Examination of Witnesses (Questions 158
- 159)
WEDNESDAY 6 JUNE 2007
MR SHAUN
WOODWARD AND
MR ANDREW
RAMSAY
Q158 Chairman:
Good morning. Welcome. Thank you very much to both of you for
coming. Perhaps I should explain what we are doing. As you know,
this is a new Committee which has been formed, it follows the
Committee which looked at the BBC Charter and what we are doing
now is examining the appointment and the role of the BBC Chairman,
which is perhaps a natural follow-up to our work on the Charter
Review. What we will do is examine the process by which the Chairman
is appointed and whether that appointment should be scrutinised
by Parliament. We will want to look at the terms of the service
and contract of the new Chairman and really know how the Chairman
sees his role and to what extent he has become a regulator. Basically
speaking, that is what we are about, and we are very grateful
for you both coming. Mr Woodward, you are Minister for Creative
Industries and Tourism inside the DCMS; can you tell us first
what that means: what do you do?
Mr Woodward: Thank you very much indeed, Chairman,
and let me start by saying thank you for asking us to appear this
morning. For the benefit of the Committee, Andrew Ramsay is our
senior civil servant, with responsibility for culture, creativity
and economy in the Department. Andrew provides the continuity,
which sometimes, I think, as you recognised yourself, Chairman,
and ministers decide, is not provided by politicians, since he
has been there from the beginning, as it were, and has seen this
process through, so there will be moments when I will refer to
him, and I have asked him to chip in, if it will be helpful to
the Committee, on questions which you ask me. My title covers,
as you rightly say, the creative industries and tourism. Tourism
is relatively self-explanatory, worth something in the order of
£85 billion a year to this economy. The creative industries,
on which we are producing a Green Paper at the moment, covers
the 13 industries, which include broadcasting, film, the music
industry, architecture, advertising, software, video games, which
represent now, as we will disclose in the report in a few months'
time, 7.3 per cent of this country's GDP, employed a few years
ago a million people, employ now 1.8 million people and actually
now are larger than financial services in this country. We are
better at the creative industries, broadcasting, film, music,
than any other European country, and we are driving this area,
which is a major source of growth for the UK economy in the 21st
century. This does mean that broadcasting matters a great deal.
Broadcasting represents nearly one per cent of GVA of our economy,
it employs 110,000 people, it is a source of major exports and,
because of the digital revolution, it is going through an extraordinary
period of change, but nonetheless we have the proud position in
the UK of being the primus inter pares of the broadcasting
culture throughout the world. It is a great privilege to be looking
after this area; it is one of which I have some understanding,
having been in the BBC for nearly a decade in the 1980s and produced
and edited a programme called That's Life, which went out
to nearly 18 million viewers a week. Which is, I think, a record,
in terms of being not only the BBC's number one programme at the
time but something which now, I think, broadcasters look on with
envy, because, of course, we live in a culture now of 300 television
channels in which `on demand' television is the order of the future,
as opposed to linear programming. It is an extraordinary moment
for a politician to have charge of an area and who might know
just a little bit about it.
Q159 Chairman:
I remember your top media job; you were Director of Communications
at Conservative Central Office?
Mr Woodward: I was; and then, My Lord Chairman,
as you know, you were a different chairman as well. I will try
to leave the partisan dimensions at the door.
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