MK LOBBIES BBC & OFCOM FOR PARTY ELECTION BROADCAST

Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall has responded to a BBC consultation on party election broadcasts (PEBs) for the 2021 local elections, which it says discriminates against parties, such as MK and the Yorkshire Party. MK has also written to the regulator – OFCOM.

The consultation re-affirms the existing “four nation” approach, which principally states that, for local and parliamentary elections, political parties would need to stand in one-sixth of the seats in any of the “nations” of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales to be allowed a party election broadcast.

The BBC states that for the local election in “England” it is estimated that “there will be approximately 5,000 seats contested, so the qualification threshold is likely to be approximately 835 candidates.”

This means that, in May’s elections, MK would need to contest all 87 council divisions in Cornwall, along with 748 other council seats outside of Cornwall, to secure a PEB.

MK has had a similar problem in past General Elections. In the 2010 and 2015 General Elections, MK contested the maximum number of seats available to it as a Cornish political party – six! But we were denied a PEB because, in addition to the six seats in Cornwall, we did not contest 83 seats in England!

And yet political parties in Northern Ireland would have only had to stand in three of the 18 seats available to them to secure a PEB, in Wales it would have been seven seats out of the 40 available, and nine out of the 59 in Scotland.

The following statement has been issued:

“Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall has written to the BBC and OFCOM challenging the ‘four nation’ approach to party election broadcasts, which discriminates against MK.

“We reminded them that, in 2014, the UK Government recognised the Cornish as a ‘national minority’ through the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. At that time, the UK Government made it clear that this ‘decision to recognise the unique identity of the Cornish, now affords them the same status … as the UK’s other Celtic people, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.’

“It is MK’s contention that the BBC and OFCOM, in terms of PEBs, is therefore failing to meet its obligations to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, with regard to the Cornish and Cornwall as a national territory within the United Kingdom.

“We have formally requested that the nation of Cornwall be treated in the same way as the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom for the purposes of party election broadcasts.”