Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

I want to go back a little, to just before the announcement. You acknowledged that there are challenging long-term trends for the industry, yet you did not include the changes that we are discussing today in your long-term plans, either when the licence was renewed or when the five-year strategic plan was produced. The changes are a short-term response to something that has just happened; they are not part of your longer-term planning.

In the short period since producing your five-year plan, which was five months ago, you have reached a decision that a crisis has emerged and that you need to make serious and damaging changes, which I am sure you would prefer not to have to make. What dialogue and discussion happened with your workforce about what the options might be? At what level did you sit down with your colleagues and say, “We’re in a difficult situation here. Let’s explore the options together,” rather than simply landing this on them?

Can I just remind you of the question?

My final question is about what happens next. From my understanding, you are trying to push Ofcom into making a decision fairly quickly and you are having a very short consultation window. I suggest that that is wrong, not only from our point of view as politicians who want to scrutinise the decision, or from your workers’ point of view, who will be affected by it, or from viewers’ points of view, but from the wider industry’s point of view. It would be wrong to make this decision quickly because, if Ofcom were to approve it, that would make it very difficult for it to resist other similar changes to reduce or even abolish regionality in other channel 3 regions.

You are proposing a pretty profound change that could impact on independent broadcasting throughout the entire industry. Do we not need to take our time and put pressure on Ofcom to take its time?

I have seen comments in the industry press where people are eyeing this issue closely and thinking about the consequences for other channel 3 regions. There are serious consequences for the wider network of channel 3 broadcast, not just the immediate regions that will be affected and fear the loss of regionality. There is a real danger that the issue could spread.

Good morning. I, too, draw attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am an associate member of the NUJ.

Several members have touched on issues that I was keen to explore, but I do not want to go over ground that we have gone over already. You have mentioned the contrast between STV and ITV. ITV does not hold a single licence for all regions; it holds a clutch of licences, but those licences involve similar commitments to regionality. Are you aware of ITV seeking permission, in a similar way in which STV is seeking permission, from Ofcom to reduce the commitment to regional output that its licences require? Have there been similar examples of that elsewhere? If Ofcom were to approve such a request, could that open the flood gates and lead to a dramatic reduction in regionality, not just in Scotland but across all ITV regions?

I take the point that there might have been a change to where one programme was produced, but I am not aware of anything on the scale that we are talking about—in effect, a region would be abandoned, with two regions being merged. That would certainly be the viewers’ perception of what they would be served with.

Do you share my concern that, if Ofcom were to say yes to STV’s proposal, it would be very difficult for it to say no to ITV if it wanted to cut its costs in similar ways and reduce regional commitments? This is not about just one region; it is about the fundamental principle of regionality throughout the channel 3 service.

I will start by acknowledging, at a human level, that answering questions of this kind in a pretty charged atmosphere will be a personally uncomfortable experience for you.

I turn to how the decision was handled, as opposed to the substance of the decision. You have suggested that there is misreporting about the online meeting and whether someone was in a holiday villa and whether another senior manager was in a hotel room very close to the studio rather than meeting people face to face. I do not know how it has been reported, but I can tell you that some of the people directly affected by that experience found it pretty insulting.

I would add to that our experience here in Parliament, when you came—as you do every year, which we value—to brief MSPs about the business and its future. I think that that was about a week before the announcement was made. We had already reached the point at which MSPs were hearing rumours that something bad was coming. We sought reassurances about your commitment to news and regional coverage and got those reassurances.

Would it not have been a bit more open, transparent and trustworthy to do that the other way around, and for you to come in after the announcement had been made and be willing to have those difficult conversations? I suggest that, overall, the situation has not been handled well.

During that period when you recognised that something dramatic had changed and you needed to respond to it, what level of dialogue did you have with your workforce, on whom you depend for everything that you do? What level of dialogue did you have with them about how to face the challenge and what the options were?

Your senior team looked at the options.