“C4 is in excellent financial health & does not want or need to raise outside capital to fund its future plans.”

Channel 4 has called out Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries after she made a claim in the Commons about privatising the channel.

Yesterday, Dorries posted a video to Twitter of herself speaking in the House of Commons where she said that privatising Channel 4 would set them free to raise more investment. She said: “Channel 4 want to raise investment. They want to invest in more content. What we’re doing is setting Channel 4 free to be able to do that.

Dorries went on to add: “Because as state owned, if Channel 4 does that whilst it’s state owned it is offset against the public balance sheet. We cannot allow that because governments don’t own money, we only have taxpayers’ money and therefore we have to enable Channel 4 to be able to be set free to raise investment to continue to make the amazing and distinctive British content – edgy, diverse programmes that it does.”

Dorries also referenced a report published by Channel 4 called The Next Episode which she claimed showed the broadcaster “wants to raise investment”.

However, Channel 4 called out the culture secretary’s claims in a tweet, hitting back at claims that it needed to raise more money to produce content.

Responding to her claims, the Channel 4 press account tweeted: “Clarification: A proposal was made, in response to a request from DCMS, showing how C4 could potentially raise a small amount of outside capital.

“C4 is in excellent financial health & does not want or need to raise outside capital to fund its future plans.”

I think many of us can see that the sale of Channel 4 isn’t really motivated by business considerations but more by the fact that the government would rather sell off a channel that’s frequently been critical of its actions.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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