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Given that you seem to find it quite straightforward to make the distinction—I am not contradicting you; I do not know, because I do not live in that area—should we not expect ITV, UK wide, not to say things on its news programmes such as, “This is happening in health” as if it applied to everybody? If you speak to colleagues in London and tell them when they get it wrong, surely that should not be happening, or it should stop happening.

I am sorry that our time seems to be curtailed; in my view, this is one of the most interesting panels that we have had and I do not say that to just any panel. Given what the convener has said, instead of asking all the questions that I intended to ask, I will make a few comments, and I am keen to hear the response to them.

I agree with Professor Beveridge. I am a supporter of public sector broadcasting; I believe that the licence fee has a real role and that educating people about its purpose is important. However, the question is whether the BBC is best placed to perform that function. Two points have come out so far: first, the extent to which the BBC is relevant and, secondly, the extent to which it is trusted. The last point that Professor Happer made was really interesting but also worrying. Indeed, young people these days might be reacting to what the previous generation has done and now look at public sector broadcasting, teachers or parents in a way that they have not done in the past. Most of us talk to school classes, and we hear them say that they are struggling to find out where they can get information that they can trust. They are particularly worried about disinformation. I am not sure whether it is part of the curriculum, but we get asked a lot of questions about that.

On the question of trust in the BBC, I will give a few examples of why there might be a lower take-up of licences in Scotland. We have mentioned the 2014 referendum, when we saw an influx of people from the rest of the UK—the serious people who came up to do the coverage, some of whom were Scottish. The level of ignorance about the situation in Scotland—I am thinking of one very high-profile Scottish journalist, in particular, although they had been based in England for a long time—was appalling.

I have put the point to the BBC on a number of occasions that it continually says, “Scotland has two Governments,” and yet it will not scrutinise the UK Government. Obviously, if there is a budget happening, it will look at that, but I would note as an example that there is a lot of coverage these days about ferries in Scotland—for fairly justifiable reasons—and yet there has been no coverage whatsoever from a critical point of view of two aircraft carriers that were built for double the budget and which came in well over time. Those boats were built in Scotland and the costs were paid for by Scottish taxpayers as much as by anybody else. I have challenged both Gordon Brewer and Martin Geissler on this in the past, and their answer is that no one will come on to discuss those things, which seems to me to be an abdication of responsibility. The question of trust is, I think, very important.

On a minor point, BBC news programmes are meant to stop at a certain time to allow the Scottish version to come on, but they frequently overrun. When I raised this with the BBC, its appalling response was that, “Yeah, sometimes something happens.” That is not what I am talking about; the programmes overrun routinely, which shows contempt for the programme coming after. However, the BBC seems unwilling to respond to that.

As for accountability, things got so bad here that the Scottish National Party group in the Parliament invited Tim Davie to come and speak to us. It was quite unusual for someone like that to speak to a political group, but he had done it routinely for Tory and Labour groups at Westminster. He quite happily admitted to us that every day of the week in London, he would have senior Labour and Tory figures banging down his door, complaining about this, that or the other. That does not happen to the same extent in Scotland and, if it did, it would not carry the same weight. The question of accountability is important, and I do not think that the BBC is accountable in Scotland.

It was Professor Happer, I think, who asked about the extent to which the Parliament or the Government in Scotland are listened to. My view is that they are not listened to at all. Of course, the big issue is that, when the devolution settlement happened, it was made sure that broadcasting stayed a reserved matter. There is a reason why that was done, as we have seen over the years.

I really believe in the BBC, and always have done, but we are, to some extent, just dancing on the head of a pin. The first comments that were made this morning were about the print media, which I note is accessed by only 12 per cent of the population. YouTube has also been mentioned; more people—I do not know whether it is more young people or more people in general—will, when they put on the TV, go to YouTube, not to the BBC or any other channel. Therefore, we are, as I have said, dancing on the head of a pin. We are talking about huge trends, and it is hard to see how they can be resisted. The best course of action is to be more accountable, more trusted and more relevant.

Finally, on the point of relevance, something that we are seeing not just with the BBC but with other channels—Sky is probably the worst—is that, when they have a news review, they get in some vaguely leftish journalist and some vaguely rightish journalist in order to have balance. I have seen a couple of examples of this on Sky. Everyone routinely slates the Scottish Government, because all three involved in the programme, including the presenter—Anna Botting is an example—have happily agreed to do so, and there is no right of reply. That is the kind of coverage that we are getting at a time when only 12 per cent of the population read the print media. The emphasis is disproportionate—not only that, but the fact is that broadcasters take their lead from the print media. The longer that the BBC and other broadcasters are not trusted and are not deemed to be relevant, the more dangerous their position gets.

I know that I have made a number of points, but I will finish on this one. Professor Happer, I know that you did not say it this way, but you suggested that young people—or, indeed, teachers or parents—might go more to public sector broadcasters, because there is nowhere else to go. That is really dangerous, because the broadcasters’ sense of complacency gets worse. They know that people are guaranteed to come to them because of the absence of a better alternative. That is a really dangerous position.

I suppose that my questions are about credibility, accountability, relevance and the way in which the BBC is trusted. I know that the BBC has made some attempts with fact-checking approaches and so on, but the fact that it is now so London-centric is, I think, driving the disaffection felt by people, especially young people, in Scotland for public sector broadcasting.

I know that there was a lot in there, but I would be happy to hear the panel’s comments. Are you stunned?

I go back to my original point that we are concerned about broadcasting in Scotland, but I appreciate that you are coming at this from a journalist’s point of view, so perhaps that was not the right question to ask you.

On the subject of bias, there was a junior researcher in the BBC who had stood for the Labour Party years before. There was a huge hullabaloo when that was discovered, as if it was an example of bias, and yet on the other side, you have Andrew Neil, and the guy—I forget his name—who is on the board of the BBC, who was appointed by the Tories. The bias and the double standards are appalling.

To go back to Professor Happer’s point, surely that is the biggest opportunity for the BBC in Scotland. If it can establish the trust and the relevance that it should have, that is its best defence against some of those other issues.

My final question, since we are short of time, is for Professor Higgins. It is about the cultural aspect, which we have heard quite a lot about in previous discussions, from George Adam and Neil Bibby in particular. It is about the impact of what STV is doing and what the BBC is doing in cutting “River City”, and the extent to which that has cut off a route for people to get into TV production, apart from anything else. I do not know what the other term for soap is, but it is a continuing thing. It is long term, which means that people can be trained up, knowing that there will be jobs there, so “River City” going is a huge loss.

Billy Sloan and Iain Anderson being given the chop from Radio Scotland makes no sense to anybody I know. It makes no sense for it to do that. It is a question of the cultural impact.

I once revealed to the committee that, as a student in Canada, I was a campus DJ and over there, you were obliged to play a certain number of Canadian songs by Canadian artists every hour, just as the Canadian universities had to have a certain number of professors and teaching staff who were Canadian. The reason for that was what Trudeau called the elephant that lives next door; they wanted to protect their culture. Is there a role for that in Scotland at all?

I have a final question. You mentioned the distinction between de jure and de facto referenda. The English legal system has a principle called stare decisis, which essentially means to look at previous decisions as setting precedents. The system is very strongly based on that principle, which, incidentally, is not the same in Scotland. Do you think that that principle, and the fact that we had an agreed referendum back in 2014, adds to what seems to many people, although not to everyone, to be an overwhelming argument for the Scottish people having the right to decide?

We have done that once before—it was agreed in the past. It is now at least 11 years since that happened and none of the reasons for not doing it again stack up. Does that create another mandate for a Scottish Parliament in which the majority of people support independence? If the English principle of stare decisis is being followed, surely that should lead to the same sort of agreement.

You are right to say that the various parties that oppose a referendum have not been able to state what the mechanism is for exercising a right that they acknowledge. That seems absurd, but that is where we are. In fact, none of the unionist members of this committee has offered any explanation of what the mechanism might be.

Do you have an idea of why, when it was agreed in 2012 that a referendum would be held in 2014, the UK Government felt that there was a compelling mandate? Why have we all had this “once in a generation” and “now is not the time” prevarication that we have talked about for the past 11 years or so? What do you think is in the minds of successive UK Governments that are trying to block this? Is it because they fear that, this time, people will vote for the independence of Scotland, or is there another reason?

I think that, when the committee went to London, most members went to hear evidence from a number of sources. My take, which might not be exactly the same as those of other committee members, is that the approach to intergovernmental meetings is an absolute shambles. I think that I mentioned while I was down there that ad hocery characterises all the different structures. The tier 1 meeting never happens on the same day as the other meeting—whatever it is called. Meetings are held only at the behest of the UK Government, when it decides that it wants to hold them, and there is no independent secretariat in many cases. That is all completely ad hoc.

I agree with much of what Stephen Kerr said, but I do not agree that we will find the answer in creating new structures, because it is not the structures that underpin this complete failure. The UK, as a unitary state, is almost unique—it is not a confederation or a federation. It is completely unable to manage the process of devolution. I am not a unionist, but I have said that, if I was, I would want devolution to work. You would think that everyone would want it to work.

It seems to me—I am interested in the cabinet secretary’s view on this—that the approach is underpinned by an attitude of contempt for the devolved settlements and an imperious approach to power sharing. There is no co-ownership of the structures or the processes. There is no agreement on them at the start—they are just decided at the whim of the Government of the day. That is not the case for every other country that you would care to examine, including Belgium, Germany and France, which take a different and more sustainable approach.

Until the attitude changes, and until there is not this fear of or contempt for the devolved Administrations, things will remain the same. Of course, the attitude varies depending on which party is in power—I mention the attitude towards Wales in relation to the pride in place programme, for example, which shows the asymmetric approach when a different party is in power.

This is an absolute shambles. It will not be properly addressed until there is—what do the Europeans call it?—a co-produced or agreed process, with structures, in which everyone is involved and takes ownership. That is not what happens just now. My view is that things will not change until that happens, but I am interested in the cabinet secretary’s view.

Yes. It is on that last answer and on the point that you raised about ambivalence versus contempt, convener. The contempt argument was borne out by Jamie Halcro Johnston’s comments when he purported to say that anything from the Scottish National Party will be discarded because it believes in independence so there can be no improvements in the meantime. That is another example of the contempt that we saw from the previous Government.

Before the referendum, commitments were given, as you remember, that if Scotland voted no, this Parliament would be constitutionally protected and that it could not be abolished. The Sewel convention made law that Scotland’s place in the EU was guaranteed, which turned out to be lies. However, the Smith commission was established after the independence referendum, and the unionist parties supported Scotland’s right to self-determination. Were they acting in bad faith?

I do not at all disagree with what has been said. To my mind and in my experience, the best period for intergovernmental relations was during the Cameron years, which involved not a structure but an ethos that was called the respect agenda, which seemed to work to a large extent. When it comes to trust and respecting confidences, there has never been a recorded instance of any Scottish Government minister, of any stripe, betraying or disclosing market-sensitive or political information. You would think that that would be enough to get some trust, even given that the fundamental constitutional aims of the Scottish Government and of the UK Government are so different.

The question really is, how will we get there? Will it take another election before there is a genuine attempt to address the issue, or will it perpetuate itself?