Ogmore MP Chris Elmore e speaks about cost ost of living
WE are living through one of the worst cost of living crises in generations. Financial pressures on people in Ogmore are growing daily as energy bills soar, alongside food and petrol prices skyrocketing. This paints a bleak picture for household budgets and I have been calling on the UK Tory Government to step up instead of standing by as they have always done.
Rather than pursue ways of supporting people through these difficult times, however, the UK Tory Government has been busy targeting publicly owned institutions for ideological reasons. Reasons that aren’t grounded in any benefits to the public, but only for dogmatic outcomes.
The UK Tory Government’s recent announcement that they intend to privatise Channel 4, selling it to what will likely be a foreign company, amounts to cultural vandalism. Channel 4 doesn’t cost the taxpayer a penny. I’ll repeat that as the Secretary of State for Culture didn’t know this. Channel 4 does not cost us anything. It is at the forefront of levelling up, investigative journalism and gives new writers a platform to showcase their talent. The output of Channel 4, and our creative sector more widely, is something to be proud of. It is recognised for its value across the globe.
We should be doing all we can to protect it, not sell it off to private investors and force it to compete with streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon. Giants, let us not forget, whose majority of their catalogue is content produced by networks such as Channel 4 and the BBC.
Selling off Channel 4 will risk thousands of jobs and opportunities being lost in regions across the country, cutting investment for independent creatives and hitting the wider British creative economy hard. As the cost of living crisis continues, we should be focusing on protecting British jobs and creating new opportunities for future generations.
The work of Channel 4 and other public service broadcasters in Ukraine, reporting directly from the frontline, particularly highlights why we need to protect independent journalism now more than ever. It is essential for gaining unbiased and factual information from conflict zones, giving oppressed people a voice and helping us understand what is happening around the world.
In a public consultation about the privatisation proposal last year which returned over 60,000 submissions, significant concerns were raised by the public about the impact this could have, yet the UK Government have made no effort to address any of these concerns.
There are so many pressing issues the British public want to see action on, from tackling soaring energy bills to rising inflation. The governance of Channel 4 is not one of them.