8. Plaid Cymru debate: Broadcasting

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:58 pm on 28 February 2018.

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Photo of Gareth Bennett Gareth Bennett UKIP 4:58, 28 February 2018

That's an interesting intervention, Dai. I refer in the speech to what you said last time we debated these subjects, which was a debate brought by the culture committee, and I do actually return to the points you just made, so I'll expand on them a little bit later.

I think, for economic reasons, we do need to get as much production as we can located in Wales, and as many jobs in film and production created here as we possibly can. We don't want to jeopardise those aims by going towards the devolution of broadcasting, which could ultimately lead to less production being carried out here. That is the possible problem with going down the devolution route.

I mentioned just now that we debated these issues a year ago, when the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee brought a similar debate, and Dai made some interesting points. He complained that there was no real portrayal of Wales in the broadcast media. He talked about what he just mentioned again: having production of Casualty and Doctor Who here in Wales is all well and good, but these programmes don't actually attempt to provide us with a picture of Wales. He memorably summarised on that occasion by saying that he didn't want bilingual Daleks, but he did feel that the hospital in Casualty should have bilingual signs. The problem is that Cardiff and BBC Wales—we successfully lobbied for the production of Casualty to come from Bristol, which is where it was being made originally. Casualty had already been going for more than 20 years before it switched to Wales. It's actually set in the fictional city of Holby, in the fictional county of Wyvern, which is supposed to be in the west country of England, so it would be a bit odd if they now started to feature a lot of Welsh speakers or if they had bilingual signs on their walls.

As for Doctor Who, we could have bilingual road signs now and then in Doctor Who, but the trouble—