Question Time ... the BBC's initial response

Earlier this month, I posted a letter by Madoc Batcup about the Question Time programme, complaining that the BBC was not fairly representing either Welsh affairs, or a representative cross-section of Welsh viewpoints on wider affairs, in the programme broadcast from Cardiff on 25 February.

Madoc has just received this reply:

Dear Mr Batcup

Thank you for your e-mail and further comments regarding 'Question Time' on 25 February. Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and are sorry you've had to wait on this occasion.

I understand you were unhappy with the choice of panellists for this edition and that you felt there was a lack of questions related to fundamentally Welsh issues.

'Question Time' aims to generate lively weekly debate on various topical issues and to represent a broad range of views within each programme. However, it cannot do this and ensure strict political balance within the five-person panel each week. Given that it's working within a limited timeframe there will always be more question the audience would like to hear asked, and more panellists featured, than the programme can provide within individual broadcasts.

However the programme does seek to achieve balance over a reasonable period and has a firm commitment to political balance over the series as a whole.

This provides some scope for different balance from one week to another, and also for introducing variety in the guests and issues featured.

If you would like to take part in the audience and put forward a question you can find more information on how to do this on the programme's website here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/1858613.stm

Viewers can also share their views on each edition on the 'Question Time' section of the 'Have Your Say' blog here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/03/your_views_on_question_time_th_1.html

I'd also like to assure you that we've registered your comments on our audience log for the benefit of the programme makers and senior management within the BBC. The audience logs are important documents that can help shape future decisions and ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.

Thanks again for contacting us.

Regards

Stuart Webb
BBC Complaints

I think every one of us can see that this is nothing more than the standard template letter that the BBC keep on file to answer any complaint they receive ... though with one or two blanks filled in. And of course that doesn't make the BBC particularly different from any other large organization.

Before looking at Madoc's response, there are a few points that I'd like to make. The first is that the BBC seem to place considerable importance on what they call their "audience log". This seems to imply that they take rather more notice of the quantity of complaints they receive than their quality. So I would invite anybody reading this who agrees with what Madoc has said to write or email the BBC even if that involves making exactly the same points. This is the link:

     www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

I believe that the BBC are trapped in a particular way of looking at politics and current affairs that leaves their central organization largely unaware of the extent of the concerns of people in Wales in particular.

To illustrate this, the edition from Belfast on 11 February this year is still available on iPlayer. As we can see, the programme took particular care to represent all sides of the political spectrum on Northern Ireland, as well as having a UK perspective through Shaun Woodward, the SoSNI. And although some questions were specifically about Northern Ireland, a good number of them were about other issues such as UK involvement in torture, expenses corruption in Westminster, the Greek economy, and the pay of celebrities employed by the BBC.

To my mind this shows that the BBC took considerably more care to fulfill their obligations with respect to Northern Ireland than they do with respect to Wales.

• On one hand, we should expect at least some matters of concern to Wales to be discussed on a programme aired throughout the UK. People elsewhere in the UK need and would surely want to be informed of what's happening in Wales. So if it's right that, say, the devolution of policing and justice to Northern Ireland was discussed on that programme, surely we should expect some aspects of what is or might be devolved to Wales to be discussed when the programme is broadcast from Wales.

• On the other hand, it is of course right that UK and world issues are discussed in addition to matters that concern Wales. But even so, the majority of the panel should be composed of people who can contribute different shades of specifically Welsh opinion on these issues when the programme is broadcast from Wales. And this should be true whichever nation or region the programme is broadcast from.

As for Scotland, all we have to do is wait until Thursday, since the next edition of Question Time will come from Glasgow. I'm willing to bet that the BBC will take care that the composition of that panel and the questions asked will show more regard for Scotland than the programme from Cardiff did for Wales.

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As might be expected, Madoc is not one to be fobbed off by such a cursory answer. None of us would be. His full response to the BBC's letter is here, but this is how it begins:

Dear Mr. Webb

Your reply is wholly unacceptable, and I intend to take the matter further. You have answered none of my questions, but only given a bland reply which deals with none of the issues. The cursory nature of the reply and its general vagueness clearly indicate to me that you have not considered the matter in any detail. You do not deal with the particular issue of Wales, nor with the fact that none of the questions on the programme related to Wales, while two were wholly or largely to do with England. This programme could have been broadcast twenty years ago – there was no-one from the Welsh Assembly and indeed no mention of it, or of any decisions made in Wales. This approach gives the BBC no credibility whatsoever in terms of appropriate treatment of Welsh matters, and informing a wider UK audience about the situation in Wales. If your response is any indication of the way in which the BBC intends to cover the Westminster elections then it gives rise to great disquiet.

I believe that the programme represented a flagrant breach of the concerns laid out by the BBC well over ten years ago. I refer in particular to the BBC’s programme response to Devolution published in December 1998, and the BBC Trust impartiality report: BBC network news and current affairs coverage of the four UK nations authored by Professor Anthony King and published in June 2008. The Question Time programme and your response typify the concern expressed by the BBC at the time in its response of 1998:

"... the BBC has sometimes appeared insensitive to political, administrative, cultural and linguistic differences across the UK, giving the impression of a London-based organisation dismissive of the more geographically distant parts of the UK. There have been errors of judgement, and, on occasions, of accuracy."

In the King Report it was pointed out that:

"... the review highlights concern that BBC network news and current affairs programmes taken as a whole are not reporting the changing UK with the range and precision that might reasonably be expected given the high standards the BBC itself aspires to. There are specific concerns as to accuracy and clarity of reporting, the balance of coverage, and missed opportunities of drawing on the rich variety of the UK and communicating it to multiple audiences. As examples, political coverage is seen as unduly focused on Westminster in volume and style; there is seen to be a general bias in favour of stories about England or telling stories from an England perspective; and there is evidence that several stories in the nations which may have been significant to the UK were not taken up by the network."

The BBC Trust's comment was:

"However, we are concerned at Professor King's assessment that the BBC is not reporting the changing UK with the range that might be expected, given the fact that audiences have expressed a desire to learn more about other parts of the UK in the BBC's coverage. This echoes a wider concern expressed to the Trust that audiences see the BBC as too preoccupied with the interests and experiences of London, and that those who live elsewhere in the UK do not see their lives adequately reflected on the BBC. It is not acceptable that a BBC funded by licence fee payers across the whole country should not address the interests of them all in fair measure."

In its document of 1998, the BBC, said that it would introduce certain measures to 'enable the BBC to provide accurate and well judged news for its audiences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but also to allow it to offer all viewers and listeners a true sense of the diversity within the UK'.

I would be grateful if you could send me any more recently published BBC guidelines which might show whether or not BBC's position in respect of diversity has changed in any respect. I assume that they will not differ greatly from what has been previously published. In your response you suggested that you were committed to political balance over the series of Question Time as a whole. This missed the point of my concern; it is not the narrow balance between the UK political parties that is of concern, but the reflection of e.g. the 'administrative and cultural differences' and the fact that there is a different government in Wales. Your reply talked about introducing 'variety in the guests and issues featured', but when are issues relevant to Wales to be dealt with if not in a programme broadcast from Wales?

It is my opinion that if the people responsible for making a programme such as Question Time cannot comply with the plainly stated priorities of the BBC Trust after more than 10 years of devolution then it is high time that they were replaced by people who will comply. By way of a request under the Freedom of Information Act I would therefore be grateful if you could confirm the following:

1.   What are the current guidelines that the BBC has to follow in order to ensure it meets the ‘political, administrative, cultural and linguistic differences across the UK’?

2.   Is Question Time considered to be covered by these BBC guidelines. If not, why not?

3.   Which person or group of persons are responsible for making this decision?

4.   If Question Time is covered by the guidelines, are there specific management, co-ordinating and editorial measures that have been put in place by the BBC management to ensure that these guidelines are adhered to?

5.   Who is responsible at the BBC for deciding and implementing such measures?

6.   Is it the view of BBC management that such measures are adequate to implement these diversity guidelines?

7.   Is it the view of BBC management that the guidelines and the measures to implement them have been appropriately and adequately communicated to them staff responsible for making the Question Time programmes?

8.   Is it the view of BBC management that:

   a. The diversity guidelines were complied with in the Question Time
   broadcast on the 25th February 2010?

   b. The measures put in place by BBC management to implement the diversity
   guidelines were implemented and complied with by all relevant staff responsible
   for the Question Time programme broadcast on the 25th February 2010?

9.   Which particular individuals are responsible for deciding on the composition of the panel on Question Time?

10.  What criteria do those individuals use for deciding which panellists to invite?

11.  How are the particular requirements of Wales, given devolution, taken into account to ensure that that such criteria in respect of panellists take into account the diversity guidelines?

12.  Which particular individuals are responsible for deciding which questions are asked on Question Time?

13.  What are the criteria used by those individuals to decide which questions are asked?

14.  How are the particular requirements of Wales, given devolution, taken into account to ensure that that such criteria in respect of questions take into account the diversity guidelines?

15.  Does the BBC management consider that the diversity guidelines were in fact complied with in Question Time on the 25th February 2010?

16.  Does BBC management consider that the measures (if any) introduced to implement the diversity guidelines were complied with in Question Time on the 25th February 2010?

17.  If the guidelines and/or measures were not complied with, who is responsible for the lack of compliance?

18.  What steps (including any disciplinary action) does the BBC management intend to take to remedy any failure to comply with the guidelines/measures in respect of the Question Time programme?

19.  What steps does the BBC management intend to take in the future to ensure that the diversity guidelines are met?

20.  How many times is Question Time broadcast per year?

21.  What is the proportion of Question Time broadcasts that are broadcast from Wales?

22.  What input does BBC Wales have into such broadcasts to ensure that the diversity guidelines are met?

I look forward to receiving your reply as soon as possible and at latest within the 20 working days provided for by the Freedom of Information Act.

Yours sincerely

M R Batcup

It goes on to raise a number of detailed questions which the BBC might actually care to answer this time round. If Madoc gives permission, I'll highlight the answers he gets.

New Welsh-medium schools in Swansea

A few years ago now, Swansea was one of the first local authorities to conduct a survey asking whether parents of very young children wanted them to have a Welsh-medium education when they reached school age. It wasn't particularly publicized at the time and I first heard of it almost a year later, when it was mentioned in this news release on the RhAG website. The headline figures were that 28% of parents wanted to send their children to WM schools no matter how far they had to travel, but that this figure would rise to 38% if a WM school were available within easy travel distance.

I wrote about it on the WalesOnline forum, crunching some numbers from documents on the Swansea website to conclude that, even using the worst case figures, Swansea would need to open some new WM schools:

The number of children in primary education in Swansea is set to reduce from the current 17,611 to 17,364 in 2011 ... an overall reduction of about 250 in three years. This means it should be possible to close a couple of English-medium schools (because the total demand for EM education will fall by 700 in the same three years and Swansea already has more than 3,200 surplus primary places) and convert them to WM with minimal inconvenience.

MH on WalesOnline Forum - 16 September 2008

A few months later, in March 2009, Heini Gruffudd of RhAG published this paper on where new WM schools were most badly needed. This was no doubt in response to the fact that Swansea themselves had not come up with any public proposals for new WM schools ... even though the original survey had been done in 2007. It was good that Swansea conducted the survey in the first place, but it is a pointless exercise unless they are then prepared to act on its findings.

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In the meantime Swansea, along with most other local authorities in Wales, were faced with a huge number of surplus of spaces in their schools, meaning that some schools would need to be closed. They put forward proposals for closing three primaries—Cwm, Arfryn and Llanmorlais—in March 2009, but because of objections each of these was eventually referred to the Education minister in the Welsh Government for a final decision. On Friday, Leighton Andrews made the first of these decisions, as reported here:

     Cwm School closure is confirmed
     Welsh Assembly Government agrees to close Cwm Primary School

As might be expected, the people who objected to the proposal won't be happy with the final decision. But the fact is that Cwm Primary is only about 300m away from Cwm Glas Primary, which is itself just about large enough for the children from both schools. The decision was inevitable.

     

The picture above shows Cwm Primary, Cwm Glas Primary is below.

     

No school closure decision is easy, but what has happened does open up a solution to Swansea's problem of where to open at least one much-needed WM school. At present there is no WM school at all in East Swansea, at least not until you get as far north as YGG Lôn Las in Llansamlet. The RhAG report I linked to shows that a considerable number of children from Bon-y-maen have to travel 2km or more to get to YGG Lôn Las, and that some even travel 6km or so from St Thomas:

74 children from Bonymaen attend Lôn-las and 20 from St. Thomas. 9 children from St. Thomas attend Bryn-y-môr. 103 children from these areas suggests that there are sufficient numbers here to support a Welsh medium school, and quick growth could be anticipated.

So we have the bizarre situation where some parents are up in arms because their children will have to travel a maximum extra distance of just over 300m to get to Cwm Glas, while there are easily enough local children in Bon-y-maen who are currently having to travel many times further by bus or car to get to the closest WM school, but who would be able to walk if the Cwm buildings were to become a WM school. And for the community as a whole it's surely better for the buildings to remain in use, for they will be just as much available for community use outside school hours as they are now. To me, it's an obvious solution to a pressing problem.

Cwm Primary is closing simply because the numbers wanting EM education do not justify two EM schools with so many surplus places in such close proximity to each other ... but its closure opens up the opportunity for Swansea to provide more WM places in accordance with the wishes of the 28% of parents that want it for their children.

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At just about the same time as the closure of Cwm was confirmed, Swansea announced some other plans for the expansion of WM education:

More Swansea school closure plans announced

As part of the council's plans to shakeup education in the city Pentrepoeth Infants and Juniors, and Graig Infants schools will close and a new all-through primary school will open on the Pentrepoeth sites.

... If the plans are given the go-ahead, the council wants to open a Welsh Medium school on the vacated Graig school to meet what councillor Mike Day, cabinet member for education, called "the continually growing demand for Welsh Medium education in the area."

... Current figures from Swansea Council show that there is enough capacity in a new primary school incorporating facilities at Pentrepoeth infants and juniors to include children from Graig infants.

Graig Infants currently has 51 full time pupils, but capacity for 113
Pentrepoeth Infants has 98 pupils with capacity for 123
Pentrepoeth Juniors has 239 pupils and capacity for 276

Evening Post - 6 March 2010

As the figures show, the children currently at Craig infants can be accommodated at a combined Pentrepoeth Primary School. It is just over 600m away. The current Graig Infants is more than half empty and although, as the picture below shows, it isn't big Morriston has the most crying need for more WM provision. There are no WM schools in Morriston, but last year there were over a hundred children from Morriston travelling outside the area to get a WM education.

     

So this isn't really a closure. Converting Graig Infants to a small WM primary will comfortably fill what is currently a very under-used school with local children. To me, it again seems obvious. It's perhaps smaller than would be ideal ... but Swansea aren't coming up with any other ideas.

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In conclusion, Swansea conducted their initial survey in 2007, but no new WM schools have been opened in response to that survey (Llynderw was already under construction). Therefore plans for the next few WM schools are long overdue.

The decision to close Cwm opens the very real possibility of a new WM school being set up in September this year. That is an opportunity that must not be missed. Swansea's intention is for the Pentrepoeth/Graig reorganization to happen by 2011. That's possible but not definite, because the decision making process can take a long time if the matter has to be referred to the Assembly.

And there are other possibilities ... but they will depend on the outcome of decisions which have not yet been taken.

Enviroparks. What better way to deal with waste?

I have to admit to being dismayed, in fact angered, by two posts yesterday from Dafydd Tristan on the proposal for a waste handling plant at Hirwaun by Enviroparks.

     Enviroparks - open letter to councillors
     If you tolerate this your children will be next

As a society, we produce a lot of waste and need to reduce it. The first way of doing it is to reduce it at source, in particular to reduce unnecessary packaging, and to make the sort of goods which last and can be repaired or upgraded rather than thrown away. The second way is to increasing the amount of waste we recycle. I'm sure there is broad consensus that we need to do both. The first is something that is rather harder to do because we buy products from all over the world, but the second is something we can deal with at local and national level. We have set ourselves targets for recycling, and we are gradually increasing the amount we recycle as a result. That's good.

But, even after doing those things, we are still left with lots of waste. The traditional way of dealing with it has been to put it into landfill sites. However we cannot continue to do that on the scale we have been doing, and there are now considerable disincentives to doing so in the form of landfill taxes which rise steeply year-on-year.

Because of that disincentive, we need to look for new ways of getting rid of waste, and the next obvious solution is to burn it, and to generate electricity from it. This explains why there have been a spate of planning applications for waste incinerators not just in Wales, but everywhere. Now yes, I would agree that burning waste is a better option than burying it. But it is not a good option ... it is simply the "next worst" option.

The reason it is bad is because it is very difficult, if not impossible to ensure that what is burnt can be burned cleanly. Therefore waste incineration produces a host of nasty emissions which are dangerous to people's health. The companies that operate such incinerators are also put in the invidious position of producing less electricity if they filter out the more dangerous waste before burning it, and of being left with waste that they can only get rid of by putting into landfill sites. They lose money if they don't burn it, and it costs them money to get rid of it. So of course the temptation will always be to burn it.

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Now, rather than talk in general terms, let me make things more specific and more local. In the valleys next door to Cynon we have two examples of what needs to be avoided. Trecatti is a landfill site just outside Merthyr. It was a big hole in the ground, and some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to fill it. However it is far too close to residential areas in Dowlais Top and Caeharris, and the shape of the valley tends to hold the smell rather than allow it to be blown away. The same is true for the dust that the Ffos y Fran opencast mine produces ... but that's another story.

However, just a few miles south, there are plans for a huge waste incinerator (there has been talk about it taking waste from all over south Wales) by the name of Brig y Cwm at Cwmbargoed ... and the preferred operator is the American firm Covanta, which has been repeatedly fined for breaking environmental laws in its waste incineration plants over there.

So, right on Cynon's doorstep, we have two examples of what not to do.

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Let me now turn to project proposed by Enviroparks. The process is multifaceted, but involves recycling, the separation of food and not food waste with food waste going to an anerobic digester to produce gas to be used as fuel, the plasma gasification (as opposed to incineration) of other waste to again produce gas, and burning the gas from both sources to produce electricity. This animation shows how these processes work together:

     

The crucial difference between this and incineration is that burning the gas is clean, whereas burning waste directly gives rise to high emissions of dioxins, nitrous oxide, toxic metals and particulates. The plasma arc breaks these down into individual atomic elements.

The Wiki article is here, including a list of projects planned or already operational. Enviroparks own website is here.

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When election time approaches, politicians might be expected to say things motivated more by political rivalry than an objective analysis of any particular proposal. But this is an issue which is far too important to be treated in a partisan way.

I simply cannot see what is particularly "dangerous" about this proposal. Yes, there is waste water, but it is produced by a controlled process and is therefore as treatable as any other water waste. The danger of polluted water seeping from landfill sites is much greater. The Penderyn Reservoir is above rather than below the site, therefore it would be almost impossible for any leak to pollute it.

But if Dafydd and others think these risks are understated, then I urge you to discuss this in objective terms. Please don't resort to language like, "If you tolerate this, your children will be next." It is horribly sensationalist, if not downright offensive. You insult people's intelligence by resorting to cheap headlines of this kind. It is not the way to foster debate on an issue that concerns everyone in Wales, not just one valley.

To the Plaid councillors that voted against it and to Plaid supporters in general who read this blog, I would ask that you look at the merits of this proposal rather than just treat it as if it were just another waste incineration scheme. It is not, the process is many times more environmentally safe than ordinary incineration.

I cannot think of a better way to deal with waste. So if people are so opposed to this, I have to ask what alternative you have in mind. For me there is only one thing wrong with the Hirwaun scheme, namely that waste is brought in by truck. For all its other faults, the Brig y Cwm scheme envisages waste being brought in by rail. But that can be very easily fixed; the rail link for the old Tower Colliery stops only a hundred metres or so from the site, and is due to be upgraded for passenger use anyway. If the Enviroparks scheme was redesigned to allow waste to be brought in by rail I think it would be just about perfect.

flash

Complaint about BBC Question Time

COPY OF A LETTER FROM MADOC BATCUP TO THE BBC
REGARDING QUESTION TIME FROM CARDIFF, 25 FEBRUARY 2010

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to complain about Question Time from Cardiff which was broadcast last night. It is a programme that seems to be in some pre-devolution timewarp. Whatever internal measures the BBC make have taken following the King Report none of them seemed to be apparent in your recent programme – in great contrast to the Question Time broadcast from Northern Ireland recently.

The choice of the panel left a great deal to be desired with two of the panellists (Nigel Farage and Liam Fox) having no discernible connexion with Wales, while Janet Street Porter's family links to Wales and previous antagonistic comments on the Welsh language and Burberry's did not seem particularly relevant to the debate or the current situation in Wales.

As a result of the panel's composition, it was noticeable that there was no representation from the Liberal Democrats, and the ability of some of the panel members to discuss matters of specifically Welsh interest was somewhat limited. Fortunately for them, of course, they did not have to do so.

The questions themselves seem to have been very heavily filtered (on the assumption that they were not planted) and failed to address any fundamental Welsh political issues. On the contrary, the two questions about the behaviour of Gordon Brown and Nigel Farage did not (as pointed out by a member of the audience) advance in any way the argument of whom to vote for in the forthcoming election. UKIP is the only party that wishes to abolish the Welsh Assembly as far as I am aware, and it would have been much more informative to ask Nigel Farage something about his party's policy in respect of Wales. We were then treated to the extraordinary spectacle of a question of legislation on faith schools which is of limited relevance to Wales, since this is a devolved matter (e.g. see the parliamentary website http://www.commonsleader.gov.uk/output/page2921.asp and its comments on devolution in respect of this legislation). This is a perfectly appropriate matter to discuss, but why in one of the parts of the UK where it will largely not be applicable? Can we expect questions about Scottish and Welsh legislation to be discussed by English Question Time panels in the future, or is this yet another case of Wales being treated as a part of England by the BBC and the issue of devolution being studiously ignored?

To add insult to injury we then had a question about the England football team. It is incomprehensible to me why it was thought such a question was appropriate to be asked in Cardiff. A number of the members of the audience and Elfyn Llwyd made it quite clear that it was a question of little interest to people in Wales. Can we expect questions about Welsh rugby from Newcastle or Basingstoke in the future? At a time when the Welsh Assembly has just voted unanimously to ask for more powers through a referendum, wouldn't this have been an appropriate occasion to discuss this issue, since the majority of your English viewers may be unaware that this potentially historic event even took place. Since it is probably the last time that Question Time will visit Wales prior to the Westminster election it would have a useful opportunity to discuss issues that are of particular relevance to Wales in the same way as the Question Time broadcast from Northern Ireland focused on that part of the UK.

In the BBC's Programme Response to Devolution published in December 1998, the BBC stated that:

In the past the BBC has sometimes appeared insensitive to political, administrative, cultural and linguistic differences across the UK, giving the impression of a London-based organisation dismissive of the more geographically distant parts of the UK. There have been errors of judgement and, on occasions, of accuracy.

As a priority, the BBC is now embarking on an extensive series of measures to educate journalists, programme makers and managers, alerting them to the differences across the UK ... they will include:

•  Regular monitoring of programmes for sensitivity to differences between the nations.

These measures are important not only to enable the BBC to provide accurate and well judged news for its audiences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but also to allow it to offer all viewers and listeners a true sense of the diversity within the UK.

Although this paragraph related to news programmes the document as a whole deals with news and current affairs, and I assume that the BBC would have the same goals for a programme like Question Time. Whatever measures you may have taken there appears, in the case of this recent programme, to have been no discernible effort to meet the BBC's diversity goal. This programme could just as easily (and more appropriately) have been transmitted from Norwich or Manchester for example. It is a clear indication that any changes that the BBC may have made in respect of reflecting the reality of the diversity of the UK have been wholly inadequate. This programme represented a total failure by the BBC of making the viewers in Wales or the wider UK aware of the important political issues that are distinctive to Wales at a time when there is a Westminster election in the offing. If the BBC wishes to patronise and ignore Wales in equal measure it is a waste of licence payers' money for it to do it locally – it can do this just as easily from London and stop the pretence that Question Time has any meaningful interest in the issues of Wales by broadcasting from Wales.

Yours faithfully

Madoc Batcup