Chamber and committees

I do not want you to be a professor, but as I say, do you have expertise in commissioning?

Do you acknowledge that that will damage jazz?

Your linear programme “Jazz Nights” is a long-standing slot; it has been there for years. It influenced Tommy Smith and many others. That is on BBC Sounds, so it is available. I imagine that you could do more to promote that.

Let us imagine that you are an aspiring young jazz musician who has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours improving your skills and are about to make that breakthrough. You could enter the competition that the BBC intends to set up and get some exposure through that, but where do you go then? If there is nowhere to play your music, if you are restricted to one tiny slot on the afternoon show, if there is no specialist Scottish jazz programme on the BBC any more and if your ability to get on to BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 3 programmes is highly constrained, where do you take that? I can see that you are nurturing talent up to a certain level, but you are then cutting away the platform where they can get exposure, raise their profile and go on to develop their career. Where is the progression if you are a young Scottish jazz artist?

Let us just get this clear: will cutting “Jazz Nights” mean more or less airtime for young, emerging Scottish talent in the jazz scene?

But is it more or less?

To come back to my fundamental question: will there be more or less airtime for Scottish jazz talent as a result of your cutting “Jazz Nights” and the reforms that you have proposed?

Right. Thank you: there will be less airtime for Scottish jazz as a result of that.

What expertise do you have in commissioning across the three genres to which you propose to make changes and cuts? What kind of musical expertise do you, as commissioners, have in those areas?

Right, but you do not have specific skills in those musical genres. I suppose that my question is this: do you understand those musical genres, how important they are and the educational aspect for the listening public—the importance of having a curated show that takes the listener on a journey to understand that musical genre?

Good morning. I start by asking whether you think that the Sewel convention should be more binding in its effect. The committee has heard evidence that there might be practical ways to achieve that. My colleague mentioned the definition of the word “normally” in the Scotland Act 1998, for example. There could be greater certainty regarding the conditions under which Westminster could override refusal of consent. There could be a body to consider or report on a justification for overriding, or there could be a requirement for affirmative support in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Those are among the ideas that have been put to us.

I wonder whether that is a matter to which you feel greater attention needs to be paid. What are your thoughts on those types of reforms and are you thinking about others?

Just to be clear, are you saying, from the Welsh perspective, that it would be useful to codify that in legislation—I presume through the Wales Act 2017?