Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence


SUBMISSION 52

Supplementary Memorandum submitted by Mr Alan Yentob, BBC

  I write to clarify the BBC's position on the matter of tax relief for British feature films, clearly a central issue in your inquiry into the British film industry.

  I feel that the issue of the continuation, or replacement of Section 48 tax relief has risen up the agenda since the BBC submitted its written evidence in March. Since we did not have time to cover the ground in our oral evidence session before the Committee, I thought it would be helpful for the Committee's deliberations to know the BBC's position on this aspect of the inquiry.

  It is BBC Film's and my experience that the present tax relief is absolutely vital to the indigenous film production industry. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that few, if any, of the films we have supported in recent years would have been made without production tax relief.

  Many witnesses before the Committee have emphasised the importance of distribution, we agree. However, whilst supporting the idea of some additional systems for supporting distribution, we believe it cannot be at the expense of production tax relief. The effect would be to cannibalise one part of the industry to aid another and this would have an overall negative impact on the UK film industry.

  I hope this will be of interest to the Committee as it considers its report into this important part of British cultural life.

22 July 2003



 
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