BBC Local Radio

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The ““Meet Your MP”” slot lasts an hour and is all speech; there is no music. It is a mixture of people going out and about and interviewing people about issues. We do not know what the questions will be, and we get the time to give proper answers rather than just soundbites, so my hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. We have heard about the value of BBC local radio in a crisis or at a time when people are worried. On my patch, there were very heavy snowfalls in the last two winters. Although it did not make for compelling radio, parents and guardians were glued to their radios as presenters read out the list of 380 schools that were closed. That was done on a half-hourly cycle, and I know how valuable the service was. The listenership was probably the highest ever. It was just list upon list of schools. The parents or guardians were worrying about whether they would have to take a day off work to look after the children; the children were jumping for joy when they could go sledging and throwing snowballs. That is the kind of localness that we get from BBC local radio. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) has mentioned regionalisation. I was on the lunchtime phone-in show recently, and the presenter kept thinking she was still in Sheffield, even though she was broadcasting across the Yorkshire region. The BBC is examining that already but, as has been shown, it does not necessarily work. BBC local radio needs to be local. We have heard in other recent debates in this place that we must protect the front line. There is nothing more front line than BBC local radio, so I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will pass that message on from all of us here today and that the BBC will listen.