Dear Mr Davie,
Congratulations on your appointment as the Director General of the BBC. We wish you well.
We are writing to you as MPs from the BBC South West region, concerned about planned cuts to BBC regional news and current affairs. These core BBC services are vital and valued in our region.
Under planned reforms, the most senior TV current affairs position based in the South West will be at producer level. Their base will be Bristol, with commissioning from Birmingham. Bristol’s patch will extend from Cheltenham to the Isles of Scilly. West Cornwall is 235 miles and a minimum travelling time of four hours by car from Cheltenham. In our area, staff across the BBC are now facing redundancy. The BBC South West region alone is set to lose twenty-six posts including all of the five current affairs posts, thirteen posts from TV news at BBC Plymouth and four roles each at Radio Devon and Radio Cornwall. This will dramatically change the BBC in our region and reduce the ability of the BBC to reach and reflect our communities across the wider South West.
We are particularly concerned about the negative impact to communities of cuts by the BBC to local news reporting. For BBC England, it’s proposed that £25million in cuts to local news will see 450 jobs lost. In recent years, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have had significant investment in their programmes. Scotland spends £13.33 of the licence fee per head of population; Wales spends £10.64; Northern Ireland spends £16.11, while England spends £1.87 (from BBC Annual Report 2018/19). We want all regions of the UK to be reflected fairly and believe new funding arrangements will disproportionately reduce services in our area. Proposed cuts to BBC England come at the same time £100 million is being invested in diversity and inclusion. We welcome that investment, but believe BBC spending on diverse stories and storytellers should include diversity of region, age and thought too.
As you will know, Ofcom has a responsibility to act on behalf of licence fee payers, holding the BBC to account for the way in which it fulfils its mission and purposes, as set out in its Royal Charter. In Ofcom’s most recent annual report of the BBC, published in October 2019, it was stated that, ‘The BBC should better reflect the whole of the UK with authentic news and current affairs content that feels relevant and engaging to all audiences. Our research suggests that audiences want to see more news about their communities, reported by people with a deeper understanding of the area.’
In May this year, in its response to these specific recommendations, the BBC stated in ‘Bringing Us Closer’, its Annual Plan for 2020/21 that, ‘Deepening representation of the whole of the UK is a priority for the BBC.’ Yet the reality is that the reverse is happening. The BBC is cutting back on regional news programmes that viewers value and are amongst the most popular news and current affairs shows that they broadcast. With the BBC needing to make savings, it’s a question of priorities, and local and regional news would appear to be taking a disproportionate share of the cuts being made by the BBC management.
The license fee is a form of public funding, which needs to be justified. As a group of MPs representing constituencies in the South West, we feel the BBC should focus on high-quality public service broadcasting which the market won’t provide. Local news is cherished, but very hard to fund commercially anymore, so it is even more incredible that the current funding axe is hanging over regional news coverage.
The BBC has an annual income of over £5 billion and pays its highest-paid earners and senior management substantial salaries. In comparison, the locally managed current affairs budget for BBC South West is around £450,000. Instead of cutting valued staff in our region, the BBC should make savings from the top earners. If stars want to earn hundreds of thousands each year, let them do so in the market. At a time of national crisis during Covid-19, our constituents are relying on trusted local news more than ever. Yet the BBC now wants to take away free TV licenses for over-75’s and, at the same time, cut the services they use the most.
We would ask that no action is taken by the BBC to implement these cuts until it can demonstrate to the satisfaction of Ofcom that it has conducted detailed audience research to determine whether or not their policy is supported by viewers and listeners.
We look forward to your engagement and response to the issues raised on behalf of our constituents and the South West as a whole.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Parish MP
David Warburton MP
Richard Drax MP
Anne Maire Morris MP
Chris Loder MP
Simon Jupp MP
Anthony Mangnall MP
Selaine Saxby MP