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I get that you are a regulator and that you do not have this power, but Westminster Governments have for decades now, I think, refused to list Scotland men’s—and, I would argue, women’s—football team events. As a result, people in Scotland have had to watch England play Albania, and they cannot watch Scotland play Spain or whatever. Does that not concern you as an organisation?

Thanks.

Rhodri Talfan Davies said that you currently spend around £300 million a year. What proportion of the licence fee raised in Scotland is that?

Would that be unchanged over the last five years?

When we had the cast and employee representatives of “River City” here, the point was made that the BBC was essentially doing away with what might almost be called a cultural college, where sound recordists, camera people, production staff, actors and actresses could get their start in Scotland. That is going by the board, and it seems like a huge loss.

I want to go back to the example of “The Traitors”. You said that there was no history in Scotland of having—I forget your term for it.

A reality show, yes. The fact that we did not have the talent to do that show is a condemnation of the track record, and it is compounded by your saying, “We will allow BBC”—or whoever produced it—“to do it this way, because they do not have the staff there.” However, that is what happens when you do not invest. Is that not the purpose of it? I would have thought that Ofcom would have had a vested interest in ensuring that the cultural capacity of the media in Scotland was sustained and sustainable. “The Traitors” is an example of the fact that that did not happen—you did not have people involved in that.

Is cultural capacity part of your remit? Are you concerned about its decline? I am talking about all the skills and trades, as well as the actors. I will let you answer that question and then come back with one more.

But there is not a single person with the ability to do high-end reality shows.

Is that the extent of your role? I talked to the folk from “River City” who were here about this, but the BBC seems to have a symbiotic relationship with Netflix and other streamers, in that, notwithstanding what has been said about skills shortages, its expenditure, its experience and the capacity that it creates are very useful to Netflix and others when they consider coming to Scotland. Does it not seem sensible to try to get those different players around the table and get them to agree on some proper way of creating a stream of that talent, whether it be production assistants, camera people and so on? Is that not part of your role?

I appreciate that it might be the nature of your remit, but it seems extremely passive, with your talk of shining a light, issuing guidance, being flexible and nuance—all those things. It seems to me that playing a much more active role and trying to encourage a vibrant sector would be useful.

My last question is on sports fans in general, but football fans in particular, in Scotland being able to see matches that are important to them. That sort of thing has been declining. Aside from the lack of free-to-air matches, the coverage of Scottish football by other UK broadcasters is pretty appalling. Is Ofcom concerned about or involved with that at all?

This committee got figures in 2021 that said it was 90 per cent at that time. Leaving that aside, Mr Kerr raised the point that the tail-off of people willing to pay the licence fee was more pronounced in Scotland than it was elsewhere in the UK. I should say I told this committee two weeks ago that I had just got my licence, having moved into a new property, and then this week I got a letter saying I am being investigated for not having a licence. A strange thing, but there you go.

I will venture some reasons for that difference in the drop-off and I will be interested in your view on them. Some are small things that may seem trivial. First is the almost constant overruns of UK programmes that eat into programmes that people want to tune into in Scotland. Those are usually news programmes, but I can think of an England women’s rugby match that stopped coverage of the early parts of the Scotland-Greece football match. It is irritating when you are waiting for two or three minutes for some little conversation between a couple of presenters on a news programme down south.

The second one relates to news coverage. You do an incredible amount of news coverage in Scotland on devolved issues. You have special investigations and you marry up your radio and TV coverage to cover devolved issues exhaustively. It certainly exhausts me sometimes. You do that all the time. However, when it comes to reserved issues—and it is the position of the BBC that there are two Governments in Scotland—the coverage is completely absent. I have raised this on air, going right back to Gordon Brewer and latterly with Martin Geissler. They both had the same reason, which was that they could not get UK ministers to appear. Important issues such as high speed 2 being cut from Scotland or the overrun on aircraft carriers are not covered by the BBC in Scotland at all and that seems very partial.

The third point is on sports. I mentioned earlier that we talked to Ofcom. I have campaigned since 2007 to have Scotland football matches deemed to be part of the crown jewels, or listed events, and that has not happened. I know that that is not in the gift of the BBC, but when you did eventually get a Scottish match, the production of the programme was appalling. It was late. You missed the early part of the proceedings. There was no commentary at all. You allowed the overrun from the previous game. That was because the programme was on pitch, as was the case for the FA Cup final on Saturday, rather than being studio based.

To me—and certainly going by my mail bag—those are the reasons why people are losing faith in the BBC in Scotland. I would be interested in your views on those points.