staff feel completely ignored. They have town hall meetings online, and the stuff that people are putting in the chat is completely ignored. Matt Brittin said he would turn over a new leaf; I am glad to see that. The last thing I want to ask is about CIISA, because of the scandals—they have not all been news ones, have they? You mentioned Gregg Wallace, and there was also Huw Edwards and Tim Westwood. The Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority is semi-voluntary now; how can we put it on a better footing? They came and spoke to us but that was untelevised because it was all a bit secretive and people had signed NDAs. What is your opinion on it?

As a Government, we back CIISA. I think that its invention and interventions have been enormously important. The BBC’s role in being one of the first to back CIISA, and particularly in insisting that those that it commissions are also members of CIISA, has also been incredibly important. That is what I mean about the BBC often being the first mover that can convince others to step in to where it leads. There are other parts of the industry that have not signed up to CIISA; I would like to see them to do it and strongly encourage them to. Ultimately, if they won’t, we are leaving open the prospect that we put CIISA on a statutory footing and mandate the industry to support it. But as I said, my preference would be that the industry got its own house in order.

Secretary of State, we really appreciate your very fulsome answers, but can I encourage you—for everyone’s sake, because we want to get you out of here by half past six—to keep them as pithy as you can? Thank you very much.

I will try to keep my question short, then. I would like to declare an interest: I used to work for Channel 4, and my husband still works there. Over the last few sessions, the Committee has heard the word “sovereignty” come up quite a lot. In the last session, with the new DG, it came up repeatedly. We have heard evidence to the Committee about six people owning all of our media, all the content that goes out and also the data that sits behind that. In your opening remark, you talked about the shared civic space that the BBC takes up and the health of our democracy. What kind of role do you see the BBC playing in the future in protecting the information infrastructure and trying to push back against media conglomerates?

This is something that the new director general is taking incredibly seriously. I think he hinted, when he came in front of the Select Committee, that he thinks this is an area of weakness that needs to be addressed, and I would support him in that. You will have seen that, as part of the charter process, we are keen that the BBC helps to counter some of the mis and disinformation that has become the norm, particularly online on some sites. The question becomes: how does the BBC protect its ability to counter that mis and disinformation? How does it do that in an era where you have huge consolidation and major players who are operating at scale not just in the broadcasting landscape but also online? I was reading with interest the exchange that you had with Matt Brittin about the X platform and whether the BBC should be on it. I have to say that I absolutely and strongly support the idea that the BBC should be on X, because I think that the BBC is the alternative, trusted source that you can go to on that site. The reason I think it is different when it comes to Government Departments—and the decision that I made to take my Department off X—is that I think politicians aren’t neutral. We shouldn’t be neutral; we have a stance; we exist to advance a viewpoint. By being on sites where the algorithms are loaded in order to divide us and where information is being pumped out that is false and misleading, I think that politicians have a responsibility to consider our own role in whether we should help to support and attract people to those sites or not. The view that I came to was not, but the BBC has to be in all these spaces and has to be able to counter that. Again, it comes back to the question of funding and whether the BBC is adequately funded to do that.

On your point about politicians’ role in spaces like X and drawing attention to those platforms, you are right that algorithms are being loaded and seek to prioritise one view over another; is our role to regulate, and to get in there to try to make that a fairer fight? That was one of my questions to Matt when we last spoke to him. You are playing in an unfair landscape when you have the BBC being treated in one way, in that it has to have factual information at least when doing a documentary or something, but platforms are not held to that standard. Is it not time for us to stop treating these platforms as a new thing and start treating them like all media?

There is definitely a role for regulation. You will have seen the action that we took on Grok, and the social media ban that the Prime Minister announced recently. Yes, there is a role for regulation, but there is another piece to this: supporting our trusted sources of news, whether they are public service broadcasters or local news sites, which are often far more trusted and are a great counter to that mis and disinformation. There is a point about media literacy and helping to support our young people, in particular with media literacy, but increasingly we are looking at other age groups across the population to make sure that people have the skills that they need to navigate it. The final piece of that is what we are seeking to address in the TV Green Paper. People have to be able to find good, trusted, high-quality content. I know that it sparked a whole range of discussions about whether I am personally the enemy of free speech and involved in some Orwellian crackdown; actually, we have very deliberately not defined what we believe trusted news is. It could be the industry’s own standards, such as the editors’ code; it could be defined by the type of institution—public service broadcasters, for example; or it could be by public consent and what the public consider to be trusted. We are very open-minded about that, but what is not acceptable in my view is that, currently, a lot of younger people are not watching television in the traditional way where they would be able to find public service broadcasting and high-quality, trusted news; instead, they are online where algorithms are distorting what they see and are actively working against their ability to find that. We cannot be neutral about that.

I agree, but going back to that point around sovereignty, information infrastructure, how we protect that and at least making something fair in terms of what people see, surely the argument is that the BBC needs to be bigger in some ways rather than smaller. When you have conversations with the Treasury, how would it go down if you talked about making the BBC a much bigger player in this space?

There are two quick things around this, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the Chair. The first is that we have been clear that the BBC has to be adequately funded to navigate this new world. The second is that we think there is scope for far more collaboration across public service broadcasting, but also between commercial and public service broadcasters. We are trying to create the conditions that incentivise that and support it.

What is the incentive for a commercial player in this when attention and eyeballs drive their revenue? How do we incentivise them to do the right thing in this space where the BBC has to do the right thing?

I will give you the example of prominence. In the TV Green Paper, we think it is good for platforms like YouTube to have really high-quality content. People love BBC content. It produces some of the best programming in the world, and it is not looking for a financial return on that; it is simply trying to extend its reach. We think it is good for providers like YouTube to be able to collaborate more. Equally, there are some barriers that currently exist. If we cannot find ways for the BBC and YouTube to collaborate to make that happen, we reserve the right to ensure that people can find that good-quality content, but we think there is real potential there.

The BBC has a really important role to play here, as the Secretary of State just explained. In our “Watch this space” Green Paper we are also consulting on a media literacy duty on all public service media providers. That is because there is an agreement of responsibilities and benefits. Although the BBC is the biggest PSM provider, it is not the only one. We see potential there to get a broader range of content providers all pushing in the same direction on this.

We will go back to the Green Paper in a future question, so I will not pick up on that.

I want to pick up on what you were saying about your decision to leave X. Obviously, you are the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, so is the fact that you chose to leave the platform not an admission that there is nothing the Government can really do to regulate X, or regulate the owner of X?

First of all, for the purposes of those many people on social media who attack me constantly for not talking about social media enough, the responsibility for social media primarily lies with DSIT. I know that you know, but it appears that most of the online world does not. The decision to leave is not a decision to replace regulation. As a Government, we have been clear that we believe that regulation is needed in the online space. We passed the Online Safety Act. We want to see Ofcom do more to enforce that. The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has just appointed a new chair of Ofcom to really try and put rocket boosters under that enforcement. As we have announced recently, there are new measures around the social media ban. The Prime Minister has also signalled that we will need new regulation in future as that develops. All Governments have to choose the mediums through which they communicate. Not to get too political, because I know Damian will pull me up on it, but the last Government did very little with local media, even to the extent that they published their levelling-up White Paper and forgot to tell the regional or local media about it. That was their call, and every Government get to decide how they communicate and through which medium. As a Department, we have placed a lot more emphasis on communicating through local and regional media. We are not communicating through X because we do not think it is a particularly helpful platform—not least because we were very struck by recent studies that showed that more than half of the accounts on social media are now bots. Of all the social media platforms, that number is the highest on X.

Will you be suggesting that Mr Burnham leaves X?

It is entirely up to him, and it is entirely up to other Government Departments. Lots of my colleagues have not left X, and I respect their right to do so. There has always been a very live debate in my political party about the role of The Sun newspaper. It is felt very strongly where I live in Wigan—I represent some of the Hillsborough families. Jo will know that well. It is for individual politicians to decide who they want to communicate with. I can see the arguments on both sides. You want to be in the places where people are in order to reach the widest range of people and make your case. Equally, there are times when you feel that that is not helpful, is not going to work and, actually, you are legitimising something that you do not believe has legitimacy. I say to all of my colleagues that Richard Hermer and I have taken one view, but it is perfectly reasonable to take another.

I must confess that I do not recall that decision in the last Government to not use local or national media. I seem to recall something rather 180° opposite—but we will leave that for another day. I wanted to come back to this thing about prominence: how you promote prominence and what gets prominence. You are quite right to identify that it is very hard to create a definition. Do you agree that it would be unthinkable to have a situation, through legislation or regulation, where you were promoting the content of the BBC and Channel 4 but not promoting the content of, say, The Telegraph and The Guardian?

As a Government, we have been looking at how we can open up access to good-quality newspapers from different political standpoints—of which we have many in this country—to young people from a much earlier age in order to encourage more young people.

I do not want to cut across you, Secretary of State, but I do not think that was the question that I was asking. I was asking, on the question of prominence on social media, do you think it would be acceptable to have a potential situation where the BBC and Channel 4 news are promoted, but The Telegraph and The Guardian are not?

I am not sure that I completely understand the question. So you would want The Telegraph, for example, to be on YouTube? I am just trying to understand the question so that I can answer it.

Your Green Paper talks about requiring prominence of some definition of media on online platforms. One potential definition is just public service media, but there is also the suggestion that you could define it some other way. You definitely could, but when you get to that half of the sentence with anybody, you realise how much harder it is to draw the line. I am not trying to take away that difficulty, but I am asking whether you could envisage a situation where you say that you want prominence for these public service media operators—the BBC and Channel 4—but not others that are also in the quality news business and rely on revenues, such as—of course, there is a longer list—The Telegraph or The Guardian.

Let me try to do this justice. First of all, “Watch this space” is a TV Green Paper, and one of the things we are trying to do is increase people’s access to high-quality television content. That does not mean that we do not—

But news is all merging, isn’t it? You have radio stations doing online stuff, online things doing radio, newspapers creating radio stations and telly doing its little thing on YouTube and Facebook, and you have TalkTV and TalkRadio. There is not really a distinction any more. Whether you are the BBC, Channel 4, The Telegraph or The Guardian, you are a news organisation.

I get that, but it is not a news Green Paper; we are talking about TV. That does not mean that we are not looking at other forms of media and seeing how we increase access to high-quality media across the board. We have just been talking a lot about social media, how to help people navigate the online space, what sort of regulations are required and so on. What I was trying to say twice is that we also want to increase the young people’s access to high-quality print media from an earlier age. That might include The Telegraph and The Guardian, and it might also include the Manchester Evening News, the Liverpool Echo, The Yorkshire Post and some of those really high-quality regional papers. It is not an either/or as far as I am concerned.

Can I move us on gently, please? We will come back to your question.

At the moment, the BBC, like other public service media providers, is bound by requirements around due impartiality. We want to introduce accuracy into that purpose because, as the Secretary of State has said, where there is a body of evidence and a factual underpinning to various viewpoints, it is important for a broadcaster such as the BBC to get that across as well.

On a day-to-day basis, it is for the BBC to enforce, but you are quite right that Ofcom, as the regulator, would have a duty to monitor the BBC and its performance, as it does now. There is then the complaints process that operates first of all within the BBC, and there will then be the potential for Ofcom to step in.

The way it generally works is that, through the charter or the framework agreement, we would set some general principles. That is the case across the board for a lot of the issues we are looking at in the charter review. It would then fall to the regulator—in this case, Ofcom—to flesh out some of the detail, as it already does in its broadcasting code. The BBC operates to an even higher standard than the broadcasting code, because it has its own editorial guidelines. If the public purpose is expanded to increase accuracy, we would also expect the BBC to reflect that in its editorial guidelines and standards.

Do you mean across different Government Departments, rather than just between us?

The two colleagues I have worked most closely with on this politically are Bridget Phillipson and Liz Kendall. We were having an exchange about the important role of print media as a trusted source of information, alongside amazing programmes like “Newsround”, which has the most incredible reach. There is a role for the education system to play to help young people to be able to access that, as well as the work that it does as part of the national curriculum on media literacy. There is also a role for DSIT as well, especially because DSIT is the primary Department to sponsor Ofcom now. Although I have a role as Secretary of State in relation to broadcasting, DSIT is the primary sponsor, so its input is really important.

We are always encouraging the BBC—all public service media providers—to work in collaboration with relevant other organisations. The Government have published a media literacy action plan, which promotes this further, and in the “Watch this space” Green Paper—sorry if I am pre-empting further questions—we are floating the idea of a new body to co-ordinate action across a range of different organisations, not just the public service media providers, but anyone else who has expertise and capability to promote that.

I have a Wigan-related question—

Sorry, Jo. The rivalry is enormous.

Versa Studios in Atherton, M3—whose seat is that in?

I have a little plea from them, because they also have a studio in Acton, in my seat. They do “Morning Live”, “Big Brother” and “Celebrity Big Brother”, and they make a good point about non-scripted tax credit, which I have written to you about before, Secretary of State. You said earlier that you are into exploring the range of tax credits. Their programmes are not drama. We did an inquiry on high-end drama, but there are high-quality shows that are non-scripted. Would you entertain looking at non-scripted tax credit again? Versa Studios in Manchester—in Wigan, in fact—and in my seat would welcome that greatly. They keep pushing me.

I feel the need to clarify the fact that Atherton does not see itself as part of Wigan.

I was googling what borough it is in. Whatever—it is in Greater Manchester for sure.

Anyway, enough of our local rivalries. I cannot, obviously, make a commitment on tax credits without agreement from the Treasury, but as I said to the Chair earlier, we are keeping the tax credit regime under constant review. We are aware that other countries are adapting and evolving quickly and that we have to stay competitive. I will look at the specific.

Okay. We are not closing the door on it—good. On the news point and disinformation and misinformation, we have a situation: Deborah Turness’s job is still vacant. She went in 2025, after those scandals. Was it not worrying when Damian mentioned mergers? I thought he was going to talk about Sky and ITV. At times, I feel that our news is shrinking, and that post is still vacant—God knows when they will fill it. If Sky and ITV merge, that is less news output. Will you possibly refer that one to the Competition and Markets Authority? Generally, on this whole point that people are making about the politicisation of the BBC under the Tories, there are specific examples. Today, the coalition of the willing is meeting in Paris; I do not know whether that is going to be on the BBC. There was a recent E5 meeting in Berlin, where Keir Starmer was praised by Merz, Macron, Meloni and Tusk; it was not on the BBC. There is a worry that good news about our Government is not being shown at the moment, and that there is a kind of lazy cutting of corners, where sometimes they go for the sensational and not the full picture.

Whereas they were nice to us all the time!

Rupa, as I did with Damien, I will need to move us gently on.

On Deborah Turness’s role, I do not know the timescale, but I do know that the BBC is intending to recruit for that, so I probably have to defer to the BBC leadership on that one. On the ITV and Sky merger, you will be aware that it is a quasi-judicial process, and I am the decision maker in that case. I have not looked at it yet, and I cannot prejudice the outcome by taking a view at this stage—sorry about that. On politicisation, I just refer you to what I said earlier. It is for politicians to tell broadcasters what they can and cannot broadcast. I heard Damien muttering that they did not exactly give the last Government an easy ride either, or broadcast all their good news. I think the BBC does a very good job. I think all our public service broadcasters do a very good job of providing trusted, high-quality news—not least “Newsround”, which is an incredible programme, the like of which most countries just do not have. I would therefore politely decline the opportunity to criticise their news output.

Going back to the BBC being on third-party platforms, specifically YouTube, its argument is that that is where the audience is shifting to—that is where the eyeballs are—so that is where the BBC needs to be. Do you agree with that premise?

I do, actually; I strongly agree. I think iPlayer is an incredible thing, and it has more scope, particularly to improve its usability and make it easier to find good content—not just content that you already know you want to watch, but other content as well. I was really encouraged by the view expressed by the director general, who said that he wants to make sure that it is pushing good-quality content towards people, and not just going along the lines of the things they already watch but helping them to discover new things. I think that has always been a core part of the BBC’s mission. There is far more that the BBC can do to use iPlayer as a jumping-off point for people to find more good-quality content from other providers as well. In general, we want to make sure that the vast majority of people are able to see and find BBC output. Young people in particular are not in the places where the BBC is predominantly. Just as in politics, I think that the answer with broadcasting is that you go to where people are. I therefore strongly support the view of the BBC leadership that it should be exploring all those avenues, particularly YouTube, in order to have wider reach.

What kind of regulatory challenges are there to the BBC being on YouTube?

I think the biggest challenge that the BBC would say it has is that it needs to be able to tailor its content in a way that is attractive to the audiences who are predominantly on YouTube—I am thinking particularly of young people. I think it finds that difficult to do when it does not have access to the data and analytics that tell it what sorts of things drive good-quality content. That is very different from its traditional way of working. It tends to work through data and analytics, rather than in the near absence of them. I think it recognises that it needs to invest more in being able to do that, and in the skillsets to do that. In turn, I think it would like YouTube to do more to help it tailor that approach, and I think YouTube is willing to do that. So, I think it is less of a regulatory challenge—although there may be questions about data sharing—and more about a willingness on both sides to partner in order to help people access more quality content.

Moving on specifically to the Green Paper, the conversation about prominence, and making it easier for people to find that kind of trustworthy content, is not necessarily that new. As we discussed in the previous session, we regulated in the space of the EPG when that came along, to provide prominence to public service broadcasters regarding a similar sort of technological advancement. What kind of work have you started doing in this space to scope out the challenges? Secondly, in a space like YouTube where, technically, it is the eyeballs and engagement that give you prominence, have there been any projections on the disruption to the industry that has sprung up from using YouTube? Some of the content creators might be feeling a bit put out by the fact that we are trying to put public service broadcasting content above theirs.

There is something quite magical about YouTube, the democratisation of that space and the ability for people to be heard who were not heard before, but I think a lot of content creators would absolutely love the opportunity to be seen and heard through the BBC channels and platforms as well, so I do not think it is necessarily detrimental to them. Opening up the BBC to more places and spaces, driving decision making out into every part of the country, and closer partnerships with indies in those places will help. I will defer to you, Robert, on the latter part of that question.

You are right: we had prominence in the electronic programme guides. We legislated for prominence in the Media Act 2024 to reflect a new technology with smart TVs and connected devices—also for audio, not just TV. On prominence on video-sharing platforms, YouTube is the natural evolution of that because that is where audiences are going. We have had a lot of engagement with public service media providers and the video-sharing platforms at various roundtables. We have just launched a Green Paper and a consultation. Ideally, we would reach voluntary agreements for how to do that. We do not believe, as the Secretary of State has just said, that there is a zero-sum game between giving greater prominence and discoverability to PSM providers or to content creators. This is an ecosystem where everybody can learn from each other. This is about pushing everybody to the top rather than pushing some to the bottom.

What downsides do you see with the BBC placing content on YouTube? It has to pay for the content up front. It cannot monetise it through advertising and it cannot currently control whether the audience will see it. What are the upsides of having content out there, other than the fact that it is just where the eyeballs are?

When it comes to monetisation, as you just mentioned, it is a potential challenge because of the way the BBC is funded. The BBC is still recruiting revenue in order to produce its content. We think the BBC should be very proactive to make sure its content is as available as possible and a gateway to lots of other things that people might not instinctively go to.

As a general direction of travel I think it is enormously positive that the BBC has been involved in discussions not just with S4C, where they have reached an agreement, but with Channel 4. I am not sure that every public service broadcaster will want to put their content on iPlayer, but, from the point of view of the consumer and the citizen, having a place where people can go to access high-quality content is a good thing. Channel 4 does an incredible job and plays a very unique role in the broadcasting landscape, but the Committee will be aware that it has faced significant funding pressures over recent years. We have appointed a new chair recently who I am very confident is gripping those challenges. But part of the answer is not to lose Channel 4’s unique role and unique remit. One reason it was set up—I should declare an interest because my dad was on the Annan committee on the future of broadcasting that led to the formation of Channel 4—was to make sure that people were seen and heard and voices and stories were told that were not necessarily being told through other places. When I look at Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympics, I think that spirit is very much alive and well. They reach much younger audiences than many other public service broadcasters. However, they are a small player in a world increasingly dominated by giants, where scale matters, so I think the collaboration is very important. As Jo said, Channel 4 is funded by advertising and the BBC is not, so there will need to be a bespoke arrangement. I understand that discussions are happening between Channel 4 and the BBC about that. As a Government, I do not think we have taken a view yet, but the principles are the same as we discussed earlier in the session. I do not want to restrict people’s access to BBC content through advertising, because of the BBC’s role as a shared civic space. I think Channel 4 is in a different position. It may be possible to reach a different arrangement for Channel 4 content.

As I understand it, those discussions are happening now.

When I went to the annual TV conference last September, that was something I urged the public service broadcasters to do. They all face challenges. They still produce top-quality content, whether it is children’s regional news or distinctly British content that very few other providers are able to match, but the advertising revenues have been falling for some time. They had real pressures, particularly from covid and the legacy of that. The indie sector has been under a lot of pressure as well. I think more collaboration is the future of public service broadcasting. There has been a lot of talk about mergers. The BBC and Channel 4 in particular play a very distinct and unique role in our ecosystem and I would be reluctant to see them lose their distinct culture, ethos and identity. What I would say, though, is that there is more scope for them to collaborate further, both to save costs and to extend their reach.

Secretary of State, have you given any thought to including in this work an obligation on the companies that make smart TVs to have a dedicated iPlayer button on their handsets, remote controls, zappers or whatever you prefer to call them?

We call it a zapper in my house. “Where’s the zapper?” is what we are normally saying. Yes, we have. I discussed it with the Media Minister earlier today. Our initial response is that we think that is a very good suggestion, so we are exploring how we could make that happen.

I will finish with the thorny subject of the DTT to IPTV switchover. You have opened up consultation on the move from DTT to IPTV with two options: a managed transition by 2034 or a managed transition by 2044. Can you explain—very briefly, because I want to get you out of here—the relevance of that to the BBC charter review and why it is important for the BBC?

I will give a broad answer, and Robert can do all the technical brilliance. One of the pressures on public service broadcasters is that they are still broadcasting in two distinct ways and meeting the costs of that. The BBC takes that obligation very seriously. I have never had a discussion with a director general or senior executive who did not take seriously their responsibility for ensuring that they maintain service for both, until we can make a transition in which nobody is left behind. We came up with those two dates because some people think that setting a date of 2034—I recognise that it will be challenging to meet—will galvanise the industry to come up with solutions and enable that to happen. That would obviously be a positive thing for the BBC’s financial situation. There are others who think that it is not possible, which is why we gave the date of 2044. We have given a cast-iron commitment in the Green Paper that nobody will be left behind. I do not know whether Robert wants to add something.

Like the other PSM providers, the BBC is under a current duty to distribute its content in certain ways, including over Freeview. Any shift in the way that we require TV distribution to operate will have a direct impact on the BBC and, relatedly, on the costs of that distribution. Maintaining the current infrastructure falls to the BBC and others, and I am sure the BBC will have told you its perspective on this. Just as the BBC played a role in the last transition—the switch-off of analogue—there is potentially a role for it to play in the event of a transition to IPTV. It can help to manage such a transition and support households with what would be required of them.

What is the timetable for this decision? Will it be made so that it somehow interacts with publication of the White Paper on the BBC charter, or are the two not directly linked?

There is a very close link between the two. Our intention is to bring forward both White Papers—one is on the charter review, and the other follows the “Watch this space” Green Paper—at around the same time, because of those interdependencies.

Very good. Does anyone have any further questions? No. In that case, at 6.30 pm on the dot, I have managed to get you out of here—I will take applause for that. Thank you both for your time today. Was there anything else you feel that we need to take into consideration as we prepare our thoughts on this? No. In that case, we will let you escape. Thank you very much for your time.