A Birmingham MP claims that rising house prices in Cheshire have been the biggest thing to come out of the BBC’s move to Salford.
Conservative Julian Knight, who previously worked as a BBC News journalist, warned other British major cities would “suffer the consequences” as a result of the “bipolar” corporation appearing to concentrate jobs in London and Salford.
Speaking during a Commons debate on the future of the BBC, the Solihull MP said: “In my experience, for example, in BBC Birmingham we are all too often not even treated as the Cinderella, we’re not even allowed frankly to sweep the floor when it comes BBC largesse.”
He added: “It was lauded when the move was made to Manchester that this was going to be increasing regional diversity.
“But I think that actually in some respects the corporation has seen this as almost the beginning of the end of the process in its attempts to reduce its over-dependence on the capital.”
Mr Knight went on: “The biggest thing they’ve actually done is increase house prices in leafy Cheshire suburbs rather than actual genuine regional diversity.”
Labour’s Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton), intervening, told Mr Knight: “As a Greater Manchester MP I do feel that the move of the BBC to Salford - not Manchester - has actually done a lot to improve the diversity of the BBC and it is nice to hear a lot of northern accents on the radio these days, which didn’t used to happen in the past.”
Mr Knight replied: “What has actually happened in that regard is we’ve created a bipolar organisation.
“There has been a move out from other regions - that’ll be Birmingham, that’ll also be other parts of the United Kingdom as well - to these two centres.
“That was the natural consequence of the huge sums that were invested.”
He added he wants to see “genuine diversity”, including for the English regions to ensure the BBC is “really drilling down into local communities in order to deliver news and content that actually makes a difference but supports the private sector”.