Torcuil Crichton

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing this important debate, and thank him for his support for broadcasting in minority languages and for making programmes that would otherwise not be made. It was satisfying to see that Gaelic merited seven mentions in the Government’s Green Paper and public consultation on charter renewal. That is about one mention for every 10,000 speakers—that is how perilous the language is—but that represents only a tiny fraction of the viewers that Gaelic content attracts on the BBC and elsewhere. The most recent example is “An t-Eilean”, a gripping crime thriller filmed on location in Harris. It was the most successful of the BBC’s Gaelic programmes, drawing 1.6 million views on iPlayer, which was almost 20% of a record breaking 8.1 million total views for Gaelic content in the last year. Of course, it is not just about murder; it is about the children’s programmes, music and learning for the Gaelic communities and the worldwide diaspora that the BBC and BBC Alba—the channel co-funded by the BBC and MG Alba—provide. I will turn to funding in a second, but I am glad that the Green Paper acknowledges the importance of Scottish Gaelic as a cultural transmitter and a keystone of the language, as it does for Welsh. The Green Paper states: “Partnerships between the BBC and S4C have been a cornerstone of Welsh language media”. Similarly, BBC Alba has become the principal broadcaster for Gaelic speakers—except that in truth there is no similarity, because the UK Government generously funds Welsh language broadcasting while giving little or no support to Gaelic broadcasting. This year, the gap in the annual funding for Gaelic and Welsh television will widen to £100 million. Admittedly, there are more Welsh speakers—850,000 and counting—but even if we look at it proportionally, we have to ask why that remains the case. A previous Conservative Government set up the Gaelic television fund in 1991, with £9.5 million a year, and nowadays the UK contribution would be £25 million. But funding for MG Alba, the successor organisation, has been frozen for 10 years, and the UK Government contribution has fallen to zero.