CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1071-iv

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

TELEVISION BROADCASTING IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Wednesday 18 November 2009

MR RICHARD WILLIAMS, MR RICK HILL,

MR TREVOR BIRNEY and MR PAUL CONNOLLY

Evidence heard in Public Questions 160 - 209

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 18 November 2009

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Mr John Grogan

Stephen Pound

Mrs Iris Robinson

David Simpson

________________

Memoranda submitted by Northern Ireland Screen, Below the Radar

and Independent News and Media

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Richard Williams, Chief Executive, Mr Rick Hill, Chairman, Northern Ireland Screen; Mr Trevor Birney, Managing Director, Below the Radar; and Mr Paul Connolly, Group Managing Editor, Independent News and Media, gave evidence.

Q160 Chairman: The Committee is now quorate which means that we are now being officially recorded. Please continue with your submission. It is not too long a submission?

Mr Birney: No, it is not. Last week I was part of a delegation that met with the DCMS, that is the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, in London and during that meeting we asked how Northern Ireland was to benefit from Digital Britain and we were told frankly that it would not. Northern Ireland, said the senior civil servant, had "fallen off the end of Digital Britain". The public funding that will now go to Scotland, Wales and England would create jobs in Northern Ireland and help tackle the democratic deficit caused by the lack of investment and deterioration in the quality of our local television news and current affairs. Crucially, it would also help pump-prime our digital economy and ensure we kept up with the rest of the UK. Today, the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland, Nelson McCausland, was due to meet his counterpart at DCMS to discuss Northern Ireland's role in Digital Britain. Last night that meeting was cancelled. The Minister, who is indignant at Northern Ireland once again falling foul of the same London-centric attitudes that have caused many of our problems, told DCMS that he will only come to London once this Government has a firm proposal on how Northern Ireland is to be included in the pilots to be rolled out across the UK. Today, we applaud the Minister for taking that stance. For too long Northern Ireland has failed because of a lack of leadership in our industry on top of soft touch regulation and a narrow commercial interest. This Government appears satisfied at inflicting a democratic deficit on the taxpayers of Northern Ireland which may be caused by a diminished news quality. Most of all, the people of Northern Ireland will suffer because the DCMS decision points to something else: that Northern Ireland, its news, its licence payers, its politics and its institutions simply do not matter as much as the rest of the UK.

Q161 Chairman: Thank you for that. That was quite a long statement and I hope the rest will not be quite as long because we do want to have some discussion. I completely take your point. Of course, we raised some of these very issues with the Minister when he came before this Committee, and doubtless you have seen the transcript of that evidence.

Mr Birney: I have indeed.

Q162 Chairman: I was very unhappy at even the title of the paper, Digital Britain, which does not refer to Northern Ireland at all. Mr Connolly, did you wish to say something?

Mr Connolly: I think I would agree with what Trevor has said. I understand the Committee is addressing the totality of broadcasting in Northern Ireland, but this issue of Digital Britain, IFNCs and the millions of pounds that could be invested in Northern Ireland has really gone right up the agenda in the last couple of weeks and we feel the situation now is quite serious. I would respectfully urge the Committee to take this issue and run with it because Northern Ireland has been relegated to the slow lane of Digital Britain. You were right when you highlighted that the name of the report, Digital Britain, caused a lot of questions in Northern Ireland. I am thinking of it now as "Digital Backwater" because that is the risk that lies before us if we do not go forward. It shows very importantly a question that I am sure you will come to later about whether broadcasting should be a devolved matter in Northern Ireland. Having been at the meeting last week with Trevor, with DCMS, I now feel that Northern Ireland has been completely wiped off the radar from DCMS and I feel very strongly that ---

Q163 Chairman: Not just Below the Radar, off the radar!

Mr Connolly: You asked about the uniqueness of broadcasting in Northern Ireland. The uniqueness of broadcasting in Northern Ireland is that it represents the totality of life. The people of Northern Ireland have triplets and quads the same as people in the rest of the UK, we commit domestic murders as well as political murders, we shop and buy stuff in the same way, but when we are portrayed on a national level none of that is shown at all and we do get the Troubles stereotype. That is why it is important that a regional flavour and identity for Northern Ireland is preserved. It is very important for that. I do notice that the BBC has been making some strides in improving the portrayal of Northern Ireland at a network level and we would applaud that.

Q164 Chairman: Mr Williams, Mr Hill, did you want to add anything?

Mr Hill: From a Northern Ireland Screen perspective, we see a country where we have dared to re-imagine the future and creative industries play a really crucial part within that. We, at Northern Ireland Screen, have what is the tallest enclosed studio space in Europe in the Paint Hall. In that studio recently we have had Universal Pictures complete a film and we have HBO at the moment. We have had notable successes with TV dramas and film in the last number of years. All of this despite the fact that very often when it comes to an appropriate level of network commissioning we find ourselves very much in the slow lane of how public service broadcasters are advancing. Perhaps you would like to add to that.

Mr Williams: Picking up from that, the concern from Northern Ireland Screen's perspective in relation to the collective evidence given to this Committee is that two things have been largely absent from the evidence, although I would have to say not necessarily absent from the questions from the Committee. Those two things are, firstly, the tremendous strides that Northern Ireland is making within the screen industries in terms of internationalising its activity and producing programming and exporting programming on a global basis. More importantly, there is an issue to do with the extent to which Northern Ireland has failed to receive appropriate value from public service broadcasting across the whole range that public service broadcasting is. One of the things that has not much featured in the evidence is money. A very conservative estimate of the annual loss, if you want to put it that way, to Northern Ireland is about £50 million. Every nation within the United Kingdom, every region within the United Kingdom, is very anxious to develop its creative industries. Creative industries are seen to be the future, a very important building block for the future of any economy, and certainly Northern Ireland's. To develop our creative industries without a building block as large as £50 million is something of a challenge. The key point from my perspective would be to focus very closely on that. That completely interlinks with portrayal, but this is an economic issue. Northern Ireland has been very poorly served for quite some decades and I would endorse that aspect of my colleague's comments, that to a certain extent that has been copper-fastened within Digital Britain.

Q165 Chairman: I think we can take it as read that there is a sufficient talent base in Northern Ireland. I do not think any of us who travel regularly to the Province would for a moment deny that, but one of the things that came up in the questioning in Belfast, and I would like you, gentlemen, to briefly give me your opinion on this, was are targets and quotas the best way of ensuring that Northern Ireland receives a fairer deal or would it be better to have a rather dramatic gesture? For instance, somebody suggested to us in Belfast, and you will have read this, that it would be good if one of the BBC Commissioners was stationed in Northern Ireland, and somebody else talked about the enormous boost that Cardiff producing Dr Who had given to broadcasting within Wales even though, of course, it was not a Welsh programme in any sense. Briefly, could we have your reflections on those various alternatives because we will want to make some recommendations and I would like to feel that whatever we recommend is in tune with what Northern Ireland needs.

Mr Birney: It is a very toxic issue when you come to talk about quotas and targets and what is a quota and what is a target and the semantics that go on around that. Again, going back to Digital Britain, many of us in Northern Ireland believed that Lord Carter would cement the relationship between Northern Ireland and the network broadcasters in imposing more stringent adherence to targets for the PSB stations. When you look at the PSB broadcasters it is quite clear they are saying many positive things about their intentions in Northern Ireland, and the BBC has gone much further than that, but when you look at Channel 4's commitment it has been miserable in Northern Ireland. It has promised to double its output from Northern Ireland, but twice nothing does not amount to anything more than that. We do have to look again, unfortunately, at the PSB broadcasters' intentions in Northern Ireland. The message we would send out is that there has to be stricter regulation, stricter monitoring and far more transparency around what exactly is being produced in Northern Ireland and the portrayal of Northern Ireland. We think that the soft touch regulation has helped to land us where we are at the moment in that Northern Ireland has fallen off the radar in the rest of the UK.

Q166 Chairman: Does anybody want to add anything to that? Do not feel you have all got to speak on everything, but equally I do not want to shut anybody up.

Mr Williams: I would like to speak strongly on that point. I would strongly endorse the proposal for quotas and I would question some of the logics against them. The suggestion is that quotas somehow might undermine creativity or they are an unnecessary interference with the marketplace. On the latter point, broadcasting is an enormously regulated marketplace so really introducing this sort of quota is not particularly significant in that context. The first point is more important. The suggestion has always been that creativity will be diminished if there are quotas but there is absolutely no evidence in the context of Northern Ireland that that is the case. Indeed, the opposite is the case. As I have already said, we have produced the least amount of network production for UK broadcasters over any period of time that you want to look at if you analyse the percentage of that programming that was award, the percentage of that programming that was critically acclaimed. Recently, after literally in my professional career a decade of being told that making projects in Northern Ireland would lead to critical embarrassment for the broadcaster that chose to do it, one of the first pieces that the BBC made in Northern Ireland was declared by one of the most well-known critics as the finest piece of television of the decade. Lord Carter said that he did not believe in light touch regulation or heavy regulation, there was only regulation that worked and regulation that did not. It is transparently clear that the present regulation does not work and I would, therefore, call for a number of things. One, for the developments at the BBC, which have to be welcomed, the introduction of a 2% target by 2012. I would dismiss the 3% target for 2016 because it is so far away it is irrelevant. There is at least a 2% target and I would say that target should be a quota. It should be monitored by the BBC Trust and that should be overseen by Ofcom to ensure that the spirit and intention of that is clearly driven through. There has been so much debate around quotas and from the point of view of Northern Ireland it has been nearly exhausting. In a sense, it is time to have less debate about it and more delivery.

Q167 Chairman: The reason that there is debate is that there is disagreement, and it is quite clear that this afternoon even among you witnesses there is disagreement. On the one hand, we have Mr Birney rather dismissing quotas and targets and opting for regulation, and we have you rather dismissing regulation and opting for quotas and targets. Is the distinction as clear as that?

Mr Birney: I am not dismissing quotas. I completely agree with everything that Richard has said. We have had so much promised in previous years about targets or quotas that it renders the two words to be almost meaningless. If the broadcaster states it is going to do something I believe that it should be regulated that they do.

Q168 Chairman: So you would have regulated quotas and targets?

Mr Birney: Yes. Regulation is the element that is missing.

Mr Hill: Part of the issue here is that we represent Northern Ireland Screen and our friends represent another grouping. In Northern Ireland Screen we do see some movement from the BBC, which is very welcome. 2% by 2012 would be very welcome, but it ought to be a floor and not a ceiling. We ought to make the most of the opportunities that that brings. For years we have been told and given reasons why we could not do it in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland Screen commissioning, with Government funding, has shown not only can we do it but we can do it in an outstanding fashion.

Q169 Stephen Pound: Gentlemen, welcome. Before I ask the question returning to quotas, can I just apologise for being the slow learner round the table. In light of the slightly iconoclastic opening comments by Mr Birney, which I welcomed, they were very refreshing, "betrayal", "robbery" and various other words, could you just say how does digital rollout work in the context of the Republic of Ireland?

Mr Birney: What we should not do is get confused between digital rollout and the promises made in terms of production and portrayal and what this Government has prioritised out of Digital Britain. In DCMS's response to Digital Britain they prioritised news and current affairs at the core of public service broadcasting and what we are saying is having prioritised news and then rolled it out in Scotland, Wales and English regions, by not including Northern Ireland it means there is nothing in the report, Digital Britain, for Northern Ireland. Despite paying our licences and our taxes in Northern Ireland, we are not to be included in the only element of Digital Britain that could have given Northern Ireland a real shot in the arm.

Q170 Stephen Pound: We agree with that. In fact, we re-titled the report in front of the Minister, "Digital UK". Can you imagine a system where you had a Digital Ireland and a slow-stream Northern Ireland?

Mr Birney: What has happened in Ireland is that there has been top slicing of the RTÉ licence fee for many years which has gone to a separate fund holder, which my colleagues can talk about in more depth than I, the BCI. That organisation then takes the money that it gets from the licence fee and decides how best it should be spent and in what areas and what areas to prioritise over others. We came forward this time last year during the whole PSB debate and said that what should happen in Northern Ireland is that we should have a very similar fund and we should call it the Northern Ireland Broadcast Fund which would ring-fence the money that was going to be raised, whether from digital switchover or industry levy or wherever it came from, for Northern Ireland, which we estimated at something like £30 million a year, which should then be spent on production and portrayal which London-based broadcasters could come in and take advantage of if they were going to either produce a documentary or piece of public purpose television in Northern Ireland or, indeed, local broadcasters and local production companies could also use. What it meant was that it does not matter what happens in the future, whether my children watch content via mobile phones or some other device in five or ten years' time, what we were saying was let us ring-fence the funding so we accept that what is sacrosanct is the public purpose television. That is what has happened in Ireland and we are saying that is what should have happened in Northern Ireland. We did not get that in Digital Britain and now we have also been excluded from the IFNC pilots which has left us, again, stuck in the slow lane of the digital revolution.

Q171 Stephen Pound: Underlying all this is the portrayal of life in Northern Ireland and overcoming the negativities, and I think all of us agree with that. One of the problems with quotas, and I am actually a fan of quotas, I remember the quota quickies we had at the beginning of the early days of television which was some of the best broadcasting ever seen, is how do you actually combine a quota with a light touch, particularly when it comes to analysing the portrayal of the region?

Mr Williams: The quota only relates to the value and volume of the programming.

Q172 Stephen Pound: What is the value of the programming?

Mr Williams: How much it costs.

Q173 Stephen Pound: Sorry, you mean the commercial value?

Mr Williams: Yes.

Q174 Stephen Pound: I was thinking aesthetically.

Mr Williams: The quota is that £10 million, £20 million, £30 million has to be spent, and that is the best way to construct it in my view, or it could be by the hour, 30 hours, 40 hours whatever. The editorial decision as to the nature of the portrayal has to remain with the broadcaster and the production company involved in making the programming. The regulation is merely of the funding and where it is channelled to. There has to be separation between the Government and broadcasters in terms of editorial. Does that answer the question?

Q175 Stephen Pound: When we had the 2003 Act, one of the debates was about the BBC having a quota for regional broadcasting which did not specify which regions. Do you see the future for Northern Irish production being broadcast in Great Britain? Do you feel that would be positive?

Mr Hill: I think it has to have a future. We have seen some good examples of it in the past, but it is quite a challenge sometimes.

Q176 Stephen Pound: Which is the best example, could I ask?

Mr Hill: Occupation, a three-part drama on the BBC starring James Nesbitt.

Q177 Stephen Pound: They always seem to star James Nesbitt!

Mr Hill: He was particularly good in that drama.

Q178 Stephen Pound: That is not a criticism.

Mr Hill: We can be very proud to be associated with it. It was a good drama featuring a leading Northern Ireland actor and a Northern Ireland accent. Sometimes to get a Northern Ireland accent on the network is hard work, never mind a programme on the network that might actually be about Northern Ireland, that is a step even further. It is one thing to have our accents heard, it is another step to have, say, a returning drama series or a regular series in Northern Ireland as you might find in other parts of the UK. That is the challenge.

Chairman: Mr Simpson?

Q179 David Simpson: It is more of a comment really. By the way, on the last comment from Rick Hill, I am very proud of the accent, too, I can assure you, but, having said that, I take his point it is very difficult to get someone from Northern Ireland because of the accent or whatever. In some of the opening comments I think Paul Connolly said that the landscape is changing, and it is changing. For 30 or 40 years Northern Ireland came through hell on earth with a lot of difficulties. We are now trying to get our lives together for the betterment of the next generation coming behind us. I think it is very sad that the Government has taken this decision that we are not going to be equally treated to other regions of the United Kingdom. The point has been made that we are paying our licences, we are paying our taxes, and we believe that we should be treated exactly the same. It gets to a very bad state when a government minister has to cancel meetings with other government officials because of this and that shows how - and I will use the word 'bitter' - how bitter it is getting because it is unacceptable. It is not right. Northern Ireland should be treated exactly the same as every other part of the United Kingdom. For many years the old saying in Northern Ireland was that we were the poor second cousins to the rest of the United Kingdom. That day has gone and I believe that we should be getting a fair crack of the whip. Hopefully, the point that has been raised in relation to lobbying, I think the Committee is right in taking this on board and, with your help, Chairman, perhaps we can push this forward and try and get some good positive results from that. There is just one question I want to finish with. Maybe you could outline for us the opportunities. What opportunities would the presence of an independently funded news consortium provide to local television operators or local print media? Could you outline some of the benefits?

Mr Connolly: We view that sort of opportunity in two ways. There are potential commercial opportunities for consortia to raise revenue by leasing office space in existing buildings, by providing skills training and various other things. We would also see the benefits of sharing editorial copy throughout groups in the country with weekly newspapers and our colleagues in other parts of the media. I think also funding could be unlocked for newspapers in particular to get reporters back into the hearts of local communities. What you are seeing across the UK - and Northern Ireland is no different - is newspapers and radio stations and television retreating from the organs of our local democracy like councils, like courts, like health trusts. I feel very strongly that a pilot INFC programme for Northern Ireland would allow us to start seeding reporters back into communities. Everyone talks over here about the Londoncentric approach. That happens in Belfast, too. The papers and television stations are highly Belfastcentric and have retreated in a lot of ways from councils and courts. A lot of the meat and drink of most local newspapers used to be that sort of stuff.

Q180 Chairman: This is one of the reasons this Committee travels around a lot in Northern Ireland because it is very Belfastcentric. Belfast is an important and very fine city. It is one to which we wish unlimited prosperity but nevertheless it is not Northern Ireland.

Mr Connolly: I am from a small village in the Glens of Antrim and you would not see a television camera there from one end of the year to the other. Another benefit of it would be we would have multi-skilled journalists who would be video journalists as well as print journalists and possibly also audio journalists, so you would have these trained reporters living, working, breathing and sleeping in communities and not stuck in offices in Belfast and that to me is a very important innovation which would help us.

Mr Birney: When you look back to PSB2 and what Ofcom were trying to achieve with PSB2, and then what Lord Carter was trying to achieve with Digital Britain, basically it was not as much about the here and now but about the future. It is going to back to where we are going to be and how we access our news and current affairs in five or ten years' time. What we do know about that is our habits are highly likely to be very different than they are now. It is very unlikely that we are going to have to sit down in front of a TV at six o'clock in the evening to see our news. It is highly likely that we will be getting our news from all sorts of sources, whether it be the internet, mobile phones or whatever other technology appears. What Lord Carter in Digital Britain was trying to do was to ring-fence and future-proof that provision of news so that we are always going to get a source of public purpose news from somewhere; news that is going to have integrity; news that is going to have sustainability; news that is going to have reach. Chairman, you talked earlier about image and talked about how Northern Ireland is portrayed in the rest of the UK, whereas where I come from in Fermanagh, if you go down there, the issue is how Fermanagh is portrayed by the Belfast-based broadcasters. The issue there is that the BBC has 700 staff based mainly in Belfast and one, or two maybe at tops, in Fermanagh. What Lord Carter was trying to do was recalibrate all of that so that news was not simply about the BBC but also ensuring that we always had plurality of provision and that wherever that provision came from, that second source, that it had proper sustainability.

Q181 Chairman: Is not the problem that, yes, you want plurality of provision but you also want centrality of provision within Northern Ireland? You talked about the internet and all the rest of it. If you have too much fragmentation, then you lose the opportunity, surely, of having central news that is applicable to the province of Northern Ireland as an integral part of both the United Kingdom and the island of Ireland, and have you not got to get the balance right there?

Mr Birney: Absolutely and we would agree with what Digital Britain set out on how to ensure that, whether that is in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the English regions. We agree with the infrastructure and that at the moment what needs to be serviced is television news output for news. That is where the vast majority of people are coming together at six o'clock in the evening to access news. Yet in Northern Ireland, according to the BBC figures, something like 350,000 people visit their Northern Ireland News Online website. That is maybe three or four times as many people as watching UTV News at six o'clock in the evening so you can see how things are changing.

Q182 Stephen Pound: Is that a daily figure? Is that a total figure?

Mr Birney: It is a total figure per day.

Q183 Stephen Pound: Per day?

Mr Birney: So that people are now coming to the internet to watch the news. What we are saying is the Belfast Telegraph or the Irish News or the The News Letter simply cannot cope with an organisation sitting very dominantly in Northern Ireland and being able to update its website minute-by-minute hour-by-hour. Paul would be very lucky if he could update it once a day because he simply does not have the resources to do that. Digital Britain and INFC were meant to be the silver bullet solution that brought in newspapers and broadcasters whose business models were being challenged. The ITV business model, as we know, is under severe challenge. UTV's figures today would attest to that; again advertising has been dropping horrendously in the last few months and the outlook is not that bright. What PSB and INFC was about was to ensure that, whatever happens, that in the next five or ten years there will always be a second service of news, whatever the reach of that, whether the majority of people reached it through mobile phones or still by watching television at six o'clock in the evening. What it is about is saying give the money, put it in the middle, and let Ofcom or others (we would say others) decide how best to reach the audience, whether or not in five years' time they realise that television is not the best way to provide plurality of service. We say that it could be on-line and maybe a pilot in Northern Ireland should focus on-line. We believe it should. We believe the money that should be spent in Northern Ireland coming from INFC should be there to be spent on challenging that dominant position that the BBC has so that, yes, you can look up a story on the BBC website but you can get an alternative view by turning to a website that has the same sort of level and equity of funding as the BBC. UTV, the Belfast Telegraph or any other newspaper or media organisation in Northern Ireland simply cannot compete with the BBC at the moment so we have something of an Orwellian society where there is only one major source of news. How do we change that?

Q184 Chairman: Do you agree with this?

Mr Hill: We have already given you a written submission on some of our thinking.

Q185 Chairman: You are now giving evidence in public; do you agree?

Mr Hill: I will give the evidence in public. We believe that there ought to be a broadly based public service broadcasting fund for Northern Ireland. That would include news and it would include other things as well that would be captured within public service broadcasting. That broadly based fund would support all those who are creating content for distribution, by whatever means, whether it is on-line or on television in the more traditional linear models that currently exist. We believe that this is important. If you look at the demographics in Northern Ireland, the only other area of the UK with such a young population is London, so they are consuming media in different ways, they are watching less and less television, so you are going to need to support the change in the medium to longer term and to support public service broadcasting across the range of distribution platforms.

Q186 Chairman: The diversity of distribution must not compromise, surely, the quality of production? So in other words what is being produced and distributed must be of a high quality if it is going to serve the interests of Northern Ireland both within and without Northern Ireland?

Mr Birney: Absolutely and that is what Lord Carter set out to achieve. As former editor of current affairs at UTV I won two Royal Television Society awards for indepth investigations that were broadcast in their current affairs series Insight. UTV does not broadcast Insight any more. It does not do any more current affairs investigations. It has jettisoned that so that means we have only one platform that produces investigative current affairs now and that is on the BBC at half past ten on a Tuesday night. UTV does not do that type of current affairs investigation.

Q187 Chairman: UTV does provide something which is of enormous value within Northern Ireland in its news broadcasts.

Mr Birney: In its news, absolutely. Its audiences come two-fold as opposed to the BBC.

Q188 Chairman: As one who watches that when I am in Northern Ireland I am always impressed by both the diversity and the quality.

Mr Birney: Absolutely. You only have to turn to the Minister, your DUP colleague Nelson McCausland, in his call for a pilot for Northern Ireland. He said he wanted it broadened for current affairs. You have to ask him why he wanted it broadened to current affairs if he felt that the supply of current affairs in Northern Ireland was sufficient.

Q189 Chairman: Are all of you united in wanting a pilot for Northern Ireland?

Mr Williams: Absolutely we are united in wanting a pilot for Northern Ireland. I think it would be true to say that there would be different emphases amongst us as to what that pilot should be, but the first point where we are all absolutely in agreement is - and maybe it was colourful language - the notion that Northern Ireland was robbed in the context of the only financially backed Government intervention coming out of Digital Britain; we would collectively agree. Northern Ireland Screen is already on record, and I am happy to reaffirm it to you, that we would not have prioritised news provision as the most immediate need for further public intervention. We would emphasise, as I have already said, production and portrayal. We would certainly endorse what has been said about the digital future, about the fact that the landscape is very much changing, that the models of distribution are changing and that Northern Ireland from every way - an economic way, a cultural way, a representational way, a constitutional way - needs to be at the forefront of that, not lagging at the tail of it. Northern Ireland Screen's view is that we would not have prioritised news but it does not therefore follow that Northern Ireland should not have a pilot. There can easily be a pilot that includes current affairs, that has a strong focus on digital distribution, and includes production and portrayal.

Q190 Chairman: Do you gentlemen go along with that?

Mr Birney: Absolutely.

Q191 Chairman: So there is a unity among you on this pilot issue?

Mr Birney: Yes.

Chairman: This is something we are anxious to be able to deliberate on and reflect upon. We may well come to recommend it. I want to ask you in a few minutes about the sort of recommendations you would hope we might make, but before that I know that both Mr Grogan and Mrs Robinson want briefly to ask some questions. We have about ten minutes left.

Q192 Mr Grogan: I will be very brief and my apologies for going in and out but I am hosting a reception on behalf of the university in my constituency, York. That would be my first point. Do you protest too much really? There are going to be three pilots. There is a Digital Britain Bill, which I agree is misnamed, to be published later in the week. Those pilots are going to be largely to plug the gap in regional television where I wish in Yorkshire we had half your provision. Given that one is going to be in Wales and one is going to be in Scotland, are you being a bit unfair to the English regions? Can you not wait like most of the English regions will have to wait until 2012/2013, particularly when you have such a good ITV.

Mr Connolly: UTV's position is quite precarious. ITV is a big institution sitting there and UTV maybe represents 2% of output. If ITV wants to do something it is very hard to see how UTV can stop it or respond. If ITV were to hand back its public service obligation, it is not unforeseeable that Northern Ireland could be left without a significant news provider. It is not just speaking as a representative of a commercial company but also as a news consumer in Northern Ireland. It is absolutely vital for our democracy that news continues and that we have certainty about news continuing. That is a big concern.

Q193 Mr Grogan: I know we are pushed for time so perhaps I will just ask one more question, if that is all right, Chairman. You said you worked for UTV and so on. Part of Digital Britain is that the existing companies will not be allowed to compete for the contract. You may have one view of UTV's efficiency and so on, but they have got radio interests, they talked a little bit about their on-line presence and so on. If there was an independently funded news consortium would you be prepared to take them on head-to-head and do you not think they should be allowed to compete with you?

Mr Birney: Just to correct you, UTV would be allowed to tender.

Q194 Mr Grogan: Not alone though, they would have to find a partner.

Mr Birney: That is not a decision or something that we put into it.

Q195 Mr Grogan: Why should they not be able to compete?

Mr Birney: I am completely competitive, absolutely: leave it open and let us work it out. This is a Bill that will pass through the House of Commons in the next few months ---

Q196 Mr Grogan: It should allow them to compete effectively with you?

Mr Birney: Absolutely.

Mr Connolly: No-one minds losing a tender but we want the option of getting into the tender.

Q197 Chairman: You make your point very well, yes.

Mr Williams: May I quickly respond to the first point. No, I do not think we protest too much. I would take you back to the wider context of Digital Britain, of the Ofcom reports and prior to that I would take you back to what I was saying that Northern Ireland is anonymous - genuinely anonymous - and has been for my lifetime anyway on the UK networks, so we do not protest too much.

Mr Hill: Can I put some figures on that anonymity. It has gone from 0% to 0.03% of network production as measured by Ofcom.

Q198 Mrs Robinson: If you have nothing how do you get anything?

Mr Hill: 0.03% is where it is at the minute. It is going to reach 2% by 2012. It cannot come soon enough so if we are protesting, it is because there is a long history of feeling a little colder in relation to fair funding.

Chairman: You feel out in the cold. Mrs Robinson?

Q199 Mrs Robinson: Rick has highlighted the issue very well that yet again Northern Ireland is treated as a backwater and not recognised as very able with people like this here coming and being able to sell our wares. Can I be devil's advocate and just put two points to you? Do you think that broadcasting should be devolved to Northern Ireland, either in the short term or the long term? What would be the advantages or the disadvantages of that? Just something simple!

Mr Hill: Can I push that back and say that that is a matter for you and for the politicians to decide.

Q200 David Simpson: Pass the buck!

Mr Hill: Our role will be to build a vibrant creative industry in Northern Ireland whether it is devolved or reserved and we will continue to do that with the funds.

Q201 Mrs Robinson: It is really in light of how we are perceived to be the backwater and the last to get anything thrown at us in terms of money.

Mr Williams: I would endorse some sort of compromise position on that. I suspect that there would be difficulties in fully devolving broadcasting. While I am very critical of the BBC in many ways, I would not want to see it dismantled, as would probably have to be the case if it was devolved. That said, I would strongly endorse the devolution of aspects of the funding, aspects of the policing, and some sort of mechanism that would ensure that rather than broadcasting being fully devolved that Northern Ireland played its appropriate representational part. I am no expert but I suspect that there could be compromise mechanisms developed along those lines.

Mr Hill: An example of where funding has been successfully devolved is the Irish Language Broadcast Fund. What we have seen is where there is a fund; if you build it, they will come, to take the image from the movie. Where you put the funding you get the added value and the added investment. If you put in the funds, the content will follow with network commissions.

Q202 Chairman: What would you two gentlemen say to Mrs Robinson?

Mr Birney: I go back to the proposal that we made a year ago in saying that the funding should be devolved.

Q203 Chairman: The funding but not the authority?

Mr Birney: Not necessarily broadcasting but again the funding should be devolved down into something like the BCI style of funding which ensures competition standards and that the money is spent on local talent. I think it is best in local hands to decide how local money is spent. What we said in that that fund should encompass everything from news, current affairs, right through all the public purpose broadcasting through to Irish language and through to Ulster Scots. We are a production company that this year, despite having very few Irish language speakers, has just produced our first three-part series on health issues in Ireland for TG4 and we have just been commissioned again to produce another three-part series on the economy for TG4 for next year. That is about helping to build skills and helping allow us to bring young filmmakers into our company who are getting the experience necessary to make documentaries and public service content in whatever language. What we are saying is that is absolutely critical and the Irish Language Broadcast Fund has had a huge impact, particularly in the last couple of years, that has helped build a skills base in Northern Ireland. What we are saying is to broaden that to encompass right along all genres to make sure that all indigenous languages are ring-fenced along with all the other public purpose broadcasting.

Q204 Chairman: Mr Connolly, I want you to be able to comment on this before I ask the final question.

Mr Connolly: I certainly think that mechanisms should be found to give the Stormont Government a much stronger say in broadcasting matters. We would not want to dismantle or undermine the valued role the BBC has, so we would need to find mechanisms to protect that, but we should have a much stronger element of devolution of broadcasting in Northern Ireland.

Mrs Robinson: Do you not find it ironic that although it is part of the whole industry we are now on the map for filming. The Paint Hall down in Titanic Quarter is an amazing spectacle to see. My husband was down there quite recently and the expertise in the producing of the backdrops, carpentry, and the making of costumes, et cetera, it is a whole new industry coming.

Chairman: I am sorry to interrupt but Mr Simpson has to leave at quarter to otherwise he will not get his plane.

Mrs Robinson: So have I!

Chairman: You are the same, in that case we will become totally inquorate, so could you just tell me very briefly, if you had your wish, what would each one of you like this Committee to recommend?

Q205 Stephen Pound: It is Christmas after all!

Mr Birney: I think that the Committee has to immediately review its position on Digital Britain and DCMS and urgently do that as a result of ---

Q206 Chairman: We have not got a position. We are here to make a report and what I am saying to you is what would you like us to recommend?

Mr Birney: I think immediately the Committee has to make some sort of engagement with DCMS over its decisions in Northern Ireland this week, because I think once again those are going to have a huge impact in Northern Ireland. I think that if they are not redressed, if there is not some message sent to DCMS that Northern Ireland simply cannot afford to lose out at this critical point.

Q207 Chairman: Thank you for that. Mr Connelly?

Mr Connolly: I would echo that and I would also like to see maybe the Committee could give some support to Minister McCausland in his stance. I think that would be quite good.

Q208 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Williams?

Mr Williams: I would like the Committee to press for the BBC target to become a quota and to be brought forward from 2016 to 2012.

Q209 Chairman: And Mr Hill?

Mr Hill: I would like to thank our elected representatives for their interest in this matter and encourage them to continue with this level of interest. We have seen in Scotland and Wales with measure of success political interest in broadcasting matters has delivered to the creative industries there.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed all of you. We have been quorate for virtually the whole of the session so it is all on the record. If there are points that you feel that you have not got across or that we have not sufficiently probed on, please let us know. I am sorry about the time constraints, but clearly we cannot carry on with only two of us, and Mr Simpson and Mrs Robinson have to go off to get the plane. We wish you all a safe journey back. We will be reflecting on all of this. It is our aim to publish a report well before the general election. We would hope to publish probably end of January/early February, so there is time to take further evidence both written and oral. All I would just say to the representative of the Belfast Telegraph is when articles are written about the Committee do not jump to conclusions. This Committee likes to hear evidence from as many people as possible and likes to be able to reflect a variety of views and then to make its recommendations. We shall seek to do just that. Thank you very much indeed. I declare the session closed.