Speeches by Hinds.

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

“I agree, but there remains a question about the direction of causality. It is also possible that people who are interested in the English language and interested in Britain are more likely to both study in the UK and consume BBC content.”

“I think someone dwelling for 10 seconds is in your half-billion figure.”

“You mentioned the World Service, and I want to pick you up on something you said in your introductory words about how the BBC now has a global reach of half a billion users a week. Those are not like-for-like statistics. When you see charts that show this huge growth over 10 years, you are comparing an old world of peo…”

“To be fair, in what you just quoted there was also a question about direction of causality. I do not think that you can demonstrate that someone decided to come and study in the UK because they tuned in to a BBC programme.”

“Indeed.”

“Why are you not running comedy clubs, then?”

“I think we are probably going to come back to iPlayer a bit later in the session. May I bring you back now to Bitesize, which you mentioned? I think Bitesize is a great product; I have been known to use it myself. I think it is widely appreciated by many of its users and recognised as a quality product, but what do you…”

“Forgive me for interrupting. I accept all the stuff about it being a great product and all the rest of it. That is not in dispute.”

“I commend the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan), as well as his two friends and allies who have just spoken, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), on bringing this important subject to Westminster Hall. T…”

“I agree with large parts of what the hon. Gentleman says. The timeframes are obviously shorter this time than they were for say, the industrial revolution, the printing press or any of the other massive changes that we have seen in the past. When Gutenberg invented his printing press, I am not sure it was foreseeable t…”

“We are not going to turn this into a whole hour about “Scooby-Doo”, but you say people come for “Scooby-Doo” and stay for “Horrible Histories” and “Newsround”. That may have been true in a world of channels, but you are not in a world of channels now, are you? You are in a world of select and click. Do we have evidence…”

“The question is just this: is it your job? Entertain, inform and educate—sure. But British Broadcasting Corporation is also the name of the organisation.”

“I agree with the hon. Gentleman; this is, of course, not a left versus right argument. For example, the antitrust regime in the United States exists precisely to prevent the concentration of power. Indeed, all the companies in the list we heard earlier were American. We did not mention ByteDance or Huawei, which we cou…”

“I think you have conflated two things there. Media literacy and discerning verifiable news sources and so on is different from the discussion about Bitesize. My question was more that, at a time when you are reviewing the licence fee and the size and scope of the BBC, that is definitely a matter for debate.”

“I had better press on, because we have a number of colleagues to get through. Regarding generative AI and its effect on information integrity, which my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings referred to earlier, we should bear in mind that so far the massive growth in fraud, misinformation and …”

“We have 109,000 more young people out of work, the youth unemployment rate is at 16%, and our ratio between youth unemployment and overall unemployment is now at European levels. Why do we care about youth unemployment? There are two reasons: first, it is a matter of what is right and of justice for young people; and s…”

“My right hon. Friend is right. I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying zero-hours contracts, partly because the previous leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), used to bring them up at Prime Minister’s questions every week, and gave the impression that half the…”

“The Minister said that he would not move the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. I do not think that is unheard of, but I am curious to understand why, having put down such an amendment, the Government would not move it. There are three main things here, and the Minister has talked about two of them: the Emplo…”

“Of course the hon. Member is right. Nobody wants exploitative zero-hours contracts. Quite often when the Opposition talk about zero-hours contracts, the Government think that the work exploitative automatically gets inserted into the phrase. That is why we stopped exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts way back wh…”