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I agree that that point is important. However, it is all the more important because we have an unregulated landscape. You have twice talked about making sure that people can find or can access impartial or accurate content. I suggest that that will be entirely ineffective if people can find accurate, impartial information if they go looking for it but meanwhile are being actively bombarded with the very opposite.

Can you confirm that the work that you are doing on video on demand will not require YouTube, for example, as a content provider to pay due regard to impartiality and accuracy in the content that it provides to everybody? I do not think that you are empowered to that.

That remains a massive gap in regulation of the news that people consume.

I cannot shake the feeling that we still have an approach to regulation and scrutiny of, and political debate about, the BBC that derives from a time when it was massively dominant in terms of the economics of production, storytelling, culture and news. It was massively dominant, but now it is a player in a market. It seems to me that the legislation that you mentioned—the Online Safety Act 2023 and the Media Act 2024—might catch us up to where we should have been 20 years ago, but it does not fully address the current landscape and what it will continue to evolve into.

The media act does give you some powers in relation to video on demand. I looked at your website to see whether the consultation on that is out yet, but I did not see it. I want to ask about the context, scope and breadth of that consultation, but I will connect my question to the point that the convener made about the recent Liverpool incident. The BBC quite properly immediately said that the incident was not being reported as a terrorist incident and that the suspect is white, but that did not matter at all because huge numbers of people were immediately fed lies that the suspect was an immigrant or that it was a terrorist attack. There is nothing at all that the regulated parts of news can do to stop the very deliberate proliferation of lies and conspiracy theories. The Liverpool incident is by no means the only example of major video-on-demand platforms actively promoting conspiracy theories, far-right propaganda and the kind of public health misinformation that we saw during Covid.

What is Ofcom empowered to do under the Media Act 2024 about those very profound challenges of disinformation, conspiracy theories and lack of political neutrality during an election on major video-on-demand platforms, as well as the proliferation of social media platforms?

Are you saying that the BBC was not the source of that perception?

It still feels as though there is quite a lot of confusion about where that came from and the way it has been handled is extremely unfortunate. If there is any suggestion that anybody at “River City” was told something that was not true by the BBC, you should investigate that seriously.

I move on to the impact of the decision. Hayley Valentine clearly set out the issue of making sure that the BBC is producing output that people want to watch. Even the folk at “River City” understand that there are changing tastes. They do not have their heads in the sand. However, the BBC needs to do another thing beyond producing content that people want to watch—it also needs to create the ecosystem for the industry, including training opportunities and first job opportunities, on a scale that justifies it. One reason why I think that there should be a broadcaster like the BBC—a large, dominant, publicly funded broadcaster—is to create that ecosystem, because nobody else will do it.

Can you confirm that you do not expect the new six and eight-part productions to create the same level and scale of career opportunities and training opportunities as “River City”? How do you intend to replace that for the longer term so that the BBC is making that permanent, on-going investment in opportunities that mean that in 10, 20 and 30 years we will have an increasing and diverse cohort of folk working in the industry?

Good morning. I will follow up the same theme that Emma Harper started and that Joe Fitzpatrick continued: the list of treatments that you have made clear is non-exhaustive, not prescriptive and can be changed. Specific issues might have been considered for such a list but have not been included, such as harm reduction. There are those who make a case for heroin-assisted treatment not as a default, but because it has been shown to be effective in certain circumstances and successive UK Governments have allowed it. I am interested in exploring not only that but the question whether any list—even a non-prescriptive, non-exhaustive one—is the right way to go.

You said that the bill would increase the range of treatments that are available. Although you might be strongly of the view that it would increase the pressure on Government and public sector bodies to invest in capacity, it would not actually increase the range of treatments that are available. You also said that it would empower individuals to access the treatment that they believe is right for them, but the bill’s achieving what you have described would not sit well, it seems, with the points that you have just made about clinical judgment in each case.

Surely, any bill that is composed of a list, as this one is, will place an emphasis on the things that are included in the list and risk de-emphasising others. Effectively, providing a list makes a political judgment in place of what should be a clinical judgment. By taking a list-based approach, are we not mistaking a political judgment for what should be a clinical one?

Nicotine can lead to people dying.

Thank you for the clarity. I am still a little unclear about the rationale for saying that intoxication, as such, determines the right to access the treatment considered under the terms of the bill. New substances are coming on to the market all the time, and a drug could come along that is lethal and highly addictive but that does not cause intoxication leading to a loss of control. I do not want to overstate the issue, as it may have been considered already during a previous evidence session, but it is a little unclear to me why intoxication—which is clearly a relevant safety issue in road traffic offences—is relevant to people’s access to addiction recovery services.

I can see why it is relevant to road traffic law, because you need to be in control of a vehicle. Could Mr Ross explain why intoxication is relevant to addiction recovery, whereas addiction to a legal or illegal drug that does not intoxicate would not be treated in the same way?