Ö÷²¥´óÐã

If you love a good committee meeting with a Welsh angle - and which of us does not? - then get yourself down to Westminster this week.

In a committee-tastic 48 hours, MPs will discuss the future of S4C on the Welsh affairs select committee and probe the Welsh implications of the Chancellor's spending review (having had ample time to digest the latter since it was unveiled on October 20) in the Welsh grand committee.

What has been noticeable about the S4C saga is that we have heard more from commentators and outsiders than those directly responsible for either running or funding the channel.

UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke publicly about S4C yesterday at Commons question time, possibly for the first time in public since the spending review.

Broadcasting isn't devolved but Ministers and members of the Welsh assembly have understandably wanted to have their say about the channel's future.

At Westminster, the committee which monitors broadcasting has yet to inquire into the S4C goings on.

The Welsh affairs committee has stepped in to fill the gap, despite S4C being arguably outside its terms of reference ("to examine matters within the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Wales (including relations with the National assembly for Wales)").

Wales Office Ministers have tried to avoid getting involved in the row, although they were said to be privately displeased by a call from Tory backbenchers for members of the S4C authority to resign.

This morning, the committee heard from Ofcom, the Welsh Language Society and the Welsh Language Board.

Ofcom suggested that recent events were outside their responsibility, the language society offered committee chair David Davies a membership form, and the language board complained that it hadn't been consulted about the proposed partnership with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.

Its chair, Meri Huws, told the MPs: "The Ö÷²¥´óÐã is a British institution. We're talking here about S4C which has a central role in terms of language planning through the medium of Welsh. I think those two things will militate against each other. And we have to ensure that doesn't happen."

David Davies asked union witnesses whether they were impressed by the S4C authority's use of "the London Government" in press releases about a government department which sent the channel £100m a year.

Mr Davies: "Clearly, they're not the London government, they're the British Government. They are no more the London government than the Welsh assembly is the Cardiff government."

Meic Birtwhistle (NUJ): "I take that as shorthand - in Welsh you refer to San Steffan and then you refer to Bae Caerdydd. It's a shorthand way of speaking about the two governments. Maybe what you've got there is a translation from the Welsh."

Mr Davies: "Something's been lost in translation."

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