Television Broadcasting in Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers 120-139)

MR SION SIMON MP AND MR KEITH SMITH

4 NOVEMBER 2009

  Q120  Chairman: Have you had a chance yourself to see the broadcasts it makes?

  Mr Simon: I have not.

  Q121  Chairman: Is it your intention to take an opportunity to go to Northern Ireland to have a look at this?

  Mr Simon: That is exactly my intention. I have to say, having done a certain amount of homework for this inquiry and this Committee, I feel now that obviously I know more about broadcasting in Northern Ireland than I did, I am greatly interested and engaged and, yes, I am very keen to visit Northern Ireland and see for myself.

  Q122  Chairman: Could I just suggest to you that you not only look at the evidence that we received last week but that you give serious consideration to trying to talk to some at least of the same people?

  Mr Simon: Certainly.

  Chairman: Thank you very much.

  Q123  Lady Hermon: It is very nice to see you before us this afternoon, Minister. I am going to change the subject slightly and I am going to move to digital switchover. As I am sure you can appreciate, Minister, Northern Ireland shares a land frontier here with another EU Member State, the Republic of Ireland. There is a significant amount of broadcasting in the Republic of Ireland. Could you just explain to us the negotiations which have taken place to date between the British Government and organisations in the Republic of Ireland to guarantee that there will be no loss of signal or broadcasting post the digital switchover?

  Mr Simon: There are lots of issues there. One of them is the range of very technical issues, which are about ensuring that having two jurisdictions broadcasting back-to-back, next to each other, the signals do not interfere and cancel each other out. That issue is being dealt with at a technical level and I do not pretend to know the technical details of how it is being dealt with, but I am assured that it is being dealt with and that the people dealing with it are confident that by the time Northern Ireland switches over nobody should be experiencing interference or signal problems, or any problems relating to being interfered with from the Republic that would not apply to any other part of the country that did not have an international border. As you say, these are problems which apply in the east coast of England and the south coast of England as well; there are issues with Holland and issues with France.

  Q124  Lady Hermon: Yes. Could I push you a little further then? Are you actually guaranteeing to the people of Northern Ireland that by the time the digital switchover takes place, which is delayed in terms of Northern Ireland, there will be no loss of broadcasting, either radio or television broadcasting, from the Republic of Ireland?

  Mr Simon: Now we are talking about the loss of incoming signals from the Republic of Ireland, which is a different question to the one I first answered. On that question, TG4 is guaranteed in the Belfast Agreement and currently reaches about 65% of Northern Ireland. After switchover it will be available to the full switched over percentage of the population, which will be 98%, or whatever, so its coverage will be greatly enhanced. In relation to RTE, there are discussions ongoing with the Irish Government about making RTE available digitally after switchover, which are ongoing and on which I cannot really say very much more now. I think it is fair to say that discussions are ongoing and we hope to announce some kind of preliminary conclusions fairly soon.

  Lady Hermon: Excellent! I can see your official nodding his head.

  Q125  Chairman: How soon is "fairly soon"?

  Mr Simon: It is fairly soon.

  Q126  Chairman: But is it before Christmas?

  Mr Simon: I do not know. I do not think it is that soon.

  Q127  Chairman: Is it before the Election?

  Mr Simon: Yes, we think so. I am not prevaricating, I genuinely do not know when it will be. It is not me personally who is doing the negotiations.

  Q128  Chairman: But I think it would help very much if you could give us an idea. I do not want to press you too much, but is it likely to be in February or March, or are we talking of April? When would you expect this to be?

  Mr Simon: I would not expect it to be in the next couple of weeks, but -

  Q129  Chairman: You have just said it would not be before Christmas?

  Mr Simon: Probably not before Christmas, although possibly before Christmas, and hopefully not very long after Christmas if it is after Christmas.

  Q130  Lady Hermon: Is there someone else within the Department you would like to nominate to come and give us evidence who would have responsibility?

  Mr Simon: No, I do not think so. It is a negotiation with the foreign government. It is ongoing. I do not think we would want to give a running commentary on the negotiation, where it is going, what the terms are and when it will be concluded. It is happening, we are doing it, it will be done pretty soon, and whoever else was here nobody else would say any more than that, in fact I have probably said more than most other people would.

  Q131  Lady Hermon: Thank you. Your official is nodding in agreement with that, so thank you very much. Could I finally just ask you, if ITV plc were to stop being a public service broadcaster with its obligation to provide news and current affairs programmes, which comes with the status of being a plc, would access to all-Ireland broadcasting provide sufficient plurality?

  Mr Simon: No.

  Lady Hermon: That seems fairly succinct.

  Chairman: We are very happy with monosyllabic answers as long as they are definite. Thank you. We have that on the record.

  Q132  Dr McDonnell: Arising out of some of the evidence last week, when we took some evidence in Northern Ireland, is it your opinion, Minister, that public service broadcasting should have production quotas from Northern Ireland for programmes made, for the volume of spend, or indeed for the programmes made by local independent companies? In other words, what I am saying is, should Ulster Television, for instance, have a quota feeding into the ITN channels of their productions? How would you see public service broadcasting investing in Northern Ireland going forward?

  Mr Simon: They do have quotas of some kind, so they have all got, outside the M25, quotas. I understand what you are saying is should they have specifically national quotas.

  Q133  Dr McDonnell: The sense we got is that yes, quotas are there, but they are very low and that there is a big London orientation and that 60 or 70%, whatever, comes and is sprayed out from London towards the various regional television companies?

  Mr Simon: I think it varies broadcaster by broadcaster according to their strength and ability to do it. The production quotas in the BBC are relatively high. The production quotas in ITV and the commercial PSBs are also relatively high outside the M25, so it is still 35% outside the M25, but where it does not immediately seem to help directly is that there is not a national production quota for ITV companies. Ofcom has just directed Channel 4 to bring in national production quotas, which are set fairly low in the first instance, I think it is 2 or 3% for Northern Ireland. I think what we need to see in respect of, for instance, Channel 4, is that they need to hit those targets straight away and then Ofcom needs to be looking at, within the confines of their whole business, what they can afford and what is realistic, constantly pushing that envelope as far as it can be pushed, given always that there is no point in pushing it so far that they cannot make the books balance.

  Q134  Dr McDonnell: The sense we got was that where there are quotas they are very small and basically my sense was that there was not even the capacity in some cases to create the critical mass to create a production industry. There is a critical level which needs to be reached. Can you give us an undertaking, or is that asking too much, that there will be an emphasis going forward to the peripheral nations, as it were?

  Mr Simon: I think it is fair to say that in the t.v. production sector Northern Ireland has not been the strongest region in this and it has not been its strongest suit. That should mean that there is an opportunity, that this is a market which can be grown in Northern Ireland. As I say, there are quotas of various different kinds and all kinds of different thresholds for the production and programming, and so on, across the different broadcasters. As you say, some of them are set quite low. Some of them are set quite high. What we need to see is the ones that are low, that are new, being achieved.

  Q135  Chairman: Northern Ireland does not come out of this very well and I hope you are not complacent about that, Minister?

  Mr Simon: I do not think it is true that Northern Ireland does not come out very well. I think it is reasonably balanced. There is a big concentration of this entire industry within the M25 and that is why there is a whole range of different targets and quotas for programming and production in the nations and the regions. It is very complex.

  Q136  Chairman: I think you do need to look at the evidence we received last week in Northern Ireland and to talk to the people. You have undertaken to do that, and for that we are extremely grateful, but I do think it is necessary if you are to inform yourself as to how this is seen on the ground in Northern Ireland.

  Mr Simon: As I have said, I am keen to go and talk to people and listen to their experience. What the broadcasters and the regulators tell me is that while television production is not an industry in which Northern Ireland would claim to be leading the way, nevertheless it is a nation with a very strong broadcasting sector in which its slice of the production pie, whilst small, is real.

  Q137  Dr McDonnell: I think, Minister, we accept some of the points you are making but the difficulty for us is that the evidence we heard last week, both from officials of organised structures like Ulster Television, which does a certain amount of production itself, but equally from small independent companies was that it was very difficult. The flow of business was neither reliable enough nor sustainable enough to maintain the critical mass of operation there, and that is the dilemma. There may be quotas at some level, but they found it very, very hard to maintain a critical mass, and that fed back then in other ways because there was a deep sense that as a result of a shortage of home production, as it were, within Northern Ireland, that Northern Ireland was not being portrayed to the rest of Britain and that it was still being seen as a place apart, a place that we should not go or should not even think about. So I would urge you, Minister, to try and ensure that that is pursued. There is a number of issues there still around quotas, but quite honestly, Chairman, I would rather perhaps leave them at the moment until we come back to that in some shape or form, because there are issues around quotas in terms of getting stuff done. There are issues in terms of the M25 circuit and production not getting outside that, and certainly the submissions we received were that small independent producers in Northern Ireland found it easier to get work from the US than they did from London, and that was a very, very damning indictment.

  Mr Simon: Can I just say that I take those points. As a matter of principle, I am on your side. I would like to see the production sector in Northern Ireland grow. I would like to see more Northern Irish home-grown programming and I would like to see the UK portrayal change, partly through that mechanism of production, as you say. I have tried to avoid saying, because I do not want to deflect from the fact that in principle I support what you are arguing for, but nevertheless I do need to say that the BBC, which is owned by the Government, to use the shorthand—you know what I mean -

  Q138  Chairman: We hope we know what you mean and it is an interesting take on it, but yes.

  Mr Simon: The BBC, which is a directly publicly funded public sector broadcaster, public service broadcaster, has got, I think a 12% production quota for Northern Ireland. Channel 4 has now got a 3% production quota for Northern Ireland and the other broadcasters, the commercial public service broadcasters, the amount they can do depends on them. These are commercial questions and it is Ofcom, the regulator, which has got to make these judgments and set these quotas. While I and the Government are sympathetic to what you want to happen, I do not think we can just wade in and -

  Q139  Chairman: Minister, I think there is a certain confusion between quotas and targets and I would ask you to look at that very carefully. I would just like to take you back to one of the points Dr McDonnell made before I bring in Mrs Robinson. When we were questioning last week, it became quite clear that it was a twin-track inquiry because the two points which emerged which were of equal importance to our witnesses were first of all the quality and the security of indigenous broadcasting within Northern Ireland, such as the excellent UTV news bulletins to which you yourself referred, but also the betrayal of Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom. This is something which is of acute concern to our colleagues from Northern Ireland and to all of us who know that very beautiful part of the United Kingdom and who feel that for far too long whenever it has been portrayed, whether in news bulletins, dramas, documentaries, or whatever else, it has been "The Troubles, the Troubles, the Troubles," and very little has focused on the positive. This is something which came across very strongly last week and whilst we do not like to think the BBC is owned by the Government and we never want that to happen, we think a little gentle influence to try and achieve a better balance would be a good thing, and we hope you will be sympathetic to that.

  Mr Simon: I am sympathetic to that, although sensitive to not owning the BBC!

  Chairman: Thank you very much.



 
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