Chamber and committees

I was reflecting on the answers that you have just given. With the other competitions, there are clear pathways to continue broadcasting. I am concerned that there is not the same with jazz. Will you comment on that? There is traditional music, travelling folk and other programmes, including the Gary Innes programme, that people can come on. What is the pathway for a young, up-and-coming jazz musician on BBC Radio Scotland?

As Mr Cameron said very eloquently, the connection that young musicians have with BBC Radio Scotland came across palpably last week. I keep hearing the word “moment”, whereas, previously, it was an hour every week. Sarah Boyack said that there was a “disconnect” between what BBC Radio Scotland, as our national radio station, is broadcasting and what the huge numbers of people who have signed petitions are looking for.

I thank the witnesses for coming along today.

I appreciate that we are all working in difficult financial straits. In my previous role at the BBC, I was involved with this side of things.

I am interested in the archive and what we could be losing by not having live performances. When you are making radio programmes, the archive plays a large part, and we need to keep increasing it. You are custodians of a vast archive of Scottish cultural music and so on.

You have talked a couple of times about using live recordings for podcasts. You also briefly mentioned the rights issue, and, if I understand it correctly, there could be some rights issues about how long new music can be played on podcasts for. Will that impact on your ability to grow the archive through having new musicians playing across Scotland in different venues?

There is therefore the question of where the audience is based, especially if your plan is to grow international audiences. If you have the contrast between 30-second inserts for the international audience and what people can listen to locally, I feel that that is a bit of a challenge.

My final question—.

Thank you for coming. Mr Cameron trumped me with his final question: I had been going to ask whether any lessons had been learned from the recent engagement between the UK Parliament and Europe about Northern Ireland.

I would like to bring the discussion back to one of the points that Mr Irranca-Davies made about how we can ensure that we get the right scrutiny in a timely manner. All Parliaments have different timetables, and as Mr Golden highlighted in his question, each Parliament has different resources. Therefore, I am interested to hear about how we in the devolved Parliaments can ensure that we are able to feed in properly, in a reasonable manner, and that, in doing so, we are shown respect by the UK Government.

From listening to the panel’s responses, I have been struck by the fact that the newer Parliaments in the United Kingdom are pushing for change, but there is a feeling that Westminster might be less willing for change to happen. I might be wrong in that perception, but I am interested to know the panel’s thoughts on how we get over that. Mr Irranca-Davies, can I start with you?

I agree with your final statement. From our perspective, in the evidence that stakeholders in Scotland have given to us, they have said that that is an important way for them to get the Scottish perspective—in your case, it is the Welsh perspective—through. That leads on to the issue of transparency with the people of our respective nations and making sure that they understand what changes could be happening to them and how they get their say on that.

Baroness Drake, is there anything that you would like to add on that?

You have touched on this in previous answers, Baroness Drake, but I wonder whether you would again, for the record, give your thoughts on how it might be made a bit more difficult—I might not have paraphrased that correctly—for the UK Government to avoid seeking devolved consent.

Thank you. Mr Wragg, do you have anything to add?