Seòmar agus comataidhean

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 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

A lot of issues have been covered and I do not want to repeat them. However, earlier in the meeting, Cristina Nicolotti Squires said, “Our minds are not made up”. The letter that we have received from you says:

“We are proposing to approve STV’s request. In our view, STV’s proposals will ensure that audiences continue to be served with high-quality, regional news provision on a sustainable basis for STV.”

That sounds as though your minds are pretty made up.

If the responses were almost universally negative, could that change people’s minds, or is it just a question of analysing the responses?

But there will be people who will miss out, and there will certainly be local news that it will not be possible to cover in the same ways that it has been.

We keep hearing about “they”, meaning the audience, but the audience are not one group. In the Highlands and Islands region that I represent, it is vitally important that we have news that is as local as possible. That is why there are such high listening numbers for local radio.

What is happening will mean that a lot of older people, as the convener highlighted, will see a reduction in the service that they are getting. Would you accept that?

So, what is to stop it coming to you for another variation when things become a little bit too difficult and too expensive?

This is a question to be asked of the Scottish Government. The party in the Scottish Government has said not that it will push for another referendum but that there will be another referendum. There has to be some legality to that in order to deliver it; indeed, as Mr Robertson has quite rightly pointed out, it has to be a legal and acceptable referendum.

From what you are saying, Mr Robertson, you seem to be suggesting that there is no legal plan. The secret plan—or the plan that is being kept secret, I should say—is simply to do what you have done before and hope that circumstances—

The point that I am trying to extract from you—[Interruption.] Obviously, it is frustrating Mr Brown, and I apologise for that. Essentially, the First Minister of Scotland has said that there is a secret plan. Sorry—he said that there is a plan. It was described as “secret” by a former First Minster, and we have taken that into account.

It is clear that you are not offering anything different. There is no difference from what has been offered in the past.

I welcome that.

We have all sat on committees where Scottish statutory instruments have come through late, or UK Government legislation has come through late from the Scottish Government for consideration. Sometimes it is the responsibility of the Scottish Government that things are late; sometimes it is the responsibility of the UK Government. I hope that we all accept that.

I will move to another point. You have raised some concerns, issues and frustrations, and we can accept that some of them are understandable. Some of them are the same frustrations that local authorities in Scotland have with the Government about their relationship and engagement. I am not asking the cabinet secretary for particular examples but, first, would you recognise that point? Secondly, are there areas where the relationship between the Scottish Government and local government could provide more of a guide when it comes to relationships with the UK Government?

It is more about your experiences. I recognise that there are differences between the two relationships, but I wanted to know whether there is anything like best practice.

A more practical issue has been raised, which has been hinted at in our conversations today. A huge amount of the work that goes on is civil servants behind the scenes. There is a recognition, probably on both sides, that some civil servants in the Scottish Government do not always understand the pressures that UK civil servants work under, and vice versa, which has implications. It was suggested that there could be more exchange and more opportunities for working together. I know that there is some exchange. We were down there just before or after a week of engagement. I wondered whether more consideration could be given to interaction between civil servants and officials, to allow both sides perhaps to get a better understanding of the challenges.