Salmond wants Scots broadcasting control

First minister Alex Salmond has called for the Scottish Parliament to have control of broadcasting policy.

In a speech at the National Museum of Scotland on Wednesday, the SNP leader was set to say that the move is needed to ensure more identifiably Scottish programming.

The nationalist head of the minority executive claimed that the BBC had failed to respond to the "cultural explosion" brought by devolution by moving more production north of the border, instead cutting the proportion of its budget it spends in Scotland.

"There should have been a response which saw more broadcasting, more content, as part of the general cultural explosion which has taken place across the artistic community," Salmond said.

"Instead of that, broadcasting is moving in reverse in Scotland. That situation cannot be tolerated - up with this we will not put."

Speaking to BBC Scotland ahead of his speech, he said a "point of crisis" had been reached.

"Instead of hitting the aspiration of a nine per cent contribution to the network in Scotland, we are now down to arguably three per cent from six per cent a few years ago," Salmond said.

"The BBC, as I remember it, is the British Broadcasting Corporation, not the English Broadcasting Corporation.

"Any self respecting parliament should have some regulatory role over the health of its broadcasting industry.

"If, for example, the Scottish Parliament had powers over broadcasting in the same way the UK Parliament does at the present moment, does anybody seriously believe we would have seen the rapid diminution and marginalisation of the expenditure in Scottish broadcasting that we have seen in the last few years?"

However, Labour's David Cairns claimed the speech was simply a recycled demand for the BBC to screen a special version of its six o'clock news in Scotland.

"The argument for the so-called Scottish Six is so old it belongs in the very museum that Alex Salmond is making his speech in," the Scotland Office minister said.

"We already have an award-winning, dedicated Scottish news bulletin, made in Scotland by Scottish journalists - it's called Reporting Scotland.

"Scottish viewers currently enjoy an hour of international, UK and Scottish news every evening from the most respected broadcaster in the world.

"Alex Salmond's plan will deliberately reduce the amount of international and UK-wide news on BBC Scotland in order to push ahead with his plans to break up Britain. The truth is, Scots are not as parochial as the SNP would like to think."