Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]

Meeting date: Thursday, January 15, 2026

Official Report 579KB pdf

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Scottish Broadcasting

Good morning, and a warm welcome to the second meeting in 2026 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. Our first agenda item is to continue taking evidence on Scottish broadcasting. For our first panel, we are joined by David Smith, who is the director of screen at Screen Scotland; Paul McManus, who is the Scotland negotiations officer for Bectu; and Emily Oyama, who is the director of policy at the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television. A warm welcome to you all.

I will open with a broad question. How do you feel about the state of broadcasting in Scotland at the moment?

Thank you for inviting us to this meeting and for having the inquiry into this subject. I know that we are late in the parliamentary session, but it is an important subject and one that I hope will be carried forward into the next parliamentary session as well.

We cannot divide broadcasting and production—they are two sides of the same coin. When we as an agency think about the health of the sector, we are probably more focused on the production side than the broadcasting side, but they cannot be separated. Demand from the broadcasters drives the health of the production sector.

I used to have a speech in which I talked about how film and television are not the same thing and explained how they differ. However, television is also not the same thing any more—there are lots of different sides to it.

The simple answer to the question is that the health of broadcasting in Scotland is variable. Some aspects are doing well. High-end television drama production, driven by the public service broadcasters and inward investment, is very healthy; it is probably the healthiest that it has been in Scotland for 20 years. However, in the unscripted and documentary side, demand has more or less collapsed across many genres. That has meant that lots of companies and freelance workers are struggling.

As a general trend, the economic impact of the sector has continued to grow. That is driven in large part by high-end TV drama and film production—more by high-end TV drama, to be honest. We are confident that the broadcasting sector will continue to grow across the next decade. There is every evidence that people will continue to watch fantastic shows such as “The Traitors” and “Dept Q” in large numbers.

However, the picture will be variable. The move away from linear delivery on broadcast TV to non-linear delivery on platforms means that audience patterns have changed. I spent most of my career in television working in specialist factual arts, science and history production, but those genres are now driven by podcasts and YouTube. There has been a complete change of direction driven by audience practice and the move away from a linear schedule.

I would like to dig down on that point. You talked about documentaries, but there has been a huge uptake in true crime broadcasting and podcasting. Where is the line between documentaries and entertainment drama?

That is a difficult question, with a moving set of goalposts. I was joking with somebody yesterday that, if you want to make factual TV now, you have to focus on either air fryers or murder—in other words, you can do consumer products or serious crime.

I am not sure that that is entirely true, but the line between factual entertainment and documentaries is blurred. I would say that documentary is a specific genre. I cut my teeth on it over a number of years. It has not necessarily migrated to YouTube alone. Theatrical documentaries are enjoying a positive period in Scotland and we, as an agency, have five funded films in the Sundance film festival later this month, three of which are documentaries from Scotland.

Thank you for inviting me along today. I would echo a lot of what David Smith is saying about film and TV production.

On broadcasting, the industry in Scotland is facing a number of significant challenges, not least of which is the already-discussed downgrading of STV’s news output.

The BBC faces significant challenges over its charter renewal. It has had many years of cuts and poor licence fee settlements, and on-going, year-on-year redundancies. It is extremely important that this Government and other bodies stand up to support the BBC to defend its impartiality in the wake of all the disinformation that is flying about. It is crucial for the culture and democracy of Scotland that we have a strong, independent, impartial BBC that is free from political interference and that the services that it provides are universal to all. Without that—if people do not have universal access to high-quality broadcasting—we start to undermine the culture and the democracy of the country.

Outwith what David Smith has said, the one area in film and TV production that is a challenge for us is the Government’s fair work policies. The industry in Scotland is miles behind other sectors on fair work. As we see more and more companies investigating, researching and moving towards a four-day week, our members would love to get away from a six or seven-day week, never mind move to a four-day week. A huge amount of work must be done in that regard.

I am not saying that it is any worse than other parts of the industry elsewhere in the United Kingdom, but it is certainly worse than other sectors in Scotland, and the Scottish Government must ensure that fair work is manifested robustly across the film and TV industries.

Thank you for inviting me to give evidence today. I concur with what Paul McManus and David Smith have laid out. I will go a bit further and state that there are significant challenges in the broadcasting sector. Of the 800 members that we represent, 55 are in the Glasgow area and, as you are well aware, they make up a screen cluster in Scotland. The majority of those members work in the unscripted genre and are having a torrid time at the moment. Public service broadcasting is the linchpin of the commissioning opportunities that they have enjoyed over many decades. If we want to sustain the incredible inward investment that we are getting, we must ensure that domestic production is sustained, because that is what positions Scotland as an attractive production hub. We are significantly worried about what the future holds.

The BBC charter and the framework renewal process have been mentioned. What should be the priorities for Scotland in that?

We are a big supporter of the BBC licence fee. It very much underpins the funding within a lot of the nations and regions, so protecting it is crucial.

Mr McManus, are there any other priorities for charter renewal?

We need a realistic licence fee settlement that allows the BBC to expand its programme making, because BBC Scotland has lost a lot of capacity for programme making over the past 10 to 15 years. Much of the product that is attributed to BBC Scotland is commissioned through BBC Studios, which is a UK-wide subsidiary. Production companies, as Emily Oyama has mentioned, struggle with commissioning tariffs. We come up against that issue time and again. Even if the BBC commissions programmes, people struggle with the commissioning tariffs that are offered, which results in some of the pressures of longer hours, lower rates of pay and unrealistic demands on the crews, the producers and the production companies.

However, there are positive signs, as I said in our submission. The way in which the BBC is changing its commissioning process and its commitments to out-of-London funding offers some optimism, which I hope means that we will start to see more products for Scotland-based production companies and crews, particularly in unscripted commissions. I know that Screen Scotland is involved in the BBC with some of that work.

Mr Smith, do you want to add anything?

The principle of universality in how the BBC is paid for is vital. Beyond that, our main point is it should be well funded. It has suffered two charter periods of decreased funding, which has impacted the sector as a whole and impacts the UK’s competitive ability in the international markets. Successes come from independent production companies and broadcasters in combination. That combination of intellectual and creative endeavour delivers those products that we then think about as being representative of UK broadcasting. However, if the BBC is constrained in its ability to spend, that impacts our competitiveness and it impacts our companies’ sustainability.

We would always argue for the BBC to be well funded, but we would also argue for a BBC that then spends that money evenly and equitably across all four home nations. There are concerns, which we will get to in this session, about how the BBC has spent its money in the previous charter period, the current Ofcom regime that determines what qualifies and what does not qualify as Scottish and then, more fundamentally for us, the BBC’s own view of how it delivers against its public purposes. Is it happy to meet the letter of certain criteria rather than deliver on their spirit?

We will move to questions from other committee members.

Good morning. I will stick with the discussion about the BBC. You all support universality and the need for funding. I am interested in hearing your thoughts on public concerns about BBC spend on administration and managers and the fact that there are perhaps too many people on very high salaries. Does the use of funding in that way need to change if public trust is to be restored?

I put that to Emily Oyama.

We have always been of the opinion that we want to see as much of that funding as possible go into content. As such, we need to see efficiencies in the BBC wherever possible. We are not entirely convinced about the people who spend the money, but we are very much in favour of as much of that money as possible going into content. Overall, the BBC contributes, I think, £4 billion or £5 billion but only around £1.2 billion goes into content, so there must be room for manoeuvre there.

Certainly, my experience of the BBC over the years is that, although there is a lot of talk about the need for more funding, there is quite a lot of wastage. Your sector, in particular, is independent, and I do not imagine that money is flowing, so you want to see it used. Do you recognise that it is a question of how better to use some of that money rather than always looking for more?

08:45

There is that. Are there duplications happening, in which organisations are doubling up in the market? That is definitely something to consider, and middle management is something to think about. When the BBC spun out to create BBC Studios, a lot of investment went into it. We want to see it succeed, but I notice that recruitment to the BBC commercial arm increased last year, compared with the BBC’s public service arm. You have to look into whether that is an efficient way of spending that budget, rather than spending it on content that could be spread across the nations and regions, including Scotland.

Bectu is never slow to criticise the BBC when we see what we perceive to be waste. That said, I am not seeing a disproportionate amount of money being spent on administration services in BBC Scotland. There are times when we struggle to find managers to deal with issues, but I do not recognise that as a serious issue at BBC Scotland, which has improved its structures and processes dramatically over the past 10 years.

Where we have seen big cuts at BBC Scotland is in its programme-making capacity. Earlier, I mentioned BBC Studios, which is a commercial venture. However many managers it chooses to employ, it has to balance that against its financial results at the end of the year. In public service broadcasting, the huge majority of programme-making capacity was taken away from BBC Scotland and put into the commercial side. I do not see huge amounts of money being wasted on administrative processes at BBC Scotland.

I should say for the record that, as someone who comes from the Highlands and Islands and is from an island community, I very much value the BBC, particularly the radio side. I say that because I was on the BBC again this morning, so I should not criticise it in any way. However, the perception is that some of the things that we laughed at in “W1A”, which was one of the BBC’s best comedies, are possibly more accurate for those at the higher levels of such an administration.

I could not watch “W1A”, as it felt too close to home at times. The BBC has undergone two charter periods in which licence fee income has declined in real terms, which has driven a lot of cost cutting and reduction in head count.

I agree with Paul McManus in that, when I look at the BBC in Glasgow now, there are far fewer people working there than there were 20 years ago. The upper echelons of the BBC are an interesting place to be, because you sit in a Venn diagram between a highly competitive global commercial enterprise and a public service broadcaster. Recently, we have seen lots of very senior people leave the BBC for jobs in the commercial sector, so there is genuine competition for those roles. If the BBC is unable to offer a salary that attracts people of ability, it is at a disadvantage, and we want the BBC to be strong. The answer is not simple, but there has been lots of cost cutting, and it is necessary to pay people salaries that will attract them into significant roles.

I am conscious of time, so I will go to a number of other points. Emily, you talked about confidence in the sector in some areas, which probably contrasted a little with what David Smith said. For independent companies in particular, is that a concern for the future? Why is there less confidence and what needs to be done to bring it back?

I will go into a bit of detail on that. Last year, we commissioned a report that looked into the changing nature of UK content and how it is impacting the diversity of supply. We found that, because of the delicate structural changes that are happening on the PSB side—reduced ad spend and a declining BBC licence fee—the broadcaster is having to pivot towards different commissioning strategies, which are pivoting towards fewer but bigger, better commissions.

That is inevitably polarising the commissions that are happening. The opportunities that are being put out there are the high-end drama and peak entertainment offers. The long-running returning series that we used to see, which benefited the small to medium-size producers, are running away from us as an industry. That report found that the middle is being hollowed out, and I do not think that Scotland is immune to that.

The members that make up the Glasgow screen cluster tend to focus on unscripted factual entertainment programming, and some of those programmes that are successful to this day are made by Scottish production companies. For example, one of our members, Raise the Roof Productions, makes “Love It or List It”. If that company was starting out now, I do not think that it would have the same opportunities to create that kind of programming. The worry is that, in the next 10 to 15 years, companies will not have those opportunities. Let us say that I set up my own production company tomorrow—I would not have the same opportunities that Raise the Roof had 20-odd years ago when it started out.

I know that things have changed and we do not all crowd around the television to watch the same programmes at Christmas as we might have done before, but it was very noticeable how many people were critical of what was broadcast at Christmas last year, and the number of repeats. There did not seem to be a huge amount of originality, and the viewing figures were a lot lower. I wonder whether that is a sign of how things are going to go, with a lot more repeats, because it is easier and cheaper to put those on.

The key word in what Emily Oyama said was “opportunities”. It is a supply and demand market, and broadcasters have to be looking to commission programmes.

Charter renewal—I note that the green paper has been published—gives us an opportunity as a nation to ask what our public service broadcasters are for. I said earlier that there has been a migration of various genres on to YouTube and podcasts. That is true, but there remain very strong audiences for all those genres on television. The question is whether broadcasters are serving those audiences and commissioning programmes that meet their expectations.

I spent 20 years working in independent production. I ran an independent production company before I took on my current job, and I was national director of PACT in Scotland immediately prior to taking on my job. The health of the independent sector is really important to Screen Scotland, and we have a number of funds that are targeted directly at its ability to win new business. The question is whether there is a market for that business, and that has been at the heart of a lot of the research that we have published over the past couple of years.

The Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates report, which we sent to the committee as one of our papers, shows that there is a single UK-wide Ofcom regime for how programmes qualify as being Scottish. How the BBC approaches that regime and how Channel 4 approaches it are quite different. Channel 4 tends to look to Scotland-based production companies to meet its Scottish qualifying output requirements, whereas the BBC has tended, especially in returning series and long-running series, to look to London-based companies to meet that requirement and then qualify those programmes as Scottish through the Ofcom process.

We like a mixed economy. A mixed economy is healthy and good. It means that, if demand falls in one part, we are sustained in other parts. However, the reliance by the BBC on too much inward investment within the UK market to meet the Scottish quota has been a concern for us, and we would like to see a rebalancing of that. There is an opportunity here. The BBC has changed its rules a little bit. It has diverted from what Ofcom has set as the criteria and it has moved the bar. I cannot remember the exact wording that it has used, but it will tend towards commissioning programmes that qualify as Scottish only on the basis of having a substantive base, and meeting the 70 per cent spend test. That is really welcome, but it does not answer the question that we have been asking for the past five years, which is, “Will you please look to the Scotland-based suppliers to deliver that output?”

You mentioned Scotland-based suppliers, but this is a big country. Recently, many programmes that are not based in the central belt have been very successful and have got a lot of attention, such as “Outlander”, “The Traitors” and “Shetland”, but are enough of the support side and the production companies based outwith the central belt? That is always an issue for my area, the Highlands and Islands, and others like it—we are a wonderful filming location, but is enough being done to base companies and people in such areas? If you are a creative, or a lawyer dealing with intellectual property, or whatever you happen to be within the industry, is enough happening in communities outwith the central belt?

I am from Inverness originally, and I moved to Edinburgh then Glasgow to start my career. It is likely that that is still how most people have to start their careers. We work closely with Studio Lambert and the BBC on “The Traitors”, which is shot up in Ardross, to invest in training opportunities on that project.

There is a focus on the location of where productions are filmed. Our concern is more about where the companies are based. In Scotland, they are predominantly based in Glasgow. I would say that 90 per cent of our production companies are based in Glasgow, and all our broadcasters are based in Glasgow. That is a function of the history of Scottish broadcasting. It is very hard to change that, because there would be real cost implications. Unless a production hires locally, you have to pay people for overnight; you have to pay various costs to complete the project. To reduce costs, we tend to cluster production into various parts of the UK—Belfast, Glasgow, Bristol and Salford. There are forces that drive all of that. However, my point is that it is not so much about where these things are filmed; it is about where the intellectual property is owned and where the backroom office jobs that you mentioned—the lawyers, the accountants, the heads of human resources and so on—are based. If those jobs are based within Scotland-based production companies that win that Scottish-qualifying output, more people will tend to be employed locally.

David Smith talked about where companies are based and said that he wants a mixed economy for that. The BBC could be a lot more transparent when it comes to those discussions. I think about discussions that we have had with the BBC, particularly about the likes of “The Traitors” and the fact that the crew for that was largely imported from down south. Right back on day 1, BBC Scotland said, “It’s a London commission; it’s nothing to do with us. We didn’t put any money into it. We didn’t ask for this programme. London commissioned it. They just happened to base it in Scotland.”

You are always going to get that kind of thing. When “The Avengers” series was parachuted in a couple of years ago, Scotland had been picked for the location and we were not jumping up and down saying, “There’s a problem here about importing work into Scotland.” The problem is, as David Smith says, when people try and pass a programme off as a Scottish product, but none of the crew is from Scotland. Lambert does not have a significant base in Scotland and most of the money goes back down south.

We are pleased that the BBC Scotland commissioning teams are working much more closely with each of the genre commissioning teams across the UK, and they are currently working with a group of Scotland-based companies to try and develop them so that they can produce more programmes, including new programmes in areas such as comedy and entertainment.

The challenge for the BBC is that, in unscripted areas, audiences are notoriously fickle. The BBC would like to commission perhaps two or three series of a comedy or entertainment show, which would allow the Scotland-based production companies to develop their expertise, invest more in training and build relationships with the broadcasters. However, it is a huge gamble for the likes of the BBC to commission two or three series, so it tends to do it on a year-by-year basis. You mentioned the likes of “Shetland”. We see programmes coming back year after year, but the BBC will not commission them for a number of years because it is so concerned about audience habits changing.

The BBC is doing a lot of work in terms of YouTube and online platforms to try and develop that side of the industry as well. I am seeing some more positive signs in terms of output, particularly on the unscripted side, but that has a long way to go because, as Emily Oyama said, the unscripted side of it is just dire and has been for the past couple of years.

We had better not get on to the whole question of how many Shetland voices or accents there are in the “Shetland” series, which is something else that comes up.

Emily, do you want to add anything about opportunities within Scotland, in the regions?

09:00

We are of the opinion that the best way to grow the sector in Scotland and across the nations and regions is via the regional production quotas.

Going back to your previous question about what the solutions are, we would say that our current framework, which has fostered diversity within the supply chain, is sacred, and we need to retain it. There is a risk that some of that may get unravelled in the next few years. I urge the committee to look at the framework, which includes terms of trade, the regional production quotas, the BBC licence fee and origination quotas. Those four things basically enable the diversity of supply.

We think that the regional production quotas are flexible enough to allow for innovation to happen. We think that sub-quotas or sub-definitions that are added to the quota could stifle innovation, and we are a bit wary of that.

Good morning. I have a couple of questions on charter renewal and one more general question.

My first question was going to be on the issue of quotas and criteria—we have covered some of that ground already. The green paper seems to indicate that the Government is open to change in that area. I wonder whether there is any prospect of the various voices from Scotland alighting on a consensus about the specific changes that would be beneficial. Judging from the comments that have been made and the written submissions that we have received, quite a number of people seem to be suggesting that change is necessary, but they do not necessarily agree on what that change ought to be.

In principle, do you think that there is potential for consensus—I do not just mean in the committee and in our report, but within the industry—about what changes to the quotas and criteria would be beneficial, or is the range of views too diverse?

I recognise that a great deal of that needs to be about the economics of the industry, as David Smith said; it needs to be about skills, where IP is owned, and so on. Is there a role for criteria—this is an as well as, rather than an instead of—around the audience perception of what is being produced and whether a production feels like it is of or about Scotland?

On the second part of your question, I have always thought that representation is really important—and a trap. Yes, we absolutely want to see Scottish subjects, Scottish voices, Scottish places and Scottish people on our screens UK-wide. I said in my submission that the lack of any kind of quota on the channel 3 licences remains a concern for us, because there is a distinct audience who watch commercial television, who are not necessarily watching the BBC or Channel 4 and who do not necessarily see that element of representation. We would be keen to see more of that.

At the same time, from a creative perspective, if a Scottish producer is required only to make things that represent Scotland, they are restricted. I have made a lot of documentaries over time. I always remember that, when I pitched up to see, let us say, the BBC head of arts, we would say, “We have this fantastic idea: we have access to the Rijksmuseum, and we are going to make a three-part documentary series about Rembrandt. It is all history using existing text,” and so on. They would say, “Maybe do Walter Scott.”

Why am I restricted to subjects about Scotland, whereas people in London are omnivorous and can graze where they want to graze? That is really important. Representation is vital. We want to see ourselves on screen, and we want to see programmes that mean something to us on the screen UK-wide. From the point of view of UK cohesion, that is very important, but it is also a trap. We should not be restricted to that.

On the issue whether there is potential for consensus within the industry about what changes would be beneficial, are the views too diverse for that?

I do not think that they are too diverse, but they are much more diverse than they were once upon a time. We have a much more diverse sector than we had previously. Some companies very much target Channel 4, some target the BBC and some target beyond those channels to the international platforms. It is a healthier sector than it was 20 years ago, but it is also a much more diverse sector.

It is always quite difficult to bring people together around the charter, because it is kind of dry, but there are elements of it that are really important. Number 4 on the list of the BBC’s public purposes is that of contributing to the creative economies of all parts of the UK, and that is the part around which we will be trying to convene discussions in order to get people to think about what that really means. Across the last charter period, that has meant production in Scotland—that is, location filming and elements of production taking place in Scotland on projects that qualify as Scottish. We would like to see much more creative origination from within Scotland, which concerns issues of representation and diversity of voice.

Does anyone else have views on that?

As David Smith said, it is a really diverse industry. The primary focus for us is to get the BBC through the charter renewal process in one piece, to maintain the licence fee with the proper sentiment, and to focus on the political challenges that the BBC faces—the main challenge that the BBC faces.

I think that, in Scotland, the BBC is heading in the right direction, although it has a lot more work to do in terms of production. On quotas, we want Scotland to get its fair share of work, and we want a fair share of work to originate from within Scotland. However, there are historical challenges with that. Some of the big entertainment shows are filmed in Scotland—Pacific Quay has been fairly successful in that regard in recent years—but we constantly get complaints from members saying that the designers are always brought up from London. All the big game shows were always done in London, and that is where the expertise in designing them has always been. Given that that is the case, we have to dig down into the specifics to see what skills development and training is needed to ensure that designers in Scotland are getting the opportunity to work on those shows, so that, over time, they can then take charge of designing them.

The issue is extremely complex. It is too simplistic to say that it is a problem that a company has come up from London, because you might find out that the whole crew is from Scotland. Similarly, you might find that a Scotland-based company has a commission but is using people from London. Part of our role is to dig down into the detail of that and identify the specific challenges. There might be a fair quota, but we need to make sure that it is fair all the way through the process and that Scottish creatives and off-screen talent are getting the opportunity to work on or produce the programmes.

I do not think that there is a straightforward answer to your question about an aligning of views over charter renewal. For us, the focus right now is on saving the BBC as a non-political, impartial broadcaster. That is the key priority.

I was going to come on to politicisation in a moment, but I wonder whether Emily Oyama has anything to add.

From our viewpoint, there needs to be a coming together of the current BBC quotas in a way that ensures that there is no weakening of the quotas around nations and regions, which could be a risk. All broadcasters are looking at their obligations for the next 10 or 15 years and asking whether they can afford those obligations or whether they should be looking at changing them. We in the industry need to be very vocal about the importance of the nations and regions quotas and the independent production quota as well.

Forgive me, but I do not want to misinterpret you. Are you saying that the issue is more about the application of the quotas and criteria than about changes to them?

Yes.

Thank you. My second question was about politicisation, which Paul McManus started to talk about. The Bectu submission addresses the issue of politicised appointments to the BBC board. That is not the only aspect of the problem, as the BBC can quite fairly be accused of being part of the mainstreaming and normalisation of far-right, racist and culture war narratives in recent years. What changes in the charter could help to address that, perhaps either by removing political appointments that have been made in the past or by changing the rules about how they are made in the future?

The key thing that we are looking for is for the Government to recognise that Governments cannot be involved in the process of appointing board members to the BBC. It is all driven from the board down. There have also been concerns about political appointments at the director general level. If there is a non-political board and it is left to its members to appoint the director general, there is a trickle-down effect and there is impartiality. The politicisation of the BBC affects our members as much as it does, in many respects, our colleagues on the journalism side of things. You hardly ever see the BBC putting out a story about any of the key topics—such as what is happening in America or Israel—without at least a handful of groups saying that the language that the BBC is using is not acceptable or that it is denying the problem. When you talk to news people in the BBC, they are almost paranoid about impartiality. To put it in simple terms, to me, it is a fear of upsetting one side or the other.

I would like to suggest that it is more a fear of upsetting one side rather than the other. The word “cancelled” is thrown around by certain types of voices, while others are sacked or forced to resign for supporting Palestinian rights, transgender people or other aspects of equality and human rights, and their careers are ended with barely a murmur or reaction in the press or any reporting of the issue.

For us, that is why it is important that the BBC feels confident and is mandated to be impartial and to investigate. David Smith has talked about getting involved in documentaries over the past 20 years. I came into the industry in the days of Gus Macdonald; in those days, investigative journalists would quite happily shoot everybody down, based on the facts that they had investigated, rather than parroting what somebody said on social media five minutes ago. It is important that we put the BBC in a position where it feels confident and empowered to investigate all the scenarios that you are talking about and report them accurately, and to reflect what I think the majority of people, certainly in Scotland, feel about those situations.

Do I have time for one final question?

Yes.

This is a slightly more general question, moving away from just the BBC and charter renewal. David Smith, in some of your comments at the very start, you quite rightly drew the distinction between production and broadcasting and, on the broadcasting side, you identified clearly the growth of streamers and other online platforms and the fact that traditional broadcasting is only one element of delivery of those productions. Within the industry, is there a clear sense of how far that is going to go? Is traditional broadcasting going to remain with us, or are we preparing for a world in which it disappears—or almost disappears—and pretty much everything is delivered through other platforms? That would require a much deeper reflection and rethink on regulation than is currently on the table.

It depends on how successful we are through the charter period. My colleagues talked about how it is really important to get the BBC through charter renewal and to sustain the BBC. It is important, but, in this moment, we have to ask—to what end? Charter renewal comes around every 10 years. There are voices suggesting that we extend that period, but the BBC focuses on these questions only at charter renewal. It is really important that we retain at least a 10-year cadence when it comes to the renewal period. It is really important that we have a strong public service broadcasting sector in the UK, and it is really important that we have a very strong BBC. It is a vital element of our whole economy.

The bigger factors here are technological change and its take-up, as well as audience behaviour. Are those factors likely to drive traditional broadcasting towards an ever smaller niche?

Possibly.

Or do we think it is going to settle at a level?

We seem to have reached a plateau in the Scottish economy, where spend is roughly 50:50 between the public service broadcasters and inward investment productions. It has been fairly static since the pandemic boost, and that is where it has levelled out. However, audience consumption patterns are continuing to change. In my household, the first thing that my kids put on is YouTube, and YouTube is on the TV. I cannot remember whether it is the YouTubification of television or the televisionification of YouTube, but that is going to continue. The patterns will continue to change, and I suspect that the element of viewing that is dedicated to the public service broadcasters will continue to reduce over time.

That drives us back to the question of why we have public service broadcasters, what we expect from them and what we want from them. From our perspective, economic contribution to and economic growth in Scotland are vital; creative origination from within Scotland remains very vital; and developing the audience for content from Scotland is vital. Those are the three things that we look for, but underneath them are a whole load of other outcomes. Just getting the BBC through charter renewal is not enough. At this moment, we have an opportunity to ask to what end we are doing this, and what outcomes we seek.

09:15

Are there any other perspectives on the long-term direction of travel?

From our perspective—certainly from my perspective—there will always be a place for traditional broadcasting.

When I talk to younger folk—in my situation, that group of people is increasingly expanding—I hear that, as David Smith said, they sit in front of the television and watch YouTube, Netflix or whatever, but I actually find that that makes them more open to watching the BBC and public service broadcasting. If they are sat in their room or out and about with their pals, they are on their phone watching stuff such as social media clips or listening to podcasts; they do not think, “Let’s go and have a look and see what’s on the BBC.” However, when they are sat in front of the TV, scanning through to see what is on, they might say, “Oh, right—what’s that on the BBC?” In some ways, that has helped to raise the profile of the BBC with younger people, but it is important that there is a standard for the BBC and for public service broadcasting.

I spend a lot of time saying to my kids and to other people, when they tell me about the latest news story, “That’s all AI generated—if you want to know what’s happening on that particular subject, go and look at the BBC and STV, and you will get much closer to the truth than you will from something that somebody has made up in their bedroom.” It is too easy for kids and younger people to accept what they see if they do not have the knowledge that not everything out there is the truth and that there are people who are deliberately not telling the truth. I look to the likes of Finland, which runs classes on fake news and social media awareness, and think, “God, I wish that was mandatory everywhere.”

I think that everyone wants to see their lives reflected in the content that they watch—that is the key thing about public service broadcasting, and the most important thing is to sustain it. That then feeds into the diversity of supply, which I talked about earlier. It is important to ensure that public service broadcasters create storytelling that resonates with different age groups and different audiences. That might involve going to where audiences are—I know that there has been discussion about that, but I think that it is important.

I thank you all for your answers.

I have a supplementary question on the area that we have been covering. We are all getting older, and the younger generation is coming up behind us. In the past couple of weeks, I heard a report on Radio 4 about how young people do not see themselves as consumers of BBC content, so they are less likely to pay the licence fee because they are paying for other streaming opportunities. Does it present challenges for the sustainability of the licence fee if a whole demographic is disengaging from the BBC and from paying the fee as a matter of course? David, do you want to come in on that?

The answer is obviously yes, but the onus is then on the BBC to meet that audience where they expect to find content. Thinking back, the BBC started radio and television; it did not start YouTube or the internet delivery of video content, but the audience is there on TikTok and YouTube. The BBC is migrating and moving more of its content on to those platforms—the answer is for it to be there and meet the audience where they are.

It is incumbent on everybody, collectively, including Governments and public bodies, to impress on younger people the vital importance of having public service broadcasting in a traditional broadcasting format. Yes, as David Smith said, the BBC is getting great at moving on to the social media platforms and trying to go where the audiences are, but that ability comes from the starting point that it is a public service broadcaster. There needs to be a bedrock of ensuring that young people understand that public service broadcasting is vital and that, without it, we are just in the wild west of make believe, which presents significant, serious and fundamental challenges for the culture and democracy of the country.

We all need to educate young people on how important it is that that public service broadcasting underpins everything that they watch.

Do you have any further comments, Emily?

No.

Okay—I will move to Mr Kerr.

Emily, you talked about inward investment, but it appears to me that all three of you also appear to have a concern about the nature of the inward investment. Basically, money comes to Scotland so that Scotland can be used as a backdrop, and some aspects of the creative landscape, all the way through to the engineers and all the rest of it, are utilised.

However, David, you mentioned IP ownership a few times. Is that how you define the success of Scottish broadcasting: that we are retaining the IP? Part of the problem in relation to inward investment—these things are all joined together, are they not?—is that we are selling that IP, often to the highest bidder, which inevitably ends up being Netflix.

You touched on many different things there, all of which are vital. As a national screen agency, we operate the screen commission. Scotland being used as a location has value, and we are really active in drawing productions into Scotland. Whenever we do so—for example, when we got “Frankenstein”, which was a Netflix production that came to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen to film—we try to drive training and crew engagement opportunities, and we try to encourage employment in Scotland on those projects. However, they are a travelling circus—they come and they go; that is their nature.

They bring a lot of business.

Yes—they spend a lot of money in the economy. In addition, “Frankenstein” will sit on the Netflix platform, and Edinburgh and Glasgow will be represented in that programme, for decades. People will see that, and it will drive screen tourism, so there is value in that.

The second parallel path would be our national broadcasters, which we look to more for intellectual property ownership. Netflix does not allow its suppliers to retain IP, whereas most of the international platforms do. Around 20 or 25 years ago, PACT ran a campaign and worked with the Governments in the UK—it was a Conservative UK Government at the time—to deliver what became known as terms of trade, in which independent production companies retain the IP and the content that they deliver to the BBC and Channel 4, and they can sell that in international markets. This inquiry is about the health of the broadcasting sector, and that was the fundamental move that kick-started the growth of the sector in the UK. It involved producers owning and retaining their IP, with broadcasters taking a licence, but only for a limited period of time and a certain number of screenings. The producer can sell the IP again and again—they also own the IP in the underlying idea as well, and they can sell that idea.

The health of the sector depends on IP ownership. That is why we see Disney buying Marvel and all of those projects. The IP is what drives consumer attention, and it is where the long-term value is.

It is all about scale, is it not? It comes down to money and scale.

It is about money, scale and leadership, and the IP in the long term, because that is what allows producers to reinvest income in new ideas that deliver new business. That keeps the cash flow going, which keeps the business open, and it keeps going from there.

That income can also be derived from the sale of IP to the giants, in the same way that we have feeder football clubs that bring on some talent and then sell it, with all the contractual add-ons.

We are seeing that more and more in secondary markets. For example, “Still Game” is massively successful on Netflix; the IP in that project remains with the production company in Glasgow.

Your example of development clubs is important. Producers do not tend to get commissioned by Netflix until they have been successful on the BBC or Channel 4. Those channels are where people learn how to make programmes and develop their reputation. Having a viable market on those platforms—the BBC and Channel 4—gets producers to the international opportunities.

So, you are highlighting the dependence on the public service broadcasters by organisations such as Netflix and Disney, but they—

Sorry—there is also the opportunity point that Emily Oyama made earlier. If we think about the number of projects that Netflix, Amazon or any of those platforms are commissioning from Scottish production companies, we can count them on the fingers of one or two hands. They are economically really impactful, but there are few of them. We can compare that with the demand from the BBC and Channel 4. They remain the opportunity market for Scotland-based producers; that is where those producers will tend to win business. That might lead ultimately to—

Hence, you all gravitate towards the idea of quotas so that there is regional equity.

UK broadcasters have had a tendency not to look beyond the M25 unless they are required to do so, because it is easier. It is a confidence game—

Is that still massively the case, though, given the Salford studios and everything else? Channel 4 has deliberately tried to change that.

It is still the case—that is still the tendency. The mileage may vary, let us say.

It has got better over time, since 2017. In terms of—

We had the Salford studios, and the Channel 4 decision to relocate outside London.

Yes, and with the increase in separate quotas that the BBC set up, for which we campaigned, we have started to see a shift into the nations and regions. However, 60 per cent of the revenue—within our membership, anyway—is London-centric. That is why the nations and regions quotas are vital in sorting that market failure in the system.

That brings me to a point that Paul McManus made earlier; I thought that it was a very important point that deserves to be amplified.

Paul, you talked about how the Scottish companies will often bring in people from down south because we do not have—or do not appear to have—the people, the talent and the resource on the ground in Scotland. I have spoken to a number of businesses in the broadcast field and they always bring up the paucity of routes into the market for young or aspiring engineers, camera people and so on. Do you share that concern?

I tend to measure the health of a sector by its talent management approach. I do not know if you agree with that, but it appears to me that that is a problem in broadcasting in Scotland. We do not have many routes for young or aspiring people to get into the sector.

We do not have a lot of routes in. However, the situation has got dramatically better, and the routes into the industry that are there have got much better over the past 20 years.

However, I think back to the committee’s previous evidence session, in which witnesses talked about STV’s proposals. All the engineering talent is being removed from Aberdeen, so if someone lives in Aberdeen, Inverness or the north of Scotland and is looking for a route in, they are following David Smith’s route and saying, “Right—let’s get down to the central belt, because that’s the only chance I’ve got.”

What has been put to me—I am just testing this with you—is that a lot of those people were actually trained by the BBC.

I do not think that that is so true nowadays. The BBC still does a huge amount of training: it brings in apprentices every year and it is still, in many respects, the gold standard on the broadcast side of the industry. However, a huge number of people are being churned out by colleges and universities through various media courses, and I do not think that their expectations are being managed. Broadcasting is a difficult industry to get into, relative to other sectors, because there is not a lot of opportunity. That is not helped if Scotland does not get its fair share of work coming up to the Scottish production companies, as those companies then do not have the opportunity to offer training. If people are not commissioning two or three series at a time, those companies do not have the ability to bring in people and train them to go into the industry—

Or the will to do so, actually, because of the nature and complexity of having apprentices. That is what has been put to me by businesspeople. They say that the administrative cost and the challenge of managing an apprenticeship in the way that we do it in Scotland puts them off, so they tend to take people—

No.

No?

No, absolutely not—I disagree with that fundamentally. I go back to the elements of fair work that I spoke about at the start. There are still people out there who think that the route into the industry is to volunteer for six months and work as a researcher or a runner, getting no pay, with the production company saying, “If we get another commission in the future, mebbe we can start to pay you.” It is not about a lack of opportunity—and this is where the commissioning tariffs and the commissioning process are so important. The BBC is thinking, “If we commission a company in Scotland to make work, can we build an element of training into that so that trainees are given an opportunity to come in?” David Smith talked about the likes of “The Traitors”. Can we talk to those companies and pressure them to invest in training and give people routes into the industry or to develop their careers?

09:30

I am talking about apprenticeships.

Yes, but a lot of the time, with people coming up from London, it is not about a lack of resources—for example, “The Traitors” could have been totally crewed in Scotland. It is about desire and the relationships that people in London or up here have with people they have worked with before. They are thinking, “I’ll bring my favourite director of photography up from London rather than go looking for somebody I haven’t worked with before in Scotland.” That is more of an issue.

But it is hard to get in. That is the point that I am making.

Oh, absolutely, yes—it is extremely difficult.

The BBC has been—as you said—the “gold standard” way to get into the sector in the past. You have an experienced BBC apprenticeship—

I would disagree with that—

Oh good—please do.

Yes, once upon a time, the BBC apprenticeships were—and in certain areas, still are—the gold standard. However, we operate a project called screen NETS, which has been involved for 40-plus years in film and high-end TV drama production in Scotland, and that is the gold standard for getting into production crew.

Apprenticeships do not really work in our sector in production terms, because no production lasts long enough to sustain an apprenticeship. Screen NETS acts as an employer for those trainees and moves them from production to production. Someone will not come out of it having completed an actual apprenticeship, but they have work-based experience and they have credits, and ultimately, at the end of the day, those are the two things that most people look for when they are hiring somebody and asking, “What have you worked on?”

But there must be a way of organising that so that people end up with some kind of recognised qualification beyond experience on their CV.

Well, we are moving to that. In September, we introduced film and screen as a subject in the national curriculum; it became the first new subject in Scotland’s national curriculum in over a decade. The next stage for us is to look at how that moves into further and higher education, and at the bridge from there into work.

Yes, because if you do not do that, you will stay with the situation that Paul McManus just described. I should declare that my wife has a background in the sector, and Paul was exactly right: it is, “Work for six months with no pay, show willing and be enthusiastic; someone will spot you,” and so on. However, for nearly everybody, it does not work that way.

I do not think that it works that way for most people, I have to say—

No, probably not, but it would be one in 1,000 or one in 10,000—

No, no—it is the reverse of what you think that I was meaning there. I do not think that that is how most people join the sector. Most people join in paid roles. They may not join in well-paid roles, but they join in paid roles. Every opportunity that we deliver has to be fair work compliant.

All that I am saying is that I think that there is agreement that, in order for the sector to be genuinely healthy, looking at the way in which we approach skills acquisition and qualifications and how people progress in their careers, there needs to be some kind of a path that they can aspire to, at least. At the minute, that is really not formed.

I agree, but I think that it is more formed than you might imagine right now, and it is becoming more so.

When Screen Scotland formed, we spent roughly £400,000 a year on skills development. We now spend more than £2 million a year, with match funding from industry, on projects such as “Dept Q”, “Outlander” and “The Traitors”. It is work-based experience. Screen NETS is about to be readvertised: there will be eight new training opportunities on that project. Those are clear pathways that have been sustained for a long time. With each project that comes up in Scotland, we are in a really fortunate position now. I remember when “Monarch of the Glen” was the only drama in Scotland, and then there was a period when there was not much else. We now have multiple dramas returning, such as “Shetland” and “Dept Q”—there are a whole host of them, and they are vehicles to upskill people.

But the more recognisable the structure of that career formation, the better it is for the sector.

Agreed—totally.

And we do not have that yet.

I think that we have it to a greater extent than you might imagine, but yes.

All right. I am glad that you are challenging what I am imagining, which is based on what people have said to me about how difficult it is to get into the sector, and how hard it is to show accreditation. Is that a fair point, Paul?

Yes—from my point of view, the accreditation part is key. That goes all the way up to the question of who runs training and skills in Scotland. We have ScreenSkills with a UK-wide perspective, and we have different things happening in Scotland.

I do not think that David Smith and I disagree on that. In my view, the BBC is still the gold standard in terms of broadcasting jobs. In terms of TV production, as I said in my submission, the BECTU Vision programme has, with Screen Scotland and the BBC, been instrumental in changing the landscape on production skills, helping people to get into the industry and progress through it and to develop their skills.

However, we still need to create a situation in which somebody says, “I’ve been in the screen NETS programme”, or “I’ve been in the BECTU Vision programme”, and the producers go, “I know what that means, so I’m willing to employ you.” At the minute, they cannot even hold up a bit of paper and say, “I’m a qualified electrician”, because there is no single qualification. There are industry initiatives such as the rigger scheme and the grip scheme, and we are starting traineeships in the electrician scheme. We need more strategy at that level. Instead of a producer saying, “Can I phone the mate you worked for last and see if you’re any good?”, there has to be a bit of paper that says that someone is qualified to do the job.

And something structured behind the bit of paper, which is the critical thing.

Yes.

The bit of paper represents something far more structured and substantive.

But a lot of work is happening behind that bit of paper at the minute. They are going in with a bit of paper but, as David Smith says, there is a huge amount of work.

So there is more to be encouraged about, basically. David Smith is encouraging me to cheer up a bit.

We will write to you outlining all the skills, activities and results.

I shall look forward to it.

We will also invite you to the set so that you can meet people in action.

I am always grateful to meet people who challenge my imagination.

The committee has previously been concerned about the decommissioning of “River City”. The skills and permanent jobs were a big concern at the time. Has anything filled the gap, or is there any prospect of something filling the gap?

Not in terms of a continuing, permanent drama series such as “River City”. The BBC announced three drama commissions last year, which it was at pains to say were not designed to replace “River City”. However, it demonstrated the BBC’s commitment to offer similar or greater levels of work. Late last year, the BBC said that it intends to double the amount of money that it spends in the nations and regions. BBC Scotland is working on more drama commissions. We have been talking about ensuring that the production process is planned, so that we do not end up with four dramas at once and none for the other nine months of the year.

We are confident that, overall, there will be more employment opportunities for more people across the year than there were when “River City” was the excuse: “Well, we’ve got “River City”, so we don’t need to worry about any other dramas.” I am not saying that the BBC was as black and white as that, but that was the concern.

I am fortunate enough to remember the days before “River City”, when several dramas were regularly shooting in Scotland at the one time. Hopefully, the commissions that are taking place now and the ones that are slated to come through in the coming year will more than replace “River City”, which was all BBC Studios employees and a very low number of permanent employees. A large number of freelancers worked for a great many years on it.

I was thinking about skills development, continuity of work and all the things that build a profile for someone in the industry.

My first point is about the BBC charter. Rightly or wrongly, we all feel a bit more invested in the BBC because of its longevity and how it is funded. You said that political interference would be a bad thing. I am thinking about what people might perceive as political interference, for example, in relation to the charter renewals over a number of years. The licence fee has undoubtedly been the subject of such interference. The unanimous view of this panel of witnesses and, I think, all previous panels, is that we all want to see a strong BBC and a licence fee. Having said that, I agree that, for young people in particular, the licence fee will be accepted if it is deemed to be of value and relevant to them, which is an important consideration.

On the issue of news, it is interesting that, although all the politicians here have had their issues with the BBC, very few have had an issue with STV. I could be wrong, but it seems that STV does not attract the same kind of political attention. If we look at what is proposed at STV North, maybe that has not helped.

The issue with the political aspect is that it is more about what the BBC in Scotland does not cover than what it does. It seems to have an aversion to covering reserved issues that impact on Scotland as opposed to devolved issues. For example—it is probably best to give an example—we have had documentaries ad nauseam about the situation with the two ferries in Scotland, but two aircraft carriers were built in Scotland and that attracted virtually no attention from the BBC in Scotland. They were more than three times over budget and went massively over their timescale, but there was no coverage of that. The cost of that dwarfed the cost of the ferries. I have been raising this issue with individuals going as far back as Gordon Brewer, but the response seems to be that the BBC cannot get UK ministers to come on to programmes to answer questions.

I am interested in what Paul McManus said about Finland and disinformation. I said to some previous witnesses that most politicians here will do talks to modern studies pupils at school, and they are very often asked, “How do I know what to trust in what I see?” However, I think that it is more about what they do not get to see and to know about, and that is pervasive.

We had Mark Davie at our—is that his name?

Tim Davie.

Tim Davie, yes. He said that, every week, his door was opened by five or six Labour and Tory people, berating him for some content, and that closeness in London is what drives that agenda.

Scotland also loses out by not having as powerful a say on that agenda. I am talking about news broadcasting in particular. I am interested in any views on that and on what might help the BBC to resist continuing political interference.

From our perspective, the non-political mandate is key to it all because it gives the BBC the confidence to say that it does not matter who is in power. Because that has not been in place, there is a concern that the BBC feels that it has to bend to the will of whoever is holding the purse strings in the Government in London at the time.

On what the BBC chooses to cover, from Bectu’s perspective, one of what I would call the blessings that I have had during my career is that, when we discuss things with the BBC, we do not stray into editorial control. We talk about the nuts and bolts of jobs, pay and conditions. I constantly remind myself and my colleagues that we do not comment on editorial output. The role of this committee and the Government is to challenge the BBC about why it is always talking about the ferries, which nobody is interested in, but it does not talk about the disaster with the aircraft carriers.

We are interested in ferries, by the way—I am not saying that we are not interested in the ferries.

No, but I get it that there are stories out there that have been done to death. Just because the BBC wants to be impartial, it does not mean that it does not stray from the truth or get things wrong at times, and the same is true of STV. It is the role of this committee and the Scottish Government to hold broadcasters to account and make sure that they are being impartial and fair-handed in their coverage.

It is almost a strange argument for more political involvement. In its various forms, this committee has been fundamental in driving better outcomes across broadcasting in Scotland for the past 20 years. Looking forward to charter renewal, we would argue for a greater level of devolved governance in the BBC across the nations and a greater role for the Parliaments in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland alongside the role of the committees and Government in Westminster.

Yesterday, we were speaking with our colleagues at Northern Ireland Screen and Creative Wales. It is a bit of a sub-point, but Creative Wales told me that it has a news reporter funded out of a publication in Caerphilly that essentially covers the Senedd and distributes those reports free for use across all publications in Wales. That is funded by the Welsh Government. There are therefore ways of driving coverage.

On top of that is the point about governance. When we started to look at the green paper, we were concerned about the role of the Westminster Parliament in comparison with that of this Parliament or the Parliaments in the other devolved nations.

In our evidence, we indicated that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee at Westminster has 11 members. All of them represent English constituencies, and 10 out of the 11 represent constituencies in the south-east of England. That makes it very difficult for us to get purchase in that committee; we have no local representation there. Parliamentary oversight and governmental oversight require a more devolved structure.

Separate to that, once upon a time, the BBC’s own governance structure included strong committees in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that supported the members of the board who sat in London. They also supported and challenged the executives in each of those areas. We would like to go back to a system in which the BBC’s governance is much more strongly devolved across all four nations.

09:45

Emily, do you want to come back in on that?

I have nothing to say on that.

I return to the idea of quotas.

This will mortify my children, but I have never watched “The Traitors”. Last night, on my family’s WhatsApp group, there were 32 different interactions about the latest episode. My kids and their partners are all obsessed by it, but I have never watched it. I hear the objections to its being imposed on BBC Scotland and now being used by the BBC to justify what it does here, but it is hugely successful and is being exported all over the shop. The point was also made that “River City” will be finishing, which is another issue that the committee has discussed.

I am not sure that there is a huge deal of confidence that Ofcom will do the right thing in holding the BBC to account to ensure that there is more Scotland-based activity. Is there an agreed standard in the industry for what people would like to see as quotas for Scotland? Is there a way of defining the quotas, or are people happy with the current definition that is used, as long as it is used well, which might be the case with Channel 4 but not so much with the BBC? Is there a proposal that people in the industry agree would serve Scotland well?

In terms of strict quotas, we have talked about 9 per cent, which is the percentage of Scotland’s population as a proportion of the UK’s, and work being distributed on that basis. I do not know whether people agree with that, but there has been a general sense over the years that the level of work that we should get should be based on population. That is the basis that people have talked about in relation to Scotland-based work by companies that are based in Scotland, using Scottish crews.

Late last year, in response to challenges from a great many people, the BBC said again that, in future, it will go beyond the three key criteria, which relate to ensuring that the majority of off-screen talent is based in Scotland, the 70 per cent production spend and the substantive base.

It is early days for us to see whether the BBC will deliver on that commitment. It is talking about doubling its investment outwith London and going beyond the Ofcom criteria, although I tend to agree that, given the light-touch regulation that we have these days, that does not make a lot of difference. It is more important to us that we hold the BBC to those commitments, which will benefit companies and crews in Scotland.

I have a final question on that last point. I have mentioned this before, and I am not sure that I am getting the point across well. Somebody else—I think it was the deputy convener—said something about watching TV at Christmas. It was a case of 57 channels and nothing on, in the words of the Bruce Springsteen song. There are lots of channels, and there is apparently a lot of diversity, but there are an awful lot of repeats.

Given that it is a global market, and given how dependent we are—even if we lose the IP—on people such as Paramount, Disney and Netflix and how valuable they can be if they decide to do something in Scotland, is it not the case that, especially in the light of the “River City” closure, we would benefit from establishing a base of engineers, production assistants, broadcasting people, writers and so on that everybody would contribute to? That is probably a question for Screen Scotland. That way, if those footloose multicountry companies wanted to do something in Scotland, they would know that all the expertise was already here.

That would be difficult to arrange. It is a diverse sector, and such an approach would require people to give up some control. That is the way that Ireland would do it. I am not saying that it does that in this context, but it does it in many other contexts. That would involve taking a team Scotland approach, which would mean that there would always be a bank of production assistants, directors of photography and so on available. The BBC would probably be the biggest player in that, but others could be part of it, too.

I do not know whether I am getting this point across well, but surely we want to sell ourselves in the best possible way to attract other big productions, if possible. Currently, if international production companies decide to come here—it is a very competitive market—they bring their own people from elsewhere. However, if they knew that we had top-class people in Scotland—sound engineers and all the rest of it—would that not increase Scotland’s attractiveness?

We would like more thought to be given to how Ofcom quotas operate to deliver outcomes. I know that the committee is taking evidence from Ofcom later on. The BBC charter has public purposes that drive various elements. That is a Department for Culture, Media and Sport process. Ofcom quotas run in parallel to all of that—they are not part of the charter renewal process.

We have long-standing concerns about the ability of any project to qualify as Scottish solely on the basis that it has a Scottish qualifying base. If a production company has a base here, that could be an all-singing, all-dancing base with an HR department, a legal department, a production department, a development department, editing and all of that, or it could be a couple of people, one of whom is a production manager and one of whom is a development executive.

That concerns us, because the economic impact of productions is not measured through that mechanism. It is measured through the 50 per cent and 70 per cent tests, but a company does not need to pass those in Scotland, provided that it has a substantive base here and the other two quotas are met elsewhere in the UK outside of London. That is an inherent problem for us. We would like a proportional allocation of the economic impact to be considered alongside qualification.

There is also the very difficult question of what is and what is not a Scottish production company. For us, a Scottish production company is one that has been formed in Scotland and is managed and controlled in Scotland. That is separate from its ownership. For example, IWC Media, where I used to work, is owned by Banijay, an international group, but it remains very much a Glasgow-focused, Glasgow-based production company. I understand that it will be difficult for Ofcom to throw criteria around that, but there is something there that could be measured.

I go back to the point about a mixed economy. We want to see a process whereby the BBC, Channel 4 and, ideally, the channel 3 licensees are required to spend a proportional share of their production expenditure—their commissioning budgets—in Scotland. That spend should be roughly connected to population share, as Paul McManus said. I would say that that is a minimum, which should be exceeded, where possible.

On top of that, there could be a requirement that the balance of that commissioning—the productions that qualify as Scottish—should be from Scottish-formed, Scottish-managed and Scottish-operated businesses, because that drives IP ownership and long-term value. That would also drive the skilled roles that you mentioned, which we could use to attract the bigger productions from outside the UK.

The PSB market is separate from the big international platform market, which is not driven by the same concerns as the BBC and Channel 4. Those big international companies have no political imperative to do anything in Scotland. They come here because we already have a network of studios and fantastic crews, and we are growing more of them. We have a great diverse built and natural environment that provides fantastic locations, and we offer a positive environment in which to work. It is part of Screen Scotland’s role to attract those companies’ productions to Scotland. A key element of that is the combination of having the studios, the skilled workforce and a positive attitude.

I do not know whether it still does this, but I have mentioned before that Canada had a requirement whereby, whether on radio or TV, a certain proportion of output had to be Canadian. That was because it is right next to the powerhouse that is the United States. That seemed to be accepted by everybody. Within that, I think that it also had French-language quotas, but I could be wrong. The French, too, are very good at that. Would hard quotas not be a good thing for Scotland?

I took it from your answer to my second question that there would be no merit in trying to put together an offer that was inclusive of all the different interests in Scotland that could be marketed to appeal to international companies? If that is the case, I am more than willing to hear it.

On your point about our having the technicians and so on, the committee has previously heard, in a different inquiry, that that is under real threat, because “River City”, for example, is ending, with the result that the benefits of that long-running drama will be lost. Am I right in saying that you are not concerned about that, because you think that the offer that we have is the right one?

No. There is always room for improvement. The loss of a production such as “River City” has an impact. Returning drama is unique in that it is mostly all-year-round work that has a continuous demand for new entrants. “River City” has been a fantastic vehicle for new production. There is definitely a concern that its loss will have an impact, but we are working very closely with the BBC, Bectu and others to deliver training opportunities around the new dramas from Scotland. We are mitigating that loss.

At the same time—Paul McManus will correct me if I am wrong—15 years ago, we had one and a half or two full-on crews that could support two big productions continuously in parallel. I would say that we are well above that now—we can cope with three, four or five productions concurrently.

As you mentioned earlier, there is a concentration on the summer months that we would like to address. We are thinking about how our funding could work to drive more activity in the winter months; we might incentivise productions that film in Scotland from November to March. At the moment, we are looking at two or three productions in the early months of this year. We are up to double digits for most months across the summer. There is real pressure on the crew in Scotland that drives the bringing in of people from elsewhere, even if it is a Scotland-based production. That is why it is important to have a mixed, managed economy, in which an agency such as Screen Scotland has an overview.

The model that you are asking about would not work. Again, it is necessary to differentiate between broadcast skills and production skills, and between broadcast needs and production needs. “River City” is one particular type of production, so working on it will not necessarily give someone the skills to work on other types of production. It is about the processes and strategies behind that. The skills and the numbers have developed over the past 10 or 20 years. It is a case of making sure that we have the agencies and processes in place to deliver the skills that you are talking about.

Equally, broadcasters such as the BBC and STV have the buildings, the technology and the logistics to drive forward the broadcasting skills that are needed. The skills that are needed to broadcast are not the skills that are needed to make a production, although there is some overlap. The BBC and STV do not have a lot of the skills that you are talking about, because those are production skills. STV Studios and BBC Studios hire those skills on a freelance basis, so it is our job, among others, to ensure, collectively, that those skills are available. That has happened—we probably have four or five full crews available for drama productions at the minute.

Timing is always an issue. I frequently get people phoning up and saying, “They’ve brought a team of electricians up from Manchester for this production. That should’ve gone to Scottish crews.” When I ask them whether they are available to do the work, they say, “Not unless they could hold off for a couple of weeks. We’ve got to finish off this job.” I say, “That’s not how the industry works, mate.” I get complaints about the fact that there is too much work. We will all go on working to deliver more skills, but that is a better complaint to have than there being no work up here.

I go back to my bugbear about fair work. Yesterday, I was sent an advert by a production company that is looking for a really experienced producer to do podcasts five days a week, but the company is offering less than the national minimum wage. Before Christmas, I was sent an advert by a company up here that was offering somebody six months’ free training if they worked for nothing. What a great way to get into the industry.

Lower-level football clubs and even a couple of Premier League clubs are constantly offering opportunities for people to get free training if they will come and do their media and film their games for their YouTube subscription channels. Their attitude is, “We’ll make money out of it, but we’re not going to pay you anything.” That is an element of the industry that cannot be ignored. There are a lot of great things happening in the industry, and I am really positive about the industry overall, but there are a lot of things that need to be addressed.

It is worth saying that those opportunities are not necessarily in broadcasting as we would describe it—public service broadcasting—nor are they funded by Screen Scotland. Those opportunities sit in the broader commercial world.

Absolutely.

I apologise to Neil Bibby and George Adam, because we are over time, but I want to get your questions in. If you could be concise, that would be helpful.

10:00

You mentioned fair work, Mr McManus. I was going to raise the issue, because you mentioned it in your written submission and your opening statement. When it comes to the robust implementation and maintenance of fair work policies at all levels, why are those principles and policies not being adhered to in the way that you would like? Is that because of a lack of education, a lack of understanding or perhaps even ignorance?

You have called on the Scottish Government to

“mandate agencies such as Creative Scotland/Screen Scotland, Event Scotland, Sport Scotland and Local Authorities to play a full and robust role in addressing the serious deficiencies in Fair work created by the ‘long hours, no complaints’ culture prevalent within the industry for too long now.”

What conversations have you had with the Scottish Government and the cabinet secretary about addressing those points?

I also ask the panel more generally, in the interests of time, about the evidence that we received last year from Dr Lisa Kelly from the University of Glasgow on safety in Scotland’s screen sector. She highlighted systematic gaps in safety skills and mentioned research that showed, among other things, that three quarters of UK crew had reported that their own safety, or that of a colleague, had been compromised at work. She recommended that safety should play a greater role in education and training and that public funding should be tied to productions with a demonstrable culture of safety.

I am keen to hear the thoughts of the rest of the witnesses on that, but I will start with Mr McManus on the fair work point.

You asked what we are looking for from public bodies. Glasgow City Council is snowed under with requests to close off streets for film productions, but I would be surprised if, at any stage in any of those conversations, the council had ever asked any company whether it was adhering to the Scottish Government’s fair work policies in talking to unions or giving people an effective voice, opportunities and so on.

A huge range of sports are trying to increase their media presence and profile. Sportscotland and EventScotland fund a lot of those. We have had conversations about that with EventScotland, but the likes of sportscotland will never think that it must make sure that there is fair work, because it thinks, “We’re supporting this sport, which is trying to increase its media coverage, but we’re not interested in media, so why should we worry about fair work opportunities?” However, public money and support are going into that.

We had an interesting conversation with Richard Walsh—I think that he is one of the civil servants in the Scottish Government’s media unit—about local authority event entertainment licences. Events are given a licence by the local authority. We and the other creative industry unions have major concerns about the fact that such licences are just handed out with no regard to the fact that the people who apply for them have a very poor track record in how they treat the workers in the industry. The local authorities have always said that there is nothing that they can do, because it is a tick-box exercise—if the criteria are met, they issue a licence.

Richard Walsh’s discussions with various departments in the Scottish Government—and, I understand, the UK Government—have highlighted the fact that local authorities have a great deal of control in setting and establishing the criteria for those licences, so there needs to be further discussion with them about how they do that, so that they can take on board the fair work concerns that have been raised by us, Equity and the Musicians Union.

There was another part to your question.

It was about safety skills.

I have to say that, in general, I think that most productions in Scotland have very good safety policies. A lot of them use highly reputable safety advisers to advise them on their productions. Our concerns about safety go back to the need to change the culture in the industry of working five, six or seven days a week for 10, 12, 14 or more hours a day. A cultural change needs to happen. Everybody needs to be on board with that, including the Government. That needs to be imposed and impressed on the industry.

Right now, if you talk to pretty much any producer or production company, they will say, “That’s the way the industry is.” If you ask the BBC why people are working 12 hours a day on “River City” when it makes it all year round, the answer will be, “That’s just the way the industry is. How can you change that?”

There are one or two green shoots that suggest that attitudes are changing. Some companies out there are trying to change the situation, but the current industry standard is to work long hours and long days. Companies need to be given the freedom and the budgets by commissioners to change that culture and bring workloads down to the normal level that everyone else operates on. Bectu Vision produced the Timewise report, which showed that that could be done without any significant increase in costs for companies. Off the back of that, the BBC is looking at piloting a couple of shows based on shorter working hours.

It is worth saying that that was a joint initiative. We fully funded the Timewise work.

Yes, that is right.

We want to see improvements and more flexibility around working time. However, every project and every role that we fund is fair work compliant. Whenever someone comes to us with a project for funding, they must be aware of that and must sign a pro forma that shows that they understand what fair work means in the Scottish context. They all do, because they must if they want to progress into a funded role with us.

It also depends on the genre that is involved. Our members are in close negotiations with Bectu and other unions about fair working hours. Drama members, in particular, have set policies in that area. I might get the detail on that and write to the committee about it.

Thank you.

Good morning. I am reminded of the time when Tim Davie, then director general of the BBC, sat here and said that he was not gaming the system with “The Traitors”. When someone says that they are not gaming the system, I automatically think that they are. Last night, I was thinking about that when I was working out what I would ask the witnesses.

I want to compare BBC Wales to BBC Scotland. I like “Doctor Who”, which is a long-term drama that I can hang my hat on, and it has been made in Wales since 2005. What I did not know is that “Casualty” is also produced by BBC Wales, and that “His Dark Materials”, which was a co-production with HBO, was produced there. The interesting part for me is that BBC Wales receives 8 to 12 per cent of network drama commissioning spend, whereas BBC Scotland receives 3 to 4 per cent. That works out at about 180 to 220 annual hours of drama for BBC Wales and 60 to 80 hours for BBC Scotland. In Wales, they complain that we are treated a wee bit better, but I do not know, because they seem to be gaming the system quite well. It is the same with factual and documentary programmes. What is going wrong with BBC Scotland and how do we change it?

I resist the suggestion that something is going wrong with BBC Scotland. The BBC is made up of multiple organisations that run alongside one another. The BBC as a whole is commissioning more drama from Scotland and in Scotland than it previously did.

Bad Wolf, which is not a Wales-based company, does not produce “Casualty” but it does produce “His Dark Materials” and “Doctor Who”. There is lots of production work in Wales, but there is no IP ownership, retention of profits or sales income; those all flow back to Bad Wolf, which is based in London and is part of Sony.

Bad Wolf has a major production facility in Wales.

It does, but that goes back to a previous point. Those projects will be Wales-qualifying, but they will not necessarily involve delivering more than production work. Production work definitely has a lot of value and is to be encouraged, but it is not the only factor.

There is a really interesting question around charter renewal. Yes, we want a proportionate share of what the BBC spends on content, but what are we taking a proportionate share of? At the moment, network originations are where the quotas land. Should we think about what the BBC spends on each of those genres across all its outputs? There is a different way to cut things that we have not quite considered yet. Wales definitely does very well with drama, but I do not really recognise what you say about factual output, because I think that Scotland outperforms Wales when it comes to factual production. The difference is that Wales has S4C.

But the difference is marginal. The figure for BBC network factual output is 5 to 6 per cent for Wales and 3 to 4 per cent for BBC Scotland.

Speaking to Welsh colleagues, though, I sense a general, pervasive and continuing concern that those projects are not necessarily commissioned from Welsh companies. The companies involved tend to be formed, headquartered and managed in London, and then deliver Welsh qualification.

It is the same issue across the board. We co-ordinate and work with Creative Wales, we work closely with Northern Ireland Screen and we come together to try to drive change that will deliver better outcomes. However, we are also all in competition—that is undeniable. If Wales is doing really well in returning and high-end drama, that is definitely something that we need to compete with. It is all about our offer—that is, the incentives that we offer and the relationships that we have with the broadcasters, the platforms and those production companies.

But how do we get to that? After all, moving from 60 to 80 hours to 180 to 220 hours is quite a big change and quite a big difference on the drama side of things.

I think that that is being driven by one or two productions and if those productions go into abeyance—obviously, “Doctor Who” is not working at the moment—that will change.

Okay. Your reference to “Doctor Who” actually presents the perfect scenario. I know that the co-production with Disney did not quite work out in the end, but we heard evidence last week that the way forward for drama in Scotland is co-production. When we asked, “So, why aren’t we doing it?”, the answer was that that was a question for people like you and, indeed, the BBC itself. So, why are we not doing more of that?

I am not sure that we are not doing it—

I am not saying that you are not doing it—I am asking why we are not doing more of it. We were told that we should be doing a lot more of it.

It is impossible to fund a film with one source these days. If you are making an independent film, you have to finance it in lots of different territories and with lots of different partners and TV is going the same way. The BBC was, once upon a time, the commissioner of a drama and would almost fully fund it. That just does not happen any more, because it does not have the funding for that.

The market has moved on, too. If you look at all the productions that are under way in Scotland—with the exception of some of the bigger ones that are commissioned directly by, say, Netflix or Sony—you will see that, if they are targeting a public service broadcaster, they will all be co-productions to some extent. The BBC has replaced “River City” with “Counsels” as the first drama out of the gates—there are two other projects that have yet to start production—and, as far as I am aware, “Counsels” is a co-production involving multiple parties.

You will have taken evidence from Scotland-based production companies. For example, Synchronicity Films, which I am pretty sure was in recently, made “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”, and it was a co-production with different territories. Co-production is increasingly the norm in drama production. It is less prevalent in factual output, but again, that is the way that the world is going to go. You cannot finance these sorts of things in one territory any more.

On the factual side, how do you compete with YouTube and the like? For a start, it is not regulated and there are also the audiences that it gets. I will give you an example. A social influencer in Scotland was invited to the first day that a certain fast-food outlet opened in Paisley, and he got figures on YouTube that would make “The Seven” on BBC Scotland blush. How do you compete with that? How do you get to that stage?

I will give you another example. One of the guys who work for me in my office is a 30-something, he has two kids and he does not watch STV News. I was talking about STV News the other day and he said that he did not watch it. However, if you mention something that was on YouTube—some documentary, say, which, of course, has not been really fact checked or anything—he will give you all the detail about it. How do we compete with that? How do we make the legacy TV and broadcasters relevant?

We do that by making compelling content, delivering it where the audience is and ensuring that it is prominent. I know that the Media Act 2024 has gone through the United Kingdom Parliament, although what it will mean for the prominence of public service content is still unclear to me. However, we just need to make good content that people want to watch, make it available to them where they want to watch it and make it available in a way that they can see it. It is all about the algorithm driving that content and the choices that viewers see.

Where are our broadcasters in Scotland in that respect? I know that BBC Scotland has dipped its toe into this and has tried to direct people from that content to the TV side of things, and that other broadcasters are doing the same thing. How are we getting on there?

Let us say that the broadcasters are on a journey. Obviously, they are bound by the fact that their numbers are measured across their broadcast platforms, not their YouTube platforms. I cannot really speak for the BBC, but we as an agency are focused on film and television broadcast production and we recognise that the sector, the industry and, indeed, the audience are migrating to online platforms. We do not have funding that is targeted towards those platforms at the moment, but we recognise that we have to develop interventions that deliver better content.

10:15

So far, we have delivered one pilot project, working with Cycling Scotland, which is on the development of mountain biking in Scotland and is called “Fresh Cuts”. It looks at Scotland’s rural, sports and visitor economies. Mountain biking is pretty big on YouTube, and our thinking was that maybe we could work with outdoor-sports agencies to improve the quality of the programmes and films that are made by Scotland-based, outdoor-sports content creators. Seven film-makers went through the first iteration last year—it was a two-part pilot—and the second six will start their course on Monday next week; I am meeting them on Friday for an introduction session. That project is how we are dipping our toe into upskilling and improving the quality of the outputs in the online delivery space. That is undeniably where the future lies.

Screen Scotland has been very successful in getting major productions to come to Scotland. It is always nice to see “filmed in Scotland” or the Screen Scotland logo at the end of the credits. However, how do we get to where Canada is, for example, as a major player? When you look at the screen at the end of some movies, you can see that, at one point in the 1990s, Hollywood had effectively moved to Canada, because there were incentives to produce there. Another logo that always comes up at the end of TV and film productions is the state of Georgia, for some reason. Can you explain why those places are major players? How we can get ourselves into that position?

Those Governments and regions decided that that was an important area for them and they invested in it, as the Scottish Government has done through Screen Scotland over the past five years or so. We were formed in 2018 and we have seen consistent growth in the number of films that are made in Scotland and the number of films and programmes from Scotland since that time, as a direct consequence of that investment.

On top of that, the UK’s tax regime for production is really attractive. The fact that it is uniform across the UK is very valuable, because it means that there is no confusion for the average decision maker for Warner Brothers in Burbank who might be wondering whether Scotland is or is not part of the UK and how that works. The universality of that tax regime and its competitive ability in international markets is really important. However, there is constant competition. Ireland has just improved its tax regime for production across factual programmes, both scripted and unscripted. We do not really have incentives that target unscripted production, so that is a proper risk for us.

I will ask a final, quick question and I am hoping that there is a really short answer. If there is not, I wonder whether you would consider writing back to the committee with a fuller answer.

Obviously, our committee also covers constitutional matters. You mentioned the CMS Committee at Westminster and the fact that there is no Scottish representation on it, and Wales and Northern Ireland were mentioned as well. Is there a significant difference in the way that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are treated as territories, compared with the way that regions are dealt with when it comes to the London governance of this whole area of the BBC?

I cannot speak with any expertise about how the English regions are treated, but I know that colleagues in Yorkshire and various other English regions would say that they are almost at a disadvantage in comparison with the nations of the UK, on the basis that we have dedicated BBC channels. Channel 4 has offices located in Scotland and we have a dedicated Channel 3 licensee, and there are national screening agencies in each of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. I think that probably the one area in which the BBC is very focused at the moment is how it does more outside of London but within England. “MasterChef” was recently moved to Birmingham. It is not an even picture across the UK, but it is also not an even picture between broadcasters.

Does anyone else have a final thought?

I think that it is horses for courses in respect of how the BBC treats people. Scotland has always had quite a strong presence within the BBC decision-making process. The English regions have different challenges, as David Smith said, and different support.

With regard to commissioning, one move that is key going forward is that the BBC’s head of commissioning for the nations is now working with each of the genre commissioners, which it never did before. That means that, across the UK, there should be much better support for unscripted work and a much more even spread of where that work goes.

Is a production being commissioned by BBC Scotland also a Scotland-based production, or is it a network production that will not be sold as a Scotland-based production, even though we would want it to be made in Scotland? At the end of the day, our members do not care who gets the profits from a production; they just want to know that the jobs are in Scotland. A lot of the profits just end up going back to multinational companies, regardless of who the employer is.

Do you have anything to add, Emily?

I agree with David Smith about the lack of representation in the English regions and I think that they look at and envy some of the advocacy that Screen Scotland represents.

Okay. I will say a quick thank you for your attendance and suspend the meeting for five minutes.

10:20

Meeting suspended.

10:26

On resuming—