Gaelic is the “orphan child” of broadcasting

The budget available to MG ALBA has effectively been halved.

Mr Morrison detailed how the Scottish Government’s contribution to funding the channel along with the BBC has remained frozen in cash terms at £13 million for ten years while the channel “needs a funding mechanism that gives us a secure future”.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee of MPs is conducting an inquiry into the position of minority languages in the UK and Mr Morrison gave evidence alongside the chair of S4C in Wales.

He recalled that a previous Conservative Government set up the Gaelic Television Fund in 1991 with £9.5 million a year – a “bolt from the blue” which transformed Gaelic broadcasting.

Mr Morrison added: “Nowadays, that would be worth £25 million. Unfortunately, the funding for MG Alba, the successor of that organisation, has been frozen for ten years.

"That means that in just two years’ time our budget will be worth exactly 50 per cent of the launch budget we had. Really, it is unsustainable”.

Describing the “very complex infrastructure”, Mr Morrison said: “We have been legislated for by the UK Parliament at Westminster, which looks after media law; we are regulated by Ofcom, which is another UK institution to which Scottish Ministers do not need to answer; we are paid for by Scottish Ministers, through Ofcom .. and then we have a very valuable partnership with the BBC”.

He told MPs: “We need a simplification of the process. We are like the orphan child of British broadcasting.

"We fall between all these stools, and we look up and say, ‘We need more money and more power.’ We need somebody we can turn to and say, ‘Look, we can’t continue like this’. We also need a funding mechanism that gives us assurance that we do have a future”.

Asked by Labour MP, Alex Sobel, if it was sufficient that the next BBC Charter would look at minority language broadcasting, Mr Morrison replied: “No. First of all, it is four years away, and in four years’ time we will be below 50 per cent, so the trajectory is going down.

"Also, the BBC charter will look at many things, and I suspect that Gaelic will be a tiny part of that. We are looking to this Committee, this Parliament, this Government, to help us out.

“The other thing with MG Alba is that, despite the very fruitful partnership we have with the BBC, we don’t fall within the terms of the BBC charter. The Bill at the moment says that Ofcom decides what is sufficient. The BBC gives £10 million ….and access to the iPlayer, and the Scottish Government gives us £13 million, which has stayed at £13 million for 10 years.

"If Ofcom were to decide one day, ‘There is not sufficient (Gaelic) broadcasting,’ to whom would it go to say, ‘You are responsible for doing this’? Who would pay for that, and who would be responsible for making those people actually pay for it?”

Mr Morrison said that BBC Alba peaked at 720,000 viewers. “The average high point was about half a million for a language of 70,000 speakers.

"We are now down to 300,000 because of linear – the ‘box in the corner’ TV – dropping off, like every other channel and we have been given no cash to help in the transition to digital”.

He said that S4C, on top of its £90 million funding, got £7.5 million from government to support the transition to digital. “We got zero”.

In Ireland, he said, “TG4 have had 20 million euros since 2021 for the digital transition. We have had nothing”.

S4C is now funded mainly from the BBC licence fee but the £7.5 million came from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Asked by Committee chair, Caroline Dinenage MP, what he wanted to see in the Media Bill, Mr Morrison said “recognition and security”.

He pointed out that when the last legislation, the Communications Act 2003, went through, “BBC Alba did not exist” and no provision was made for it.

Summarising the objectives, Mr Morrison added: “I think if we got £25 million plus a funding mechanism that secured that going forward, and if we got something in the Bill that said there is a Gaelic service going forward that protects the right of this language to exist and to broadcast and tell our stories to the world”.

MEANWHILE, the Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, Rt Rev Helen-Ann Hartley, has continued her advocacy of Gaelic broadcasting following her recent speech in the House of Lords debate on the Media Bill.

As reported in last week’s Gazette, the Bishop – whose father was a Church of Scotland Minister – joined cross-party support for Gaelic during the debate, saying that it “is caught in a difficult place because while there is goodwill, there is no statutory provision for a Gaelic media service. There is an opportunity here to do something about this, and for good reasons”.

This week, the Bishop posted an image of our coverage and tweeted: “My House of Lords speech on the Media Bill has made it to the Stornoway Gazette.

"Great to have such a growing number of peers advocating for the Gaelic language. Slainte!”.