Speeches by Kane.

“We will move on now to the transition to online. One of the recommendations in the March 2023 PAC Report was: “The BBC should develop a detailed plan including scenarios for how it could switch to an internet-only future, working with government, audience representatives and wider stakeholders, to ensure no-one is left…”

“Yes, I actually agree with that, and I congratulate and applaud you on what you are doing. If I sound like I am being a bit too picky now, it is part of what the Committee is here to do. When you say that, what I sometimes hear is, “London, and then everywhere else.” We can create examples—you mentioned the north-east—…”

“My worry is more a load of people sitting in Glasgow or Edinburgh covering Stirling and Perth. That is my worry—that as you push things out from London you do not continue to push them out further.”

“The observation that I would make is that you could, in theory, provide a basic level of service in my constituency of Stirling from a desk in London. It would not be a great service, but you could provide a basic level of service. That sense of embedding local democracy reporting within a community, which has been the…”

“You mentioned local democracy reporters. What are you doing to ensure that local democracy reporters are truly local? A lot of the problems in local media mean that local media is getting bigger in terms of the areas that it serves. How are you ensuring that local democracy reporters are actually in the areas that they…”

“I do not mean AI; I mean more generally, as we have more streaming players and more of an Americanisation of the way that we are approaching creating content.”

“We could, but just to expand on that, it is about not just AI but the leadership role, and ensuring that as we have more domination from—let me be charitable—an American approach to dealing with the creatives that is different from how we would do it—”

“Can you talk about the leadership role that the BBC plays? We have seen a huge debate about AI and how it is interacting with the creative industries. What do you see as the BBC’s leadership role in ensuring a fair creative world that is profitable for everybody, including the BBC?”

“I will push a little bit more on this. I love the vision and where you are going, but we are trying to get at putting in the policy to underpin the vision. You are not meeting the targets that you have for new IP at the moment. What will you do to turn that bold and welcome vision—”

“No, I do not think you are, but I will take the point that you could have 10 duds or 10 phenomenal successes—it is a risk game. You have the job of trying to work out how to do the risk-reward thing, so I suppose I am trying to interpret how you do that.”

“How do you do that?”

“I think it would be important to know. What assurance do you have that the people undertaking the surveys have an appropriate understanding of the mentality and motivators of freelancers, when I would imagine that the survey takers and survey makers are probably employed and less likely to be freelancers?”

“In my dim and distant past, I was a freelance broadcaster. Do you have any data on the threshold at which a freelancer would feel comfortable reporting bad behaviour, compared with someone who was employed? Do you have any data on whether the length of tenure of a freelancer—or, indeed, the pay point of a freelancer—wo…”

“I do not know whether this is helpful or unhelpful, but on the Public Accounts Committee next week we will be looking at that. You have reported two dividends—last year and this year—in this year’s accounts. I was a little bit confused about that question as well. A shared understanding and clarity are required, becaus…”

“I agree.”

“Can I put on the record my membership of the National Union of Journalists? I should have done that earlier. This is a plea, I suppose, following on from the earlier question about freelancers and IP. Freelancers already have slightly fewer rights than employed staff in the way they interact with the BBC; employed staf…”

“Can I come back to intellectual property for a minute? Watching movies in the last 10 years, I think we have all realised that exploiting current IP is preferable within the industry at the moment to creating new IP. I wonder how much of a leadership role the BBC is playing in creating new IP. While you have not met yo…”

“These internal targets you are talking about would be useful information to see, to help us evaluate, as you are doing, how well things are working.”

“But I do not think you are setting targets for tackling evasion, so how are you measuring success without targets?”

“Can I ask about setting targets for tackling evasion? I do not think you have set targets for doing this. This is a general question—my curiosity is about not just the scale of the problem, but the scale of the answer to the problem. That is one part of it, but I note that, for example, you are putting a huge amount in…”