Speeches by Irons.

“Q3. I am proud that, after decades, this Labour Government are putting passengers before profit by bringing Greater Thameslink Railway, Southern and Gatwick Express into public ownership. The previous Government shelved plans to unblock the bottleneck at East Croydon station, which not only causes delays from Bedford t…”

“How do they ensure that political influence is not infiltrating the decision-making process? What kind of safeguards do they have?”

“You were saying that the trend among young people is not to watch linear telly, as they have gone on to YouTube. Do you have analysis of how much PSB content they are watching on YouTube? There has been a shift from the PSBs to move a lot of their content on to YouTube to capture those eyeballs. Is there any analysis o…”

“This is not just about work; this is about what it means to grow up as a young person in this country and meeting the ambitions of young people like those in my community in Croydon East. The Government have already announced a number of measures to support our young people. Can the Minister outline what can be done to…”

“Rob, do you think there are any benefits to a household levy?”

“It sounds like they have quite a lot of clout and power, and their independence is obviously key to that. You talked about judicial review. Is that one of the main mechanisms by which they are held to account?”

“Has the change to the levy, bringing in the household levy, had much impact on or made a difference to the quality of public service media in Germany? Are more people engaged and watching it?”

“I should declare an interest: I used to work at Channel 4, and my partner currently works there. I am going to pivot a little to the household levy idea, because we have had a lot of submissions that are supportive of that model. Gill, how would a household levy work and what are the essential differences between that …”

“Are we saying that the advantage is a bit of independence from Government and it applying to everybody, but the—”

“The challenges are the delivery of it.”

“That is interesting, because we have a constant back-and-forth with our own World Service about how we do this.”

“Is the main challenge the transition to that new system, rather than the principle being the problem?”

“You are trying to fix council tax for us. That would put a lot of things in the too-difficult box. Do you think it is better to change how the licence fee currently works and make it a bit more universal and device-neutral, rather than bring in a wholesale change?”

“Just to wrap up, were you surprised that the Government left it out of the consultation, because it sounds that there are things here to tease out? Would it have been a good place to start the conversation about this?”

“So they probably should have included it?”

“Sorry, but there are a lot of connected tellies now, so you can do programmatic and dynamic ads. Also, for radio, most of that is dynamically sold now, for the big commercial players.”

“You mentioned the KEF. Can you explain the process? We just need a little detail about what that is, how it is established and what it does.”

“Sorry, this is just so that I understand—instead of automatically setting something for the next four years, you review it before deciding?”

“Currently, that is not happening?”

“It is very interesting. It sounds as if you are saying that because actually extending and changing the licence fee was not included in the consultation, adding in this sort of independent mechanism would be a very good way for us to go forward. Were you disappointed not to see the household levy in the consultation?”