Chamber and committees

:One of my local newspapers advertised for an AI journalist. I am not entirely sure what that is, to be honest. There is very little local content in local newspapers now, and there tends to be a concentration of ownership.

It seems to be the case that we do not have what we should have, in relation to the funding of the Gaelic language, for example. It seems to be the case that network TV at a UK level does not serve us. A lot of the examples that we have heard about, including the convener’s, are about a news item that comes on at six o’clock or ten o’clock on the BBC and completely forgets to mention a dramatic situation. There is so much coverage of student loans just now, but virtually none about student loans in Scotland. That is a serious concern, but more fundamental is how they choose which stories to concentrate on.

Yesterday, there was one on recycling rates for food waste, which was actually about England, although it did not say that it was for England. It was a very good piece on Wales that said that every local authority in Wales has a scheme to uplift food waste every week. That is newsworthy, but that was not the basis for the story. It was about the Barnett formula. The BBC decides what is important in England, and then it might do an add-on. It decided that the UK Government was telling English local authorities that they had to comply with that, and then it covered a bit about Wales. The issue is the basis of the BBC’s decisions on what news to report.

The point is not just that, very often, the news is irrelevant to Scotland. It is also that the BBC does not understand that Scotland has a separate NHS—that just does not register with it at all. Frequently, we have headlines here about some development or a crisis in the NHS in England, but the BBC does not cover such issues here. If the BBC is not giving Gaelic broadcasting its place and is not covering Scottish news—sometimes it just blacks out things such as the aircraft carriers, which I have mentioned before—maybe we should pay only part of the licence fee. I say that as somebody who supports the BBC and the licence fee, but we are not getting the same service as the rest of the UK gets. We are being short-changed. I am interested to hear your view on that.

:To your point, cabinet secretary, you have said before that we have been saying this stuff about the BBC for years. I do not attend the BBC dinners at the SNP conference. Stephen Kerr can take my place at those if he is keen to go to the SNP conference.

We have said this stuff for years. I will give two recent examples. You mentioned Ofcom. I raised with BBC Scotland what is I suppose a niche concern that the network news regularly overruns, thereby delaying the Scottish bit of the news. I presume that the news is also delayed in every other part of the UK. The issue was the utterly dismissive way that the people from BBC Scotland dealt with that—they said, “Oh, sometimes, there are scheduling issues.” That is not about a big crisis that requires an extended news piece. There is regular overrunning, and there is a contempt for local—as they see it—news. The issue is the BBC’s complete lack of response, which was mirrored by Ofcom.

I raised with Ofcom the BBC’s press review programmes—most of the channels have such programmes now, with a token leftist journalist and a token rightist journalist. The issue is that a Scottish person is never involved. The programmes highlight in a very one-sided way the print media and all the stories that it wants to print. There is never a case for Scotland. When I raised that with the woman from Ofcom—I forget her name now; it might be Christina—she absolutely brushed over that with no concern whatsoever. Those programmes usually continue through election periods as well. I noticed that the BBC website has truncated some of its coverage of the newspapers because of the by-election today. It is recognised that a democratic process is going on, and that such coverage might influence that, but the BBC does not do that with its press reviews.

My point is that neither the BBC in Scotland, nor in the UK, nor Ofcom is taking those points seriously. They have had every chance over the years, so perhaps we have to try something different. I argue that the solution is to devolve the BBC. I think that we would suddenly see a lot more attention on the customer in Scotland if it was devolved. That is just my view.

:It is a bit more than that. Look at the sports coverage. Look at the coverage of the six nations. Every programme has to have at least one English representative on it to safeguard the programme from local natives going over the score. Every programme, regardless of who is playing or who the presenter is, there will always be an English player there to talk about it. With the Nick Robinson stuff and what happened during the referendum, it is like the BBC has to send somebody who will understand and can translate into language that the corporation will understand what is happening in this distant land. It is a mindset that the BBC cannot seem to shake.

I have just a couple of questions. From all the evidence that we have heard, it is clear that what is common to the BBC and other broadcasters is the threat, as it is perceived, from streaming and various other sources, and the fact that a majority of people, when they switch on their TV, now look at YouTube first, rather than a terrestrial channel. It seems to me that broadcasters look through only one end of the telescope—focusing on how they cope with all those threats—rather than considering what their subscribers and customers want, which is a mix of local and national news. That is the sentiment that we have seen in the responses to STV closing down its functions in the north-east and so on.

If broadcasters were to consider what viewers want, surely they would better safeguard their audiences. I am not saying that they should ignore streamers or the various threats that they face, but the idea—although I have got it across quite badly—is that you could establish a cohort of people who are experts in broadcasting, such as the entire production crew, so that if some of the big streamers or companies want to locate a project in Scotland, they have the ready resources to do so. The BBC is best placed to do that, because it is the biggest organisation, but it keeps on chasing the latest thing, rather than rooting itself in what is wanted. You made the point that Gaelic is underfunded, not least compared to the Welsh language service. Surely it would be more productive for the BBC, and broadcasters in general, to look at what people in Scotland actually want.

I have a question on the legal position, based on your submission and also what we heard earlier from our advisers. When this inquiry came about, I asked how consent can be exercised in relation to the Act of Union, if it is said to be democratic and voluntary. However, from what you said and from what we heard from the committee’s advisers—Aileen McHarg also mentioned this in her submission—I know that there seems to be a view that the treaty of union is not that relevant to the debate that we are currently having. Am I getting that wrong?

I am pretty sure that the UK Government would not have given as the reason for its granting that authority that the Turks and Caicos Islands were a former colonial possession. That is not the basis on which it would do that, and I do not think that the case being made in that respect is based on its status as a former colony. I do not know what its status is just now; it might have dominion status, but I am not sure. I am pretty sure, though, that the UK Government would not have justified its actions by saying that it was an ex-colony. That being said, I do take your point.

But what would we be seceding from?

I am grateful for that clarity, but it raises in my mind the question whether it would be possible to have in Scotland a legal referendum on having no confidence in the Supreme Court, but that is just my own view.

I could be wrong on this, so please feel free to correct me, but a kind of narrative seems to have built up with regard to the two referenda that were held on devolution. In the second referendum, a lower bar was set rather than a higher bar, and instead of its coming about because of a change of mind, it came about because of an increase in support. In the 1979 referendum, there was the perverse and very unusual—indeed, unprecedented—rule that allowed the votes of the dead to count towards a no vote, and there was also the 40 per cent rule. However, support still grew over time.

I think that Professor McHarg made this point—I am paraphrasing here, because I do not want to put words in her mouth—but that kind of obstruction to a democratically expressed view will tend to lead to an increase in support for the view. I think that I have got that right. People in Scotland voted in 1979 on having an assembly—I am just old enough to remember it—and it was refused. Did that refusal in itself lead to an increase in support over a period of time?

I should also point out that the settled will was never a precondition of the 1997 referendum. People might say that, but it was never a precondition. When it comes to the idea that we can set that kind of precondition and that there must be some settled will that meets a certain bar—and I know that you have all argued against that, because the term is so vague—I point out again that that was never part of the 1997 referendum. I am happy to hear any comments on that point, but we should be clear about the history of the two devolved assembly referendums.

I have read your submissions and we, as a committee, have also had a chat with some advisers, all of whom are as esteemed and as knowledgeable as the members of this panel.

The submission that stands out to me is that of Adam Tomkins. I do not want to overstate it—and Adam Tomkins can correct me if I am doing so—but that is because of the extent to which it talks about the people as being central to this, which is often forgotten when we talk about legal and constitutional architecture and so on. However, as Professor Tomkins says at various points, the simple fact is that

“the decision-maker is the people of Scotland”.

That is very true, whether it is about trying to force the issue of having a mechanism to achieve independence or stay in the union, or whether it is about actually taking that decision. I think that it is also true of the European Union, where I have worked for a number of years in the European Committee of the Regions, and now the Council of Europe, which is often said to be bound by its constitutional and legal architecture. Very often, it will follow the people; the people are supreme in relation to that.

However, apart from in Adam’s submission, that point seems to be relatively absent. Aileen and Stephen, is that because of the way in which you were asked to contribute to this session, which is about finding a legal mechanism? Adam has made his position clear, but does either of you want to say something about the extent to which the people are pretty important in all this?

Maybe I introduced the confusion here. I do not think that that is what is happening with the Turks and Caicos Islands; it has not made an appeal to the United Nations or other international bodies on the basis of its origins as a colonial state. It comes back to the point that, if the UK Government decides that it wants to allow for an expression of self-determination, it can do so itself, and, indeed, it has done so on that basis. It is not, to the best of my knowledge, part of a wider campaign.

I have a final question. We have had a lot of discussion in this debate about the once-in-a-generation idea. It was mentioned by a couple of very prominent people on at least a couple of occasions—with, I think, a misinterpretation of what was said—but it seems to have been elevated almost to the status of a constitutional convention and become a cast-iron law. I point out that, during the 2014 referendum, it was said that the only way of securing Scotland’s place in the European Union was to vote no, and that has not been continued as a constitutional convention. What is your view of the once-in-a-generation tenet?