BBC accused of ‘shortchanging’ Wales over new funding deal
WELSH politicians have accused the BBC of “shortchanging” Wales after it emerged that BBC Scotland has been allocated £19m of new money against just £8.5m for BBC Wales.
Plaid Cymru AM Bethan Jenkins, who chairs the National Assembly’s Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee, demanded equality for Wales from the BBC following its decision to create a new Scotland-based TV channel at an additional net cost of £19m.
BBC Scotland is also being given an extra £20m to make more programmes for the BBC’s UK network.
Ms Jenkins said: “This announcement once again goes to show that the BBC treats Wales very differently. Although extra money has been announced for BBC Wales, it was significantly less than the £30m recommended by our committee, by Welsh Government and by the Institute for Welsh Affairs.”
Welsh Conservative Shadow Culture Secretary Suzy Davies described the announcement of a new Scottish channel as “an affront” to Wales’ journalists and licence-fee payers. She said: “It is difficult to draw any other conclusion from the Scottish announcement other than to infer that the BBC holds Welsh broadcasting in much lower esteem. We urge the BBC to reconsider its package for Wales, and to bring it closer in line with that which is being offered to Scotland.”
A BBC spokeswoman said: “The BBC already has a very strong presence in Wales and we know audiences watch more BBC TV than any other part of the UK.
“We’re already investing significantly more in Wales on producing programmes for the whole of the UK than our targets, and we’ve announced measures to make sure that output reflects Wales more strongly. In addition we also invest tens of millions each year in Welsh language TV. But we’ve always said we wanted to do more for Englishlanguage programmes made in Wales for Wales.
“The new £8.5m of funding will help deliver this with 130 extra hours of content being broadcast to large audiences on BBC One Wales and BBC Two Wales with total investment in English-language TV services expected to reach almost £30m pa by 2019/20.
“We believe this funding will be truly transformational and help us serve our audiences even better.
“The needs of audiences in Scotland are different and as a result, different choices have been made that then require different levels of funding.”