stuff over the years, and particularly, actually, in the last year or two with david grossman and sima kotechathat they've been making. and i think that at the heart of this is the point that roger makes about centralisation. the bbc, because it accounts for about a third of broadcast output in this country. it depends how you measure it, really. but the bbc has to sort ofjustify that almost quasi—monopoly position and has done so over the years by internal competition and pluralism within the bbc. now, if you centralise all your investigative work, you lose a lot of the pluralism. and by that i mean that until now, if somebody's got a scandal they want the bbc to expose or look into, they might go to the today programme, they might go to newsnight. if one turns it down, which inevitably happens, they can try another one. under this new regime that's being proposed, it's more like, let's get a yes or no, and that's it. that's it in terms of getting that sort of thing exposed. so i think the pluralism of the bbc is something that needs to be maintained. roger, the bbc says it's not downgrading

thank you very much, sima kotecha.andsworth in birmingham. he was the son of a barbadian postman and a jamaican nurse. he left school, aged 13, unable to read or write. "we heard dat de streets were paved wid gold, "sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold. "i luv me mudder an me mudder luvs me. "we try te live in harmony. "yu might know her as valerie, but to me she's my mummy." as a dub poet, a style he claimed was poetry with a groove, he used his art to confront the social and political injustices as he saw them — most notably racism, empire and colonialism. here he is in a newsnight film back in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the race relations act. i no longer have to run away from skinhead thugs, but i still get stopped by the police. on the whole, society is more accepting, but we still have institutional racism. after the death of stephen lawrence, the macpherson report said the met was institutionally racist, and that hasn't gone away. in 1982, he released an album called rasta, which featured the wailers' f

stuff over the years, and particularly, actually, in the last year or two with david grossman and sima kotechaer one. under this new regime that's being proposed, it's more like, let's get a yes or no, and that's it. that's it in terms of getting that sort of thing exposed. so i think the pluralism of the bbc is something that needs to be maintained. roger, the bbc says it's not downgrading investigations, they're just being centralised. michael's implied that's pretty ominous. does it sound ominous to you? it does sound ominous because this country is now much more diverse and therefore needs, i think, a range of editorial voices and a range of powerful editors. and the way michael is right, is that when the today programme had its own team of reporters and newsnight and the world at one, it meant sometimes it was hard to justify in terms of efficiency, but it didn't make good programmes. and you had the today programme able to put resources into hunting down a story and sending a reporter, which they now can't do. they don't have any reporters. and newsnight was the last redoubt of a semi—in