The British Broadcasting Corporation is facing a secrecy row after refusing to disclose how much public money has been spent on its digital channel in Scotland.
The BBC declined to provide spending figures for the BBC Scotland channel, total expenditure since its creation, or audience data following a Freedom of Information request.
The BBC is the United Kingdom's national public service broadcaster, funded largely by the television licence fee paid by British households. Freedom of Information legislation allows members of the public to request official records held by public bodies to maintain financial transparency.
BBC Scotland launched in February 2019 as a dedicated television channel for Scottish audiences. However, the service has been repeatedly criticised over low viewing figures and poor value for money, with figures published before the BBC changed its disclosure policy showing the channel had cost more than £200 million since its launch.
Scottish Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament Craig Hoy condemned the decision to withhold the financial details.
Hoy said: "The BBC cannot expect licence fee payers to pay for a TV channel while they refuse to come clean about these basic details. After years of concerns over BBC Scotland’s value for money, it is extraordinary that they now claim they do not hold this information on the channel’s spending and viewing figures."
Hoy added: "Licence fee payers deserve transparency. The BBC must stop hiding behind an FOI process and publish the figures."
Accounting changes and academic warnings
The corporation claimed it could not provide financial figures because it no longer reports spending in the way it once did. Critics argue that a change in internal accounting methods should not prevent the broadcaster from explaining how much public funding has been invested in its services.
John Cook, a professor of media at Glasgow Caledonian University, warned that a lack of transparency risks undermining public confidence in the institution.
Cook said: "The BBC always needs to take care to be transparent with its licence fee payers in Scotland, the public who actually fund it. Accountability on how much BBC Scotland costs should be a matter of simple public record. Otherwise the BBC leaves itself open to charges of obfuscation and evasion."
In response, a BBC spokesman stated that audience consumption habits had changed since the channel was launched, leading the broadcaster to consider costs across a range of services rather than individual platforms.
A spokesman for the BBC said: "We are moving away from reporting spend on our TV, radio and online services to a genre-based view, recognising that content is consumed across multiple platforms. For example, Scotcast [a podcast] is available across two TV channels, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds. Assigning its budget to a single channel would not reflect how it is produced and distributed."
Falling budgets and declining viewership
The controversy follows the release of the BBC's annual report in July, which revealed that overall spending on programmes commissioned in Scotland fell by more than 11 per cent in the past year, slumping from £131 million to £116 million.
Audience figures have also struggled, with data disclosing that only one in eight Scots watched the BBC Scotland channel each week last year, raising doubts over its long-term future.
Programming changes have already been implemented on the channel. In 2025, news programme Reporting Scotland: News at Seven, presented by Amy Irons, replaced flagship news show The Nine.
The Nine was scrapped due to low viewing figures after its audience fell to just 1,700 people at one point.
Job cuts and licence fee decline
The BBC in Scotland is facing spending cuts of £10 million and the loss of up to 60 jobs as part of a broader effort to eliminate 550 roles across the broadcaster's UK operations.
The financial strain comes amid wider pressure on the organisation's funding model. Figures published earlier this year showed that the number of UK households paying the BBC licence fee fell by more than 500,000 last year.
