Stupidity, not a mid-life crisis—yet.
Italian supporters are guaranteed to see their team on free-to-air TV; Ireland supporters will see their team on free TV, as will France supporters; but Scotland, Wales and England supporters face watching a blank screen if the rights are allowed to lapse into subscription TV’s hands. The Welsh Affairs Committee, which has already been mentioned and on which my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) sits, had it right when it recommended in its report on broadcasting in Wales that
“the Government adds the Six Nations to Group A of the Listed Sporting Events, to ensure its status on terrestrial TV.”
Obviously, that is proposed in new clause 16.
These islands will host the men’s Euro 2028 championships, and there is a reasonable chance that all five countries might qualify. Viewers in England, Ireland and Wales will be able to see their teams live and in full throughout the qualifying campaign without paying a penny—beyond the licence fee, in case anybody wanted to challenge me on that. My amendment would guarantee that right to all across these isles through a simple amendment of the existing legislation, extending the protections that exist to protect “events of national interest”, in the words of the 1996 Act. Scotland’s journey in the past few years under Stevie Clark has shown how much interest there is across Scotland, and it is time that the legislation reflected that.
I am grateful to Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats for their support for the new clause. I hope that Tory Back Benchers who have been espousing the power of sport and arguing that sport should be shown on free-to-air TV will join us in the Lobby this evening.
3.45 pm
New clause 18, the related amendment, is designed to prevent any detriment below a certain annual revenue level to governing bodies and organisations that have their events listed and broadcast outside subscription paywalls. I know from my extensive discussions with governing bodies that they are in something of a bind. On the one hand, they support their sport and want to see it in front of as many eyeballs as possible—and perhaps, on a cynical level, to have as many eyeballs as possible in front of perimeter advertising as well. On the other hand, they receive a decent whack of cash for the TV rights—funds that go into developing the sport and supporting the grassroots—and that might well take a severe knock if the value of the rights is cut through listing in group A.
I fully understand that sports broadcasting rights inflation has been significant over the last decade and more. I understand that it is difficult for an STV to make a winning bid for Scotland rights commercially viable, due to the size of the TV market in Scotland. That is made harder still by the fact that UEFA has bundled Scottish international football rights with those of Wales and Northern Ireland to try and draw larger bids and more money for itself and the national associations. Although the same rights inflation has impacted the BBC, it does not have the same commercial considerations as an STV or an ITV. I appreciate, however, that Tory culture wars have inflicted severe damage to the funding levels available to the BBC in recent years. However, the BBC is required to serve all audiences across the whole of the UK, including provision for those in the nations and regions. From a sporting point of view, that simply does not happen.
We do not know how much the BBC paid to secure, yet again, the rights to “Match of the Day”, but we do know that it is a huge sum that takes up a huge proportion of BBC Sport’s budget. Despite the figures not being available, it does not take a genius to ascertain that per-capita spending to secure English sports rights vastly dwarfs that which is spent on Scottish sports rights. Incidentally, I do not blame BBC Scotland for that; the blame lies firmly at BBC network’s door. It
would seem that the approach by the network is to let Scottish football fans eat English cake. If BBC Scotland were afforded the per-capita sums used to secure England football rights, Scotland would be in a far better position to bid for, and secure, Scotland international rights. Or, indeed, if BBC Alba’s funding was anywhere near the levels of per-capita support offered to S4C, that would very likely allow BBC Alba to secure secondary sub-licensed free-to-air Gaelic coverage.
In lieu of any action to address this, new clause 18 would attempt to solve the funding gap by providing financial support to governing bodies, who could rely on that revenue stream to offset any loss of income caused by group A listing. That is a proportionate, cost-effective way of ensuring that there is no detriment from listing, while limiting access to the fund to those who actually need it, rather than those organisations that are already awash with cash. Of course, governing bodies in the devolved nations, being much smaller, are hugely hit by being part of a large UK broadcast market but a very small domestic market. To address the question that the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked in an intervention, I would suggest that if the Government are content to flush away nearly £10 billion on unused personal protective equipment, they are flush enough to cough up the relatively small sum needed to protect both grassroots sports and the principle of national teams on free-to-air TV.
In Committee, the interim Minister or temporary Minister, or whatever title the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) is going with in this debate, made reference to the Scottish Government bringing forward such a scheme if they wished. While the Tories are taking such a relaxed approach to the concept of reserved and devolved powers, perhaps he and his colleagues might extend that relaxation to the other powers that the Scottish Parliament has, such as the right to hold a fresh referendum on independence at a time of its choosing. Whatever the then Minister may have said, the simple fact is that broadcasting is an entirely devolved matter. In schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, section K1 states clearly that
“The subject-matter of the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Broadcasting Act 1996”
are reserved to Westminster. If it were up to me, schedule 5 and its list of powers reserved to this place would be deleted in its entirety, but there we are.
If the 1996 Act is entirely reserved to Westminster, so must be the financial implications of measures enacted under that amended Act. It is not up to the Scottish Government to fix the consequences of the UK Government’s broken devolution system, and it is entirely in order that the UK Government compensate governing bodies and others whose income falls below a threshold if it drops as a result of listing. Taken together, new clauses 16 and 18 would not only give group A listing a firm moral footing, but give rights holders a firm financial footing. Surely that is a win for everyone, including this Government.
I will touch briefly on my other amendments. New clause 17 would place the Gaelic Media Service, which in partnership with the BBC provides the BBC Alba channel, on the same statutory footing as its Welsh counterpart in the S4C Authority, which oversees the Welsh language channel. When the 1996 Act was passed, Gaelic broadcasting was restricted to opt-outs on the
two BBC channels and through STV and Grampian’s schedules. MG Alba, which the Gaelic Media Service now operates as, did not exist. Television was entirely analogue, and Gaelic and Welsh language broadcasting were restricted to Scotland and Wales only.
My new clause would simply ensure that Gaelic language broadcasting has parity with Welsh language broadcasting when it comes to the consideration of listed events. It would be an utter nonsense to say that speakers of Gaelic have less of an interest in seeing sports on free-to-air TV than their Welsh-speaking counterparts, yet that is what the current legislation implies. BBC Alba has developed a reputation for high-quality sports coverage since its inception. It therefore has a strategic interest in where sporting rights go, simply because it has invested a great deal of time and money into securing some of those rights and broadcasting the sports free to air not just in Scotland, but across these isles.
On the Broadcast 2040+ campaign, I welcome the pledges made by the interim Minister in Committee, and I am sure that the current Minister will back that up. In response to that campaign for digital terrestrial broadcasting to continue for many years to come, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) made some good comments. Even the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) made some comments that I agreed with, which is highly unusual.
However, pledges made by Ministers have a tendency to become pliable when circumstances make it easier to slide away from the original commitments. Amendments 79 and 80 would simply place into legislation a compulsory requirement for public service broadcasters to continue using digital terrestrial television to deliver their services. I can see no reason why that would be incompatible with those ministerial promises, which is why I see no reason for the Government not to accept my amendments.
Broadcast television has worked and, as the cliché has it, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” My amendments would keep the Government from fixing a problem that simply does not exist at this point, and I commend those amendments, as well as the other new clauses and amendments to which I have spoken, to the House.