Speeches by Kane.

“I completely agree—that goes back to what I was saying. Donald Dewar said: “A Scottish Parliament. Not an end: a means to greater ends.” If we all remembered to think about the evolution of devolution, and strived to make it as good as it can be, we would all be doing the people of Scotland a service. The risk of diver…”

“Quick wins can be a welcome sugar rush of positivity, and that is great—absolutely, we should go for that low-hanging fruit—but they can also mask the deep-rooted and entrenched problems that are difficult to change. I suppose my question is about how you approach understanding the difference. Do you have a sense of wh…”

“That begs a question, though. If that is what you are doing, it sounds like a really good process, but it is not delivering results. I quite like the sound of what you have just described, and it sounds like you have hit all the buttons I am asking for, but the Report is showing us that we are not delivering the result…”

“The last part of the question is how do you then check that that is not just a talking shop. How do you check it is actually delivering results after it has been socialised?”

“You have done a really good job of describing the theory of sharing best practice, but I am more interested in how you are sharing the best practice across Government. What does that forum look like? Who is there? What are they saying? How are you tracking whether this forum is actually delivering the result?”

“You mentioned best practice and sharing best practice. How do you decide who is getting it right? How do you recognise what best practice is? How do you track the implementation of best practice after you have had the session where best practice has been shared?”

“How do you do that?”

“This may be a daft laddie question from me. Set the scene on what the difference is between a “Doctor Who” brand, in terms of its potential next year, versus something new: IP that you create that grabs everybody’s attention—the next “Doctor Who”. What is more valuable to you longer term: creating more IP or exploiting…”

“I also offer my congratulations for what you are doing to monetise your existing content and your focus on digital. To pick up on things we were talking about last week in the CMS Committee, which was around creating new intellectual property, of your most profitable programmes last year, I think only one in 10 was IP …”

“Tim, do you foresee a world—maybe not for this charter, but perhaps in the future—where we move from household licences to individual licences, given that the younger demographic, in particular, think like that? We are all used to having subscriptions for apps that are based on us as individuals, not as households. Giv…”

“Okay. How is Capita incentivised to increase sales and reduce evasion?”

“It seems really good that you have put milestones in place and you are tying the payments to them. I would hope that with hindsight you would say, “We wish we had done that at the beginning of the contract in the first place.” Is there a lesson for future contracts to do that? You are halfway through the contract exten…”

“You use Capita to do your licence fee collection services, and I think you are halfway through a five-year contract extension with them. That extension requires Capita to make operational improvements and IT upgrades to improve the customer experience and to create these efficiencies. Have you realised the expected imp…”

“Thank you for that, Mr Davie. You spend 4.3% of the licence fee—£166 million—on collection; that was the figure last year. Leigh, what are you doing to ensure that figure represents the value for money that you are pushing for and that you are getting the best results you can for it?”

“Everything starts with one.”

“Do you have a target for increasing the number of electronic issuances?”

“You are required to give a licence if they request it, but 40% saying “Yes, send me one,” seems high to me. Given how many licence payers you have, 40% affirmatively saying, “Send me this,” seems—”

“So is this people requesting them, or is your default position that if they don’t ask for one electronically, you issue a physical one?”

“I want to ask about the money you are spending collecting the licence fee, but I also have a daft question, which I should know the answer to but I do not. In the annual report, it says, “The BBC is taking steps to minimise collection costs, for example by issuing 60.2% of licences electronically”. Why do we issue lice…”

“You won’t be targeting poorer areas for more enforcement action—it will be a universal enforcement action?”