We will now begin this session of the Scottish Affairs Committee. I should mention that we have a guest this morning in Tom Rutland, who is a member of the CMS Committee and here today because of the session that we are having. Welcome, Tom, and welcome to our guests this morning too. It is really good to have you along, and we are really looking forward to having this discussion with you this morning, so again, thank you for coming. Congratulations to Hayley in her relatively new position.

Thank you very much.

I am sure it probably feels as though you have been there forever now.

No, it still feels quite new.

We are getting you when you are very new, which is good. Can I just ask each of you to introduce yourselves briefly for us, please? That would be very helpful.

Madainn mhath. Is mise Mairead Màiri Moireach. Good morning. I am Margaret Mary Murray. I am responsible for the BBC’s Gaelic language services, which are BBC Alba, which we run in partnership with MG Alba, and BBC Radio nan Gàidheal.

Good morning. I am Hayley Valentine. I am the new director of BBC Scotland. I have been in post for almost two months.

Good morning. I am Louise Thornton. I am the head of commissioning for BBC Scotland, sitting across TV, radio and iPlayer.

Thank you. That is very helpful to know. I am going to begin with some questions this morning. Given that we are at the start of a new year, it seems appropriate to ask what your priorities are for the year ahead. This is really directed to Hayley. What are your long-term ambitions for BBC Scotland under your leadership?

I am going to start with an overview of the BBC’s ambitions all together and how they knit together with BBC Scotland’s ambitions, because we are in total alignment on those and they feel really relevant for audiences in Scotland. We are very content-focused and very audience-focused. One of the three pillars of the BBC’s content strategy is pursuing truth with no agenda, which is largely about our news coverage, and it is crucially important to me that, in Scotland, we get that right and that we are a trusted source of news in a world where that is not always the case, and that we really deliver on our news values that we look at in investigations and policy and all of those big areas of Scotland that we know that our audience really cares about. Furthermore, we are going to invest in homegrown storytelling. In a Scottish context, that looks like the big dramas that we are commissioning, but it is also in factual and in comedy, across the whole commissioning piece, both in Gaelic and in English. We have some really big ambitions in that area. The third thing where the BBC really plays a massive role is bringing people together, so those big events. In Scotland, that comes across in big sporting events. We know that Scotland really cares about sport. We have our big cultural events where we are really distinctive in our coverage. We are doing them in a way that nobody else is doing—the big festivals and the big Scottish moments. All of those things really knit together as the BBC’s ambitions as a whole, but Scotland has a really big role to play in all of that, and I have some big ambitions in that area. If you will bear with me, you talked about priorities. In terms of priorities that I have asked staff to think about, I have done a couple of big staff events and there are four priorities that I have asked them to think about over the next 12 months. We can talk about further ahead, but, over the next 12 months, it is about really building that relationship with audiences in Scotland, which comes through our content. We build relationships in lots of ways. We do lots of the stakeholder management. I do lots of that myself, but it is, basically, a content aspiration around how we make sure that our audiences are getting what they want from us. We have some really good evidence over the last 12 months of how we have done that, but I want to do more of it. The BBC is changing, and what I really want to do is build more collaborations with other parts of the BBC and the rest of the industry. We cannot operate alone. We are not in splendid isolation anymore. We can deliver those really big, high-impact content pieces only if we collaborate with others. My colleagues will talk more about how they are doing that, but we can no longer operate on our own, and nor would we want to. Not only do I want to demonstrate that we are reflecting Scottish audiences back to themselves, but I also want Scotland to be reflected across the rest of the UK and the world. I want that sense that Scotland has stories to tell that are interesting and relevant to the whole of the UK and the world. My third priority, which is very timely, is to build the case for the BBC. We are about to go into a conversation about the future of the BBC. What is Scotland’s role in that conversation? What is the case for the BBC in Scotland, as well as the whole of the UK? In terms of my fourth priority that I have asked people to really think about—those who know me through previous roles know this already—it is very important to me that we have a really positive, inclusive, creative culture and that piece about, “Is the BBC in Scotland the best place you can work in Scotland, whether you work for us, or whether you work with us and alongside us?” Culture is important to me for all the obvious reasons. We want it to be a brilliant place to work. We want people to be able to be really positive about the place where they work, but it also impacts on content. They are not two separate things to me. If you have a great culture where people can feel that they can bring their most creative ideas and take some risks, that then impacts on the sort of content that we make. Those are my priorities. We are doing this just to give a little bit of context against a backdrop where the BBC’s place in public life in Scotland is more important than ever. We need to play a massive role in that. We are working against quite challenging financial constraints. The financial position is not easy for us to manage. We have some difficult choices to make, but there is also a real opportunity there. The BBC plays a really big role in the creative sector in Scotland, and we want to continue to do so.

Thanks very much. Hayley, where is BBC Scotland doing well and where would you like to see it improve?

It is doing well in so many areas. There is so much to be proud of. Internally, we use many measures to think about what our audience wants, and we have better data than we have ever had before. We have lots of information about our audience. One of the things that we do is something called the For Me score. Do people think that we are for them? It is on the up, basically. We do it over a six-month period. I do not have the last six months of the year but, in the first six months of 2024, we had a massive increase in our For Me scores. It is an internal measure. I would put it down to that content piece. Across the piece, we had a general election, which we did brilliantly. I am so proud. I was not there and cannot take any credit for any of this stuff, but we did really well in terms of both the campaign and the election night itself. Our election night was arguably the best television on the night. I do a lot of channel flicking, but the Scotland offer was really strong. We have a brilliant news team, particularly in the area of politics, who do a really good job for us. It is more than that, because we are looking at broader audiences. We also had some really strong drama. The most important thing about it was some really strong Scottish representation. What people want from us is to see their lives reflected. We had “Nightsleeper”, which started in Glasgow. I heard somebody the other day saying that they loved the fact that it started at Central station, because they have been standing around there when trains have been delayed a lot. The sense was that we had a great Scottish cast and a Scottish placing of that drama. We also had “Rebus”, and we should not forget the football. One of the things that we do best of all is our sports coverage. In terms of the Euros, with all of the commissioning that we did around the football and the way in which we covered that tournament, those scores are not accidental. They are about our content. I would start there, and that is what we have to build on. The challenge for us is how we keep that going. You need a cadence of really high-quality drama and high-quality factual. “Inside Barlinnie”, which we made last year, was a real success for us. It is a really good comedy. We have had a few successes recently, which Louise will talk about in a bit more detail for you, if you would like that. Those big pieces where we represent the audience well, where we do our news coverage particularly well, and where we get our sport right, are the central planks of where we need to build.

Are there any lessons from your previous work in the BBC that you want to take forward in this role, now that you have that opportunity?

There are lessons every day in this job. Every day is a school day in this job. Of course, I have worked in politics for a long time. I spent three of the last four years in the network newsroom. I have worked in English regions. You always learn something from all of these jobs. Working in network and in news was, like every job I have had, a massive learning curve. I have done it before. I have done it for a lot of my career. Going back into that role at a senior level, there is always something to learn. If I am honest, the most recent lessons have come from my time in the Midlands. We operate in English regions with relatively slim resources, and what we managed to achieve with that is pretty impressive. I had almost as big an audience base working in the Midlands as I do in Scotland. It is a very different cultural mix, and I have learned a lot from working there. In terms of what we can achieve, with the right people facing in the right direction, and with the right strategy, there is a lot to learn from the English regions. Q6                Mr MacDonald: I am a huge listener of BBC Scotland radio. I absolutely adore it. Like almost everybody I know, we all look at the BBC website for news. I wonder about productivity. I was in the news world for a decade. If you look at the Highlands and Islands, there is very often only one story a day. If you look at business in Scotland, there are very few—only three or four—stories. I wonder if you have considered the productivity of your team in terms of churning out stories and benchmarking against the other media. It might be something worth looking at.

We will always look at everything, clearly. We need to focus on quality. Your phrase “churning out stories” is an interesting one. Some of our competitors are looking at volume, because they have other priorities around engagement of advertisers, et cetera. We are really looking at quality. Our resourcing is slimmer than it has ever been, frankly, but we do well to cover the country. You are talking particularly about the Highlands. We offer that representation of stories. You talked about radio and online. We operate a structure that is story-based now, so we do not have separate journalists doing things for radio, television and digital. That is not the way that we operate. We have story teams. It is based on a network model that we ran in London as well. What happens is that journalists will be deployed on a story or, ideally, will bring the story. Our journalists are brilliant at bringing stories—we do a lot of exclusive journalism—and they will do it for all platforms. You will have heard a story on “Good Morning Scotland”. You will see a written piece by the same journalist most of the time, and a piece for television. We find that that is clearly a much more productive way of working, where one journalist takes ownership of a story and does it cross-platform. I would come back to the audience. Our job is to make sure that, wherever you choose to consume your news, we are pushing those stories out to you. It is our job to be there to meet you as your habits change, whether you are on digital, whether you are primarily a radio listener or whether you sit and watch the 6.30 news in the evening.

Thanks for coming along today. This is for Louise and Margaret. How does the work that you and the team do contribute to the BBC’s purpose and objectives in Scotland?

Everything that we do is for the BBC’s purpose, which is to inform, educate and entertain. I manage a commissioning team that sits across the platforms—across TV, iPlayer, radio and Sounds. My team works across all of what we would call the genres of programme making, so unscripted and scripted, which is factual, documentary, entertainment, comedy and drama. We are increasingly delivering a lot more online as well, to Hayley’s point about digital being a priority. In terms of going where the audience is going, one of my big strategic aims is to grow iPlayer and to make sure that we have a universal service and a universal offering for audiences in Scotland, where they can see and hear themselves represented. In terms of iPlayer, our growth strategy is fantastic. That is where I am absolutely delivering on the BBC’s strategy. Since channel launch, iPlayer for Scotland content has grown by about 250%. I just love that stat. That really shows that what the team is doing and what the industry in Scotland and the UK are delivering for audiences in Scotland is really working. Beyond iPlayer, our growth in terms of Sounds is incredible. We have about a 17% increase in on-demand on Sounds year on year, which is, again, down to the fact that we have live listening increasing on Sounds by about 14%. The podcast strategy, where we can reach a much wider audience as well, is just delivering on that purpose of a broad audience within Scotland where they can see and hear themselves. Within our online products, I just cannot say enough good things about the team that runs Bitesize, really delivering on that education strategy. The team that works on Bitesize delivers not just the online pages that you will see. They also do live events in schools. They do outreach. They run a brand called Authors Live, where they bring brilliant writing talent into the BBC in front of schoolchildren, and we put that on iPlayer. It is a very broad job that I have but, at each point within my commissioning team, we are always thinking, first of all, “What audience are we hitting with this programme? Can we get value for money for the licence fee payer? What is the best way to reach that audience in terms of the platform that we are using?”

Just picking up on Louise’s point, our Gaelic services do virtually everything that our English language services do, but through the prism of the Gaelic language. Our services on television and on radio and, increasingly, on the digital platforms aim to offer a credible and relevant service to Gaelic speakers and learners, but also offer non-speakers a window or a door to the Gaelic language and culture. We try to meet the aspirations of both of these audience polls, and we know that our audiences use the services in different ways. In order to reach out to non-Gaelic speakers, our documentary, music and sport content is really attractive. You do not need to have high levels of fluency to enjoy that content, and it is incredibly popular. For our core audience, our news service is a big driver. To Mr MacDonald’s point about ensuring that stories from the Highlands and Islands are surfaced elsewhere in the BBC, in our Inverness newsroom, English language journalists and Gaelic language journalists are working much better together and in a more coherent way than they ever have in order to ensure that stories from the Highlands and Islands are reflected in our digital products. For our core audience, news, entertainment, events, drama and children’s programmes are incredibly important to us. We have children’s programmes on BBC Alba every evening from 5 o’clock to 7 o’clock, and we have a CBBC Alba sub-brand from the main English language brands, if you like. Following on from that, we have a learning zone every evening. Our collaboration around the new SpeakGaelic resource, which has, again, been a partnership endeavour between ourselves and MG Alba, Bòrd na Gàidhlig and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, has had a massive impact in terms of learning the language. We are ambitious for the Gaelic language. We are ambitious for our audience. We punch well above our weight in creative terms and in terms of ambition. Partnership lies at the heart of BBC Alba. It lies at the heart of the way that we work, both organisationally and structurally. We also partner well within the BBC and with other agencies and creative organisations in the UK, in Europe and, increasingly, worldwide.

I expect that you will always be looking forward, and Hayley gave the four themes there, but what are your priorities for 2025 and beyond?

The priorities for me and my team are to continue on that iPlayer and Sounds growth trajectory. We are in the hits business. We want some big hits from Scotland, quite frankly, so I am very excited about some of the programmes that we have coming up. To Margaret Mary’s point, some of these programmes that we are commissioning are also commissioned in partnership with other international organisations. You never want to call out too many programmes—you do not want to leave anyone out—but we have the return of “Dinosaur” for a second series, which is co-funded with Hulu. It is a fantastic Scottish comedy fronted by Ashley Storrie, who we have worked with for years as part of working with new talent. Things such as seeing her at the front of a big show like that, which will be shown not just in Scotland and the UK, co-commissioned with Network Comedy, but also across in America with Hulu, feel really exciting. To Hayley’s strategy point about Scotland to the world, we just want to do more things like that. We have quite a few examples of shows like that, which, hopefully, you will all enjoy. They will be seen not just by audiences in the UK, but will be a good Scottish portrayal going worldwide, and Margaret Mary has a fantastic example of that as well.

A date for everybody’s diary is 14 January, when BBC Alba is launching our first ever high-end drama series, “An t-Eilean”—“The Island”. Mr MacDonald: I have seen it.

Have you seen it? Mr MacDonald: We got a preview. We were all so excited, I cannot tell you. We could not tear ourselves away.

We were all intrigued, because the trailer stopped at a cliffhanger, so you have a bit of a captive audience already for that one.

That is fantastic. It is a really big thing for us.

I am a fan of BBC iPlayer. In fact, I always catch up on “The Traitors” through BBC iPlayer, which I believe is made or filmed in Scotland. Given that people have to subscribe to a TV licence, I am just wondering if you are exploring any other possibilities for people to be able to access BBC iPlayer or through subscription. You have to then sign up for it, have an email address and log in, in certain circumstances. I am just wondering if, in the future or even now, you are exploring these opportunities.

We are encouraging people to log in, because it allows us to give people a more personalised experience. To the wider point around subscription-based, that is part of a charter renewal conversation, which Hayley might want to say something on.

You probably heard the chair, in his first speech, talk about the fact that we need our service to feel universal. If we have subscription services, it excludes people who potentially cannot afford that—the disenfranchised, or the less well-off. Our sense is that we are content first and we make programmes. However you want to receive them, and when and where, is increasingly a question. As you say, you presumably watch “The Traitors” when it suits you better than when it is on live. We want to make that available to everyone. We are all about giving people the choice of when and where they consume our programmes, but anything around a subscription model does not fit in with the universality piece.

On your priorities for the coming years, I have noted that you have indicated in your evidence that one of the three aims or objectives of BBC Scotland is to bring people together. Nothing brings people together like major sporting events, and you made reference to that, Hayley. What are your plans over the next couple of years? Will BBC Scotland be covering, for instance, the Commonwealth Games coming to Glasgow? Can I also ask you about our coverage of football? BBC Scotland’s coverage of the women’s game is absolutely excellent, and that should be encouraged. What about Scotland’s men’s football team being free to air and available to everyone? You have just made reference to the less well‑off in society not being able to afford subscription channels. Can that be available to everyone? That would bring the nation together.

It really would. Thanks for mentioning the women’s football. We have done a brilliant job over the last few years, and we can take some credit for growing the game and the popularity of women’s football. I am really proud of that, and of the women on either side of me for making that happen. I know how important sport is to Scottish audiences. I am a big football fan. These moments are huge for us. Of course, we would love to have the men’s internationals. These things are not cheap, and we have to think about value for money in all our decision making. In order to pay for one thing, there is no extra money. What are we not doing in order to fund something else? I do not really want to go much further than that, because, as you can imagine, there are some live discussions going on, but I would, of course, be delighted if we could bring those to free-to-air audiences. You mentioned the Commonwealth Games, which we will cover. Again, there are conversations going on about rights, which I cannot go into in this room. If you look back at what we did the last time and that sense of how we cover sport as a whole, it is not just about the live match or the game. It is about what we do around the outside. That sense of how we bring a city and a country together is really important to me. In terms of our broad coverage of sport as well, we tell the stories of Scottish sport away from those live matches. I do not disagree at all about the importance of those moments, but we have told stories about Andy Murray and Doddie Weir. We have a great documentary on Alex Ferguson at the moment. That sense of how we deliver stories about Scottish sport to audiences is much wider than just the live events.

Thank you very much. Before we pass on to the next question, which will be from Angus, can I just say this? You are all really passionate about what you do. We have a lot of questions that we want to ask. Could you just keep the answers a tiny bit shorter? We will try to be disciplined too. Thank you. Q11            Mr MacDonald: Do you get the impression that the BBC corporation appreciates BBC Scotland and that we get the share of the funding and support from the parent organisation?

Yes. I really do. Q12            Mr MacDonald: Do you have a pay review coming up soon?

No. In the last year, we spent almost £300 million on content in Scotland. Increasingly, across the UK project, the whole of the BBC is behind that. More and more content is coming to Scotland and out of Scotland. More and more parts of the network are based in Glasgow than ever before. My sense is that this is a BBC-wide mission. The BBC has changed massively in the time that I have worked there, since 1996. That sense of where I sit within the BBC’s decision making, conversation and influence is completely different than it probably was 20 years ago.

It is good to see you, Hayley. It is nice to be asking you the questions rather than to be on one of your shows where I am the one being asked the difficult questions. What a relief that is. Following on from what was being asked there, it is still very much the case, as a report that came out last year emphasised, that much of the work that is being done in terms of reaching the quota for commissioning in Scotland derives from organisations that are based in London essentially putting an office into Scotland in order to meet that quota. Do you believe that the BBC is ultimately ensuring that Scotland is benefiting in the way that it possibly should? The evidence would suggest that there is a lot of work still to be done in that context.

I am going to apologise in advance, because this is not a very short answer. I think that you are referring to the Screen Scotland report. We work very closely with Screen Scotland. Its basic mission is to increase the creative sector and creative talent coming through Scotland, and we are totally aligned on that. That particular report that they did looked at things through only one prism. It looked at programmes by volume, or number of programmes made. Its definition of what a Scottish company is was one that has no parent company elsewhere. We work with a really broad range of production companies—more than 70. We do, of course, support indigenous Scottish companies that are absolutely based in Scotland. There are a number of companies that have a significant Scottish base, but a parent company elsewhere—for example, to my previous role, Mentorn. Mentorn is part of a bigger company that is based in Wales. Mentorn has a significant base in Glasgow. “Question Time” moving to Glasgow was a big thing, and it gave me and many people since then a career opportunity. I would argue that that is absolutely relevant, and there is nothing odd about that being part of our quotas. It has given Scottish talent the opportunity to work on a really big network show. Since Mentorn moved there, it has expanded. We now make “Debate Night” from Mentorn as well, which is a really big part of that Scottish debate programming that we have. There are other examples, such as “Landward”, which has been made in Scotland for almost 50 years by BBC Studios. Under the way that that report was put together, that would not count. BBC Studios has a significant base, both in Glasgow and in Aberdeen, but it clearly has a parent company, i.e. there is a base in London. We work with people across a much wider range of definitions of what Scottish looks like than that particular report would have said. The other thing that I would say is that we are in the business of saying yes to expansion in Scotland. There is a third example, which is that we will use an English-based company that wants to do work in Scotland, because we are about supporting the sector overall. For example, we have a production company at the moment that is based in England, has done several series of programmes for us in England, and now wants to make one in Scotland. It will hire a significant number of freelancers in the industry in Scotland and support their careers. We know how difficult the sector is at the moment. Our base of what looks and feels Scottish is much wider than that report necessarily defined. The other thing to say about that volume piece is that we make a lot of programmes that would not have qualified in that report through volume, such as “Shetland” or “Question Time”, because we do not make enough editions of those programmes to qualify. The report is valuable, and it is particularly valuable to Screen Scotland, because of their key ambition, which we share, but we have a much wider range of definitions of how that works.

In respect of “Question Time”, I understand the point that you are making. Of course, “Question Time” was a long-established show long before it moved to Scotland. It was, essentially, at the time, a lift and shift by the BBC in order to try to meet its quota requirements. I do not think that there would be any disagreement in relation to that, but the success that has been there from the Scottish team is to be commended and celebrated. For every example like that, you have a similar example, such as the World Snooker Championship, which is in Sheffield. I am struggling to see how that is of huge benefit to anyone bar the BBC in terms of meeting its quota, because there does not seem to be any unique Scottish production value or creativity value deriving from that.

Again, I will mention a couple of things, and I will try to be brief. The Sheffield example in particular is made by a Scottish production company. We follow the Ofcom guidelines as to what is Scottish. Our ambition is to follow them on at least two of the three criteria. One is that it is a Scotland-based company that makes it. The Scotland-based company that makes it makes it in Sheffield, because that is where the snooker is. It is one example. The broader picture is that we are doing much better than our quotas, on both spend and share, in terms of the volume of stuff that we make. I would say that there is the odd example like the Sheffield one, where you might think that we are meeting that quota on only one criteria, but, broadly speaking, we are beating our quotas. We are making more content for more people in Scotland, and giving more people jobs. Overall, you can look at examples where we have indigenous Scottish companies that have parent companies that do good work in Scotland.

I have just one final question in relation to that. I appreciate your answer in that context. Of course, “Question Time” is a couple of hours long in terms of its runtime with regards to the iPlayer and the crossover on to the BBC channel. The snooker show, for instance, would be thousands of hours, which all applies towards the same quota, despite the production value being slightly different, and the number of people involved being slightly lower. I am struggling, again, to understand how that does anything but allow the BBC to meet its quota targets as opposed to delivering genuine, good-quality jobs and production value for a Scottish audience, using Scottish people going forward.

The quotas are for hours and for spend. On hours, we are doing a lot better than that 8%. Even if there is a volume of hours for the snooker, we are still way above what that quota would look like. In terms of the jobs value, there are those bigger pieces, such as “Question Time”, but it is particularly things like the dramas and what “Shetland” has done in terms of nine series, with hundreds of jobs in a part of the country that probably had no media involvement at all before that, apart from the news that we do. It is very different from some of that high-volume, lower-spend end of things, which probably does not have as many jobs attached to it. We are doing a lot of content that employs a lot of people in high-value, high-engagement jobs, but I do not think that it was quite reflected in that report.

Thank you for coming along today. My question is directed to Hayley. Ofcom has found that positive impressions of the BBC are less common in Scotland than in some other parts of the UK, including Wales and Northern Ireland. Why do you think this is the case?

We could sit here and rehash why we think that we live in an increasingly polarised society and how that has a particular tone in Scotland. The political situation in Scotland is unique. We have talked about football, which can polarise people, but I am interested in what we do now. Clearly, this is a challenge, but it is also a massive opportunity for me. As I say, what we have been able to show in the last year is that, if we get it right, that can change really quickly. With those For Me scores, it is about whether we get the content right and deliver what we think people want. It is not just our opinions, but, as I say, we now have a lot more data about what people want from us, what they are enjoying and what they want us to do more of. The opportunity is there for us to improve on those scores, and the opportunity for us is to really serve the Scottish audience. Just touching on the politics, our approval ratings went up between the last two general elections in 2019 and 2024. I am an optimist, but there is a really positive case to make to say that, if we get it right, we can improve those scores. If we deliver for Scottish audiences, we can have a good relationship with them and build on that.

As a caveat to the question, the BBC’s income from licence fee payments in Scotland has been falling over recent years. Are you concerned that this may reflect declining engagement with the BBC among Scottish audiences?

It is really important to remember that people now have more choice than ever. It is our job to make sure that, in that world, we are giving people reasons to choose us. There are lots of reasons why people may not want to pay their licence fee, not least the cost of living crisis. As I say, if we can make that difference with the content, we need to make the argument that we are worth people’s money. People have a lot of things to spend their money on. They have a lot of choice in terms of the media that they consume. Audiences in Scotland watch more television than in any other part of the country, so there is a prize to win there. Of course, it is a concern that people do not want to pay their licence fee, but it is our job to make sure that we are giving them good reasons for why it is worth their money.

Good morning. The BBC Scotland channel has been on air for six years now, but it is being watched by only 13% of Scottish adults, and viewing figures continue to decline. You will not be happy with that performance, but what are you doing to try to claw that back?

I was part of the commissioning team that launched the channel. Six years is a long time in the media landscape, especially with changing viewing habits. There is no denying that we are in a world of linear decline. That is what the data tells us. Over the past couple of years, the performance of the Scotland channel has held steady. I am really proud of that, to be honest, because other channels are seeing a 6% decline. We saw a 0.3% decline last year, which is pretty even. To be honest, in terms of a commissioning strategy, the channel is just one outlet for us to reach audiences. iPlayer has also changed a lot over the past six years. The prominence of Scottish content on iPlayer has improved massively. We now have a new and trending reel on the front of iPlayer. I do not know if you have seen it, but, in terms of that first programme that you see in that new and trending reel, I hope that, if you are based in Scotland, you should be seeing more Scottish prominence there, and we are getting more programmes on the front of iPlayer than ever. While I still obsessively check the viewing figures for the BBC Scotland channel every morning—I cannot deny that I do, because it is still so important that we are out there—I am really homing in on how we are doing on iPlayer. Although the linear decline that we are seeing is a concern, it is just the reality, and the growth in iPlayer is offsetting that, particularly for Scottish content. We do know what drives a linear audience. Like Hayley says, audiences in Scotland watch more telly than anyone. Live football performs brilliantly for us on the Scotland channel. We have new factual content like “Inside Barlinnie” and “Highland Cops”, which are premier launches that we can put on the channel and that people still absolutely turn up for. “Beechgrove” and “Landward” are still driving a massive linear audience. We have “Debate Night”. We have just launched a new news programme, which started the channel really well on its first go. We do know that we can get a linear audience. It is just that it is not our only focus. iPlayer is absolutely the future of where audiences are going, so we need to keep our eyes on the growth there.

Has the vision for what the channel should offer changed at all since it was launched?

When the channel launched, it was so exciting. We had almost a blank canvas. Being part of that commissioning team was hugely exciting, and we were jumping into the unknown, but the principles still remain. We control a budget for Scotland. It is all about reflecting Scotland’s people back to them, to the rest of the UK and to the world. Those pillars of modern Scotland have not really changed. Looking at the content mix, my role in the commissioning team, when we launched the channel, was really about new talent and getting some of those new faces coming through, such as Ashley Storrie, who I mentioned, and some of the young talent who have gone on to present other things. We are doing fewer low-cost hours, and that is part of the strategy of moving towards high impact. In terms of some of the programmes that we would have commissioned at the start of the channel, generally and factually at the lower-cost end, we are now diverting that money into big dramas. We had “Rebus” and two series of “Granite Harbour”. We had “Mayflies”. We have just had “Only Child”, which is the comedy that has just blown it out of the water over Christmas. I am so pleased with that. We would not be able to invest in those higher-impact pieces if we did not stop doing the lower-cost and without the middle being squeezed, but that is absolutely in response to audience changes, to be quite honest. That is what audiences are expecting from us, so that is what we need to deliver.

Margaret Mary, the proportion of Gaelic speakers watching BBC Alba in an average week has fallen. The number that has been quoted is 59% in 2020, to 46% last year. What has gone wrong, and how are we going to improve that?

It is a similar story to what is happening globally. People are consuming media in a different way. BBC Alba is a linear TV channel, but it is incredibly important, as Louise was saying, that our content is manifested on digital platforms. The iPlayer is incredibly important to us. We also have our own YouTube channel. It is really important that our Gaelic language content is available where the audience can consume it. We have seen a decline in the linear channel, but we have also seen a 37% increase in our iPlayer stats. In fact, December was our highest iPlayer performance ever. The last year has delivered over 7 million views to Gaelic content. I am increasingly confident that people know and value the BBC Alba brand. If they can find it on iPlayer and find Gaelic content on Sounds, they find content that will delight them and offer a window into our world. It is just that balance between the utility of a linear service and that daily habit in terms of news and children’s programmes, but also ensuring that we have a window in digital as well.

Louise, just coming back to you for a second, there is no denying that 13% is a low figure. I understand what you are saying about linear decline and that it has pretty much held steady, but you would expect that 13% is a pretty hard and committed base, so you would not expect that to change much. When BBC Scotland was commissioned, what sort of figure was the expectation? What was the pitch, effectively? Where were you expecting it to be? If it has not reached that figure, why is that?

It comes back to the fact that it was launched six years ago, when linear viewing was much healthier. You cannot underestimate the massive shift.

What was it at its peak?

I would have to get back to you on that to give you the right figure, but we are not denying that there has been a decline. For us, it is trend. Bear in mind that the channel fluctuates from night to night as well. We can have an incredible night and, in the morning, be looking at amazing figures. If we get some live football games, we get hundreds of thousands of views. I commissioned a programme called “The Agency: Unfiltered”, which is about young women who run an influencer business in Scotland. It is a fantastic programme, with young people seeing themselves in a positive light in Scotland. That is absolutely one of my key focuses for people growing up in Scotland to have that, but it literally did nothing on linear, because that is not the audience on linear. Young audiences are not watching those things on linear. It is all about iPlayer for that show. When it launched, it had over 80% of 16-to-34-year-olds watching it, but it was all on iPlayer. I am looking at the linear figures on the channel and thinking, “Well, that is not great”, but then the iPlayer figures come in; they come in over 28 days now. That is really when we are looking at shows. Nobody wants their channel or their shop window to be in decline, but we have to just recognise that it is against a declining market. If the iPlayer year-on-year growth of 29% was not happening, I would be really concerned, but what I cannot do is change our commissioning strategy to focus on linear when that is not where the audience is.

My question is to Hayley. BBC Scotland’s flagship news programme “The Nine” was cancelled at the end of last year. I understand that you were the editor when it was originally launched back in 2019. What had you hoped that it would achieve at that stage? Did you consider at the time that it was necessary, when we already have Scottish news on BBC One Scotland—for instance, “Reporting Scotland” and the other regular bulletins throughout the day on BBC One? “The Nine” has been replaced now, as I understand it, by a half-hour news programme, starting at 7 pm, which immediately follows “Reporting Scotland”. Again, is that an unnecessary duplication? Is it, effectively, the same news being presented immediately after “Reporting Scotland” on BBC One, or will it be different? Is there a different take come 7 o’clock? What are you hoping to achieve from that, and will you be more successful in relation to viewing figures as a result?

I will start with “The Nine”. You are right that I was the launch editor of “The Nine”. I started the role of planning for and then launching “The Nine” in 2017, which, back to Louise’s point about linear audiences, was a long time ago. We had very different viewing habits in 2017 than we do now. I will always be incredibly proud of what we did on “The Nine”. GMS had been doing it for years in terms of radio programmes, but we delivered the first integrated news programme in Scotland where you could watch all your local, national, UK-wide and international news in one place, all through the prism of what was relevant to and interesting to Scottish audiences. Beyond the programme itself, as part of that bigger picture of what the launch of the channel allowed us to do, the influx of investment into Scotland at that point allowed us to hire in and develop a huge new swathe of talent at the experienced end of the market. We brought James Cook back from America. We hired Martin Geissler from ITN. We also brought in and developed a really diverse mix of younger reporters and producers from a really wide range of backgrounds. Many of them still work for us, but I am equally proud of the ones who do not. We have a young director who joined us from local commercial television in England and now directs the “Six” and “Ten” programmes. One of our reporters who joined us from Radio Tay, having never done television, made a “Panorama” at the end of last year. There are many stories of success. A number of people who worked for me now work on big network brands, so I will always be proud of that, but audiences and habits change, and we have to move with them, as we have discussed. What the money from cancelling “The Nine” has allowed us to do is not just launch that 7 o’clock programme, which I will get to in a minute, but a whole suite of things. A half-hour programme on the channel, reflecting what audiences tell us they want, is closer to what the Scotland channel have told us over the last few years that they want. We are launching the “Scotcast” podcast, which starts next Monday. Martin Geissler will present it. I am really keen that we are part of that “cast” brand. It feels like a real gap in the market. It will be four days a week, with news and current affairs through the Scottish prism. We know that as many people listen to podcasts in Scotland as listen to Radio Scotland, so we absolutely need to be in that place, and I am really glad that we are doing that. We have invested more money in our digital news online. We want to be able to do more analysis and more in-depth, to do more live pages and to be more responsive at the weekend. It has allowed us to do that in a really big growth area for us. We have also committed to doing a number of extended “Reporting Scotland” programmes on really big days. We always did that with “The Nine”, and we did it with “Reporting Scotland” too, but, when there are really big days for Scottish news, we will extend that programme, make it longer and do an hour of news where necessary. Finally, the money allowed us to do some extra editions of “Debate Night” last year at really key moments during the general election. It is not just about cancelling one programme and making another. Going back to audience habits, it is a real suite of programmes. “News at Seven” is doing two things and there is a balance. We know that audiences on the channel like to see particularly Scottish stories reflected back from where they live and from the rest of Scotland, so we are really concentrating on that. I do not know if you have had a chance to watch it yet. It has been on for two nights. I am guessing that, if you have been down here, you have not had the chance to, but it has had a really strong start. We have got all the way around the country. We have done stories that perhaps would not have appeared on other news output, from Inverness to Aberdeen to the Borders. It is looking at things through the prism of the audience, so them telling their stories. What you might get is a little bit of duplication across “Reporting Scotland” and “News at Seven”, but you might get the story done from a policy and politics perspective on “Reporting Scotland”, and then the impact on real people in “News at Seven”. They can be watched in tandem, and you will get a little bit of duplication in the stories, although not terribly much. Last night’s lead story on “News at Seven” had not been on “Reporting Scotland”, but, equally, for some people who come in at 7 o’clock and have missed that hour of news, they will get something fresh. It is a really warm, empathetic, through-human-stories take on the news, and I am really pleased with it so far.

Research conducted by Ofcom in 2018 found that viewers in Scotland felt less visible than those in other parts of the UK. What has been done since then to address that issue, and is it still a challenge today?

Again, going back to the strategy, I am trying to look forward as opposed to looking back, having just started the job, but this work has been done before I have got there. We need to really push on with it. People want to see themselves reflected back across our output. The launch of the channel and all of its content, including the news that I have just talked about, was designed to make people feel more visible and to be able to see themselves reflected back. We know that that is what our audiences want, and that continues to be front and centre of our strategy. We know that, if you go right around the country, “Highland Cops”, “Shetland”, “Landward” and “Rebus” are really big examples of where programmes over-index with the audience in the place where they are made but are really popular across Scotland, and they over-index in Scotland if they are network programmes as well. Louise, you might want to talk about your commissioning strategy, because it absolutely fits with this example of how we reflect audiences really well back to themselves.

It is something that we take really seriously. The channel is doing a lot in that space, as is iPlayer now. Ofcom did a piece of research in 2022 that said that audiences who had watched the BBC Scotland channel had a better view of the BBC. We feel that that just plays into that strategy of people wanting to see and hear themselves reflected. It is not just within the BBC Scotland channel, but also in terms of our co-commissioning strategy. By that, I mean that we work very closely with our colleagues in the BBC network, who are commissioning for the whole of the UK. Honestly, in commissioning, we have never worked more closely together, and I can see just how much of the money that I control we are now spending in partnership with the BBC network to get bigger shows off the ground, so that they do not just go on BBC Scotland channel or a BBC One opt-out slot, but will be on BBC One, BBC Two or BBC Three. The audience data that we get shows us that these shows over-index in Scotland. First of all, that is good, in that we are spending the money in the right way for audiences in Scotland. We are also increasing our portrayal of Scotland throughout the UK, which is only a good thing as well. “Highland Cops” is a great example. I do not know if you saw “Confessions of a Teenage Fraudster”, but that was a BBC Three co-commission with Scotland, telling a story of a young fraudster come good. That over-indexed with audiences in Scotland, but also with working-class audiences, which is another key priority for us as a commissioning team.

When I was reading my papers, I came across the minutes from a meeting with the BBC Scotland Committee on 8 May 2024. I appreciate that none of you was at that meeting, but the committee noted how the phrase “backing British content” is better framed within Scotland as “homegrown”. Is that an approach to perhaps overcome the decline in some of the channels? Do you agree with that approach?

Just so I understand the question, do I agree with the approach of backing homegrown creativity?

This was the previous director in the Scotland report, and the committee noted how the phrase “backing British content” is better framed within Scotland as “homegrown”. I just wondered if that was a better way of promoting BBC Scotland rather than from a British perspective.

Nine out of the 10 of the indies that we work with are from Scotland. I know that there is the O&O report, but, in terms of the number of indies that we work with, it is about 90%. Without rewriting the BBC strategy, we do have a focus on Scottish talent and the Scottish production sector. That may be in reference to what the previous director was meaning there. In terms of the money that we have, we tend to look for creatives within Scotland. It is fantastic that Richard Gadd won the Golden Globes with his big Netflix show, but we are working with him for his next drama, which we are really excited about. He is a Scottish talent who we have worked with for years, so that, for us, is a really good example of homegrown talent.

To your question, the strategy that I started with includes—this is across the BBC—investing in homegrown storytelling. That is where we landed as the whole of the BBC. These strategies, as you can imagine, are worked on and worked on. The phraseology and how they quite align with audience needs is worked on for a long time. You will hear, in other Committees, no doubt, Tim Davie and others talking about homegrown storytelling. It is a phrase that resonates with audiences in Scotland, but one that resonates across the UK.

Margaret Mary, during your time working at the BBC, have you seen a shift in the importance of Gaelic content, or the prominence that it is given?

Last year, we celebrated the centenary of the BBC’s relationship with Gaelic broadcasting. The BBC and Gaelic go back a long way. The first Gaelic broadcast was a Gaelic sermon from Aberdeen. It was an audio broadcast, obviously. The relationship is one of inclusion. It has been part of the BBC’s portfolio. BBC Alba and Radio nan Gàidheal are proudly part of the BBC family, and we see our relationship with other BBC brands, such as the children’s brands CBeebies and CBBC. The drama that I spoke about earlier on is going out on BBC Alba, but also on BBC Four. The Gaelic language is absolutely a proud part of the BBC’s portfolio. The way that audiences can access other language content now has shifted, even in the last five years, and consumption on digital devices makes the audience much more familiar with consuming subtitled content. In itself, the language is not seen as a barrier to enjoying content in other languages, so I absolutely feel that our Gaelic services are part of the BBC portfolio, and a proud part too.

Looking back at last year, when there was the partnership agreement with BBC and MG Alba, how will you assess the success of that, and what are the arrangements for it?

The BBC and MG Alba formed a partnership in 2007, just before the channel was launched, and the Chair will remember that time. The two organisations came together to deliver something unique. At this juncture in time, when services are pivoting much more to digital, we felt that we should look at all areas of the partnership in terms of what both partners brought to audiences, and we have recalibrated the partnership. It is much stronger. Our partnership has always been strong, but having a focus on a digital future has allowed us to take a hard look at what the BBC and MG Alba can deliver. About 97% of MG Alba’s funding goes to the indie sector. The BBC delivers core public service content such as news, education, children’s and big music events such as the Mòd. It has also allowed the BBC to invest in core public service areas. We have invested £250,000 in Bitesize. Learning and education is really important to us. We have invested in digital journalism, and we are investing in the co-development of great homegrown stories, working with our English language colleagues to develop more great bilingual drama. That is what the review has allowed us to do: to examine what we do, and to ensure that our resources are pointing in the right direction, that we have content in the right places for audiences and that we are as fleet of foot as we can be. Q29            Mr MacDonald: I am going to run my two questions together, and they are about funding for Gaelic programming, basically. I know that there is a concern that we do not have the same legislative protection for the Gaelic language as they do, for example, in Wales. I know that John Morrison from MG Alba has said that there is a real concern about funding for the Gaelic language. Are you comfortable that you are getting the funding that we need and that we have the protection, so that we do not lose our Gaelic coverage?

From a BBC point of view, the funding for BBC Alba has incrementally increased over time, from the launch in 2008 to the recent investment off the back of the partnership agreement. There are funding challenges. It is a partnership, and our partners’ funding has remained relatively stable during that period, but we are looking at the various mechanisms that can be deployed in order to ensure that we have a sufficient funding and legislative framework going forward. Again, our partners and ourselves work together on that. The BBC has increased its funding over time. Last year, we invested in news, journalism and digital technology, for example in Inverness. The BBC’s investment is sitting around £10 million, and I think MG Alba’s regular funding is sitting in the region of £12 million at the moment.

You do not think we need legislative protection for the money spent on Gaelic programmes, as they have in Wales.

Within the media legislation, the Gaelic language is recognised. Again, I guess there is an opportunity to examine that with the forthcoming charter.

The Across the UK project has really transformed the BBC. In the last 10 to 15 years, it has become unrecognisable in terms of where people sit and where decisions are made, and we have benefited from that so far. For example, there is a big network news department now sitting in Glasgow. We lead the technology story team, who have an editor and a team of about 20 who sit in Glasgow. That used to be based in London, and that has been a real success. We also have people working in news growth and on iPlayer and in other roles in news, so it is totally different than it was 10 to 15 years ago. Last year, we set up a joint Scotland and Northern Ireland audio network, based in Glasgow and a bit in Northern Ireland, and we make programmes out of Glasgow, including “Loose Ends” and “Front Row”. All those programmes were previously based in London. We have got to a really good place, and my message is always that we are open for business. We would like more. We are really interested in what else could come out of Scotland, not just Glasgow. That is the broader picture of where we are with Across the UK. As I say, in terms of that sense of how we collaborate and work together, the BBC feels like a really different place, and there is a sense of influence and opportunity to discuss all of our needs in the context of Across the UK. You will have heard the chair talk about how it is really important that that project continues and that more work is done across the BBC and away from inside the M25, and we have been real beneficiaries of that so far. In a commissioning sense, we need to talk about the detail, but we have 15 commissioners in Scotland, five of whom are network and 10 of whom work for Scotland. They all work really closely together. That sense that the decision-making happens in Glasgow between the two teams, with network and Scotland working together, is a really different model than you might have seen a couple of decades ago. I will let you expand on that.

My commissioning team sits right next to network commissioners who work across daytime, comedy and drama. For example, the drama I referenced, “Half Man”, which is coming next year from Richard Gadd, who created “Baby Reindeer”, is commissioned between BBC Scotland and BBC Drama. Lindsay Salt is the head of drama, I am the head of commissioning in Scotland, and our two commissioners, Gaynor Holmes and Gavin Smith, are co-commissioning that, working hand-in-hand on that title. It is the same for “Only Child”, which is between Gavin in my team and Gregor Sharp, who works to Jon, who is the head of comedy. It has never been so collegiate and that is all down to the co-commissioning strategy, where the tick in terms of signing off or commissioning a project between myself and whoever the genre head is happening very smoothly. We have commissioners who sit in Scotland who can work together on those programmes, and that is across genres, not just scripted. In terms of factual entertainment, the commissioner for “The Traitors”, Neil McCallum, also sits in Scotland, and that is filmed up in the north of Scotland. We really do have a really good, close working relationship for commissioning in Scotland and across the UK as well.

I used to run Bitesize for Scotland. That was my first job in the BBC when I came back from London to live in Scotland. The way the Bitesize team is constructed is that we have a team sitting in Scotland who create resources for the Scottish curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence, and that goes into a certain part of Bitesize. There are teams across the whole of the UK commissioning content for Bitesize. We also have a Gaelic language team, there is a team in Wales and there is a team covering GCSEs, but they all form part of one Bitesize team; they just happen to be in different locales. That has been very successful. When I took over Bitesize, it was very separate. The teams had commissioned and created their webpages in isolation. Now, everyone works to one platform and one template. They share resources and budgets. We are always trying to reduce duplication and make it as efficient as possible. I think the last stat I read on Bitesize was that 75% of young people use Bitesize, which is incredible. To your wider point about how that impacts Scotland, we obviously worry about young audiences and their relationship with the BBC, and Bitesize is where we know they have a strong relationship. It is a trust relationship, and that carries them through, hopefully, into other platforms, such as iPlayer and Sounds, which we can promote on Bitesize as well.

I believe so, yes.

I think we over-index in Scotland. We are very focused on the Scottish curriculum, and, as Louise says, we have this base of services for efficiency reasons, but everything is absolutely tailored to Scottish kids, and we do really well in Scotland.

Can I just follow on slightly from Susan’s question, but also refer back a little bit to Stephen’s as well? “The Traitors” has been mentioned a couple of times today, and of course it has been a huge hit for the BBC, but my understanding is that certainly series 1 and 2 are not classified by Ofcom as made in Scotland. In order to qualify, you have to tick two of three boxes. One is about having a substantive base in Scotland, one is about the proportion of the budget being spent in Scotland, and the other is about the percentage of the production team living in Scotland. Although “The Traitors” is obviously filmed in Scotland, it is produced and edited in London. Is it not possible to do the production and editing work in Scotland? If we do we already have the skills and talents—I would be surprised if we did not—could we upskill people in Scotland to allow them to be involved in the production all the way through?

Yes, you are right that we absolutely do have the skills. What happens with programmes like “The Traitors” is that programmes develop. I think “The Traitors” does qualify as Scottish under Ofcom. There are three criteria; we would like to qualify for at least two of these criteria, although we would like to go above the minimum. As you know, we are in series 3 now, and what has happened with “The Traitors” is that the level of production and talent in Scotland has increased as the programme goes on. I will have to get back to you on the exact figures. The sense of upskilling and getting to a place is a gradual thing. I talked earlier about Mentorn, which I have a close relationship with. You are right that it moved, and then gradually more and more of the Scottish talent came through and we were able to base all the aspects of “Question Time” here. The same has happened with “The Traitors”. We have got more and more talent based in Scotland than perhaps in series 1 and 2, but these things evolve over time.

That is interesting. It will be interesting to see how series 3 is classified, then, going forward.

I should begin by declaring some interests as the chair of the BBC APPG, a recipient of BBC hospitality, and a former employee of the Prospect and Bectu unions, which represent BBC staff. In December 2021, the BBC and Screen Scotland said that there was an urgent need to address skills shortages in the screen industry. Are skills shortages still limiting the growth of TV and film production in Scotland?

As we have said throughout this morning, the industry is changing and moving, and we have to make sure that we can keep up with that. For example, I think we have 68 apprentices working in Scotland at the moment, and they are not all working in news or current affairs. We have news apprentices, production apprentices, engineering apprentices and HR apprentices. We have apprentices across the whole spectrum, and they are not all in Glasgow either. We have got them in Shetland, Inverness, Aberdeen, etc. We spend a lot of money on skilling inside the BBC. Outside of the BBC, it is really important to us that the sector is able to deliver as the industry changes. For example, on some productions—"Granite Harbour” was one of them—we put in, alongside the production, a training programme. We look at training to ensure that people have the right skills, and we work really closely with Screen Scotland and other agencies to make sure that, as we pivot towards high impact and as the model changes and as the programmes we ask people to make for us change, people have the skills to go with that.

The Across the UK strategy included a commitment to partner with local education providers, which I think you have just touched on, to grow the skills base needed to operate the BBC’s production studios in places such as Glasgow. Can you elaborate a bit further on the progress that has been made on that?

We do a number of things. We work closely with colleges and universities to make sure that they know what it is that we need and that their graduates can come and work with us. A number of our staff go and talk to college and university courses. I have been asked to do it in the past, and I know a number of our colleagues will do that, and talk to people about their careers, what we need from people and the skillset that they need. We have really close relationships in Scotland with all of those providers, and we want to try to keep that conversation going, because, as I say, it is ever-evolving.

Yesterday, at the CMS Committee, we heard a lot about how there had been a big boom in content commissioning a few years ago that has now dried up a little from the major streamers, which has resulted in some independent production companies having to close, or there not being enough work commissioned. How does that sit with the skills shortage as well? It is interesting that there is almost a surplus in some areas and a shortage in others.

Let us not pretend that life is easy as a production company or a freelancer in our industry at the moment. We have financial challenges but our competitors are also challenged in various ways, and we know that a large number of people, for example, work in our sector and freelancers are out of work. We work very hard in terms of licence fees. Some 75% of the money spent in Scotland is spent by the BBC. We cannot work in isolation. We do not want to be the last man standing. We really want the sector to flourish, but with other parts of the industry contributing to that as well.

That takes me on to streaming. Louise, perhaps this is for you. How has the BBC’s relationship with streaming companies such as Amazon and Netflix changed in recent years, both in general and in Scotland specifically?

We are all part of the ecosystem, are we not? What we do in the BBC is very different from what the streamers do. They have a commercial model. We are a universal broadcaster. To Hayley’s point, there is massive pressure on the sector at the moment. We are very aware of that. We are also very aware of the inflationary costs of production, which have increased massively over the last few years. This is all against the audience appetite for more high-end TV. There is a good balance to be struck. How it has changed for us in Scotland is we are working increasingly in partnership with streamers and other broadcasters. I have mentioned “Half Man”, which is in partnership with BBC Drama and HBO. “Dinosaurs” is in partnership with BBC Comedy and Hulu. We have got a BBC Scotland drama commission with Sky New Zealand that is coming this year. We are looking to the market for good partners and to find the right projects that we can all support. There is a huge appetite to work more in collaboration. There has never been more appetite for content from Scotland. I was at an international market last year, and there was a lot of conversation about what was coming out of Scotland and the exciting talents, which the BBC and the streamers all contribute to. We are all contributing to that excitement about Scottish content. Margaret Mary’s example of “The Island” is an excellent one that is absolutely a funding partnership, with lots of partners coming together to make a bigger product rather than everybody commissioning smaller things individually.

When you collaborate with the companies you mentioned, and perhaps also the bigger streamers, do you think it is possible to retain a distinctly Scottish end product if you do work together?

Yes. That is what we bring to the table. It is not my commission, but Gaynor Holmes, who commissions for BBC Drama, has commissioned our new “Lockerbie” drama with Netflix. That is absolutely telling the authentic story of Lockerbie, but it will also go on the Netflix platform. One of our key criteria for working with any partner is that Scottish portrayal is at the heart of everything we do. If we put money on the table for a project, that is what we want from it.

When you compare yourselves against those other companies, what do you think is distinctive about what the BBC brings to the Scottish screen sector, both from an industry perspective and for audiences?

That is a really good question. I am not sure if this is jargon but, for us, authentic portrayal is what we think about. Will people and audiences in Scotland recognise themselves when they watch this programme? That is what we bring, and the commissioners in my team, our audience team and our marketing team are very close to our audiences. We are much closer to our audiences in our communities and in sensibility. That is what we look for as BBC commissioners, and that is what sets us apart. We have programmes that we have commissioned that feel very authentic, but then have been bought by streamers such as Netflix and Amazon. We look for quality but we also look for authenticity. If you get those two things right, then you are delivering for your audience in Scotland, but those indies can then sell those programmes across the world, which is obviously brilliant for them as a business too.

For Margaret Mary, have streaming companies shown any interest in content for Gaelic-speaking audiences?

No, not yet. I am sure they will.

Honestly, I have no evidence of that. I was thinking about our news team yesterday in particular, but we have really high‑quality people working in Scotland, and that is because not just the BBC but Scotland as a whole is an amazing place to be. Going back to your questions about Across the UK, we have not struggled to persuade people to come to Scotland. People want to live and work in Scotland. There is a great quality of life, so I have no evidence of that.

Good morning. We know that impartiality is prescribed in the BBC’s charter and it is really important, and no one is doubting BBC Scotland’s or any of your individual sincere commitment to impartiality. Despite this, in the mid-term review, there were concerns of perceived lack of impartiality throughout the BBC, but particularly in the news content. This will especially be on our minds in the next 18 months in the run-up to the Scottish Parliament elections, but at all times how are you addressing this, both in terms of representation and what people see and hear? How are you going to ensure both that audiences are seeing the impartiality that you are trying to deliver and also that it is truly impartial?

It is incredibly important to me that we are impartial and that audiences trust us. For a little bit of context, we are still the most trusted news provider by some distance, but we are not complacent at all about this. We run impartiality training. Every journalist, from new starts through to people who have been with us for years and years, have impartiality training. We monitor impartiality. We piloted—it is now being rolled out—impartiality champions across BBC Scotland. BBC Scotland was the pilot, and it was the idea of somebody in Scotland. They are now placed within teams and able to call stuff out if they think it is not quite working. That is going to be rolled out across other parts of the BBC now. I have real faith in our journalists. They work in, occasionally, a tricky environment, particularly in the political sphere, although it is not exclusively that. We cover politics across the whole piece. Our journalists across the whole country cover the impact of politics, so it all need to feel like it is really impartial. Going back to what I said earlier about a polarised society, we have our particular challenges in Scotland, but we have a brilliant team of journalists who I am confident can address them. It is quite the opposite of looking at the next Scottish election and thinking that things are potentially going to be problematic. I really think that that is when we will prove ourselves. I go back to that general election figure: our approval ratings went up between the two elections. It is absolutely possible to improve the way that people see us in terms of our impartiality scores, but I have real confidence in the way that we tackle impartiality. It is across everything, is it not? Are we covering the whole country? Are we geographically based? Is there impartiality of viewpoints? Is every view represented? That is really important to us. I have been in lots of production meetings in my time, and “What else?” is often the question. It is not just about whether we are hitting the boxes, but what else we need to do. I go back to the audience. We may say that we have representation across the piste, but does the audience understand the wider picture at this point? What else do we have to do? That explanation, analysis and in-depth journalism, often on our website but across all of our output, is where we can really deliver on that.

To follow up really briefly, how do you monitor or measure levels of either actual or, more likely, perceived impartiality? Is that all internal? Is there some external? How do you display this to the public? If we are to tackle perceived levels of impartiality, that needs to be the message that is coming across as well.

As I say, we have our own internal mechanisms of measuring things. Quite frankly, people tell us. The audience really tell us what they think now. As you will know, there are also external surveys around levels of impartiality and perceived trust in various broadcasters. As I say, we are not complacent but we do regularly come out as by far the most trusted broadcaster. I have teenage daughters, and where they get their news from is a much wider range of sources than when I was their age. It is really important in the modern world that they feel that they can trust the BBC.

Do you see the charter review as an opportunity or a risk for BBC Scotland?

It is a massive opportunity. Across the BBC, we are about to embark on an engagement exercise with audiences, and Scottish audiences will play a major role in that. What we really want to do is to have a conversation about what our purpose is and what is wanted from us. We will take our lead from what they tell us. In terms of what Scotland wants to get out of the charter renewal process, we will be led by what our audiences tell us. It is a real opportunity to have a detailed discussion about what our purpose is, what people want and need from us and how we can deliver that. Clearly, we need to have a sustainable financial model in order to do that. We need everyone to support that. We need the support of people in this room. What do you need from us in order to help us with that debate? What is the conversation going forward? It is definitely an opportunity, but we do need the sustainable financial model.

Making sure people like us are informed, and to explain to the 650 MPs, would be very important for you guys. You can lay out what is available and how we can help you.

Yes, absolutely. What do you need from us in order for us to ask for your help? Whether it is coming to visit us or whether it is coming into a studio to see how things are done and having a look at things first hand, we are very happy to help with whatever it is that you need from us.

If I were you, I would do a memo about what you think you are delivering and how we can help you. We are obviously not as informed as you are.

Again, events like this give that level of understanding of what it is that we are doing and the content we can talk about. Thank you.

Going forward to the charter review, is there any one thing in particular that the UK Government could do to help the BBC, and BBC Scotland particularly?

We are about to do this engagement exercise across the whole of the UK, but Scottish audiences are at the heart of it for us. We will very much be led by them as to what they say. I will really relish the opportunity to come back and talk to you a bit more once we have done that, but clearly, going back to your questions about the Across the UK strategy and what that looks like, we are open for business; we want the BBC to be represented in Scotland and to represent Scottish audiences as much as it can. We think it is a brilliant part of the BBC to work in. In terms of what we can deliver out of Scotland, I have huge ambitions. There are no limits to what we can deliver in Scotland. We have brilliant resourcing, particularly in Glasgow but across Scotland, in terms of studio space and the facilities we can offer. We can take more things in Scotland and we can really develop the creative sector through that, but, as I say, I will wait to see what the audience wants, because that is what matters to us most.

That sounds like a good note to end on. Thank you very much for that. It is fair to say that, over the years, this Committee has had an ongoing dialogue with BBC Scotland, and it is something we would want to maintain going forward. It has been very helpful and informative today, but we are also very grateful, Margaret Mary, to your colleagues in Stornoway. We had a very interesting visit with them and they did do their very best to promote “The Island”, so we will watch that one and other output from the channel with real interest going forward. Thank you all very much for that, and thank you very much for your time too.