It seems that the spirit of deference that once sustained an empire remains alive within some of Holyrood’s committees. These pocket battleships of the Scottish parliament are deemed to be one of its most palpable successes; regularly eliciting clarity and exerting transparency from dozens of evasive, public sector executives on the gravy train. Yet, observing two of them at work in recent weeks revealed a marked difference in tone and attitude.

Those beleaguered NHS 24 executives who endured hell at the hands of Holyrood’s public audit committee perhaps were lulled into a false sense of security by the treatment of BBC chiefs the previous week by parliament’s education and culture committee. The NHS 24 bosses seemed to shrivel up before us as it became clear that petty office politics and an absence of leadership had contributed to a £41.6m overspend on an IT system that hasn’t even been delivered yet.

Compared with this, the BBC bosses’ encounter with their inquisitors on education and culture was polite and cordial. Long before the proceedings meandered pleasantly to a close, I was expecting a short adjournment for tea and empire biscuits. Yet the BBC had as many serious questions to answer in this year of charter renewal as its wretched colleagues on NHS 24. But whereas the £110k-a-year chief executive of NHS 24 was a timid-looking, middle-management chap called Turner, the BBC was led by its director-general, Tony Hall, the Baron Hall of Birkenhead, whose annual £532k salary includes an £82k pension.

His lordship was only there, of course, because the BBC is statutorily required to treat with Holyrood over the renewal of its charter. It ought to have been an uncomfortable ride; instead, it was a picnic. Scotland raises £323m in licence fees, yet has an annual budget of some £35m. The corporation has tried to put that figure at £123m, but such a sum includes spending on programmes and projects that are “badged” as Scottish but whose DNA is anything but.

The disparity arises from the cost of what BBC staffers call “lift and shift” programmes. These are programmes that are given a patina of Scottishness so that the cost can be added to the Scottish budget. In this way, a sum of between £75m and £80m is added as part of the network supply review, under which several programmes are produced for the UK network. These include Homes Under the Hammer and all the lottery game shows.

None of them had their origins in Scotland and the creative personnel and processes bypass Scotland completely. Technical studio staff are flown in from England on a Monday morning as part of the ritual known inside Pacific Quay as “the trundle of the trolley-bags”.

On one of these shows, badged for all to see as “Scottish”, a rudimentary head-count analysis was conducted by an independent programme-maker. Of about 25 or so individuals who appeared on the production credits, only four had addresses in Scotland.

In 2013-14, the BBC Scotland television budget was broken down thus: news £10m; sport £4.5m; River City £6.5m; TV commissioning £10m; other costs £4.5m. That’s right; BBC Scotland’s chief television commissioning editor sits down every year wondering what he can make with £10m to play with for the year. Ten million wouldn’t stretch to the budget for the ladies’ foundation garments on Anna Karenina.

There are still some in Scotland who believe that television made in Scotland would be inferior to that made in England

In one extraordinary statement to the committee, Hall said: “The BBC now has half its spending; half its people, outside the M25 and London. That is a good thing.”

The members of the committee smiled and slumbered on when they ought to have been asking these questions. Why does one part of one country of the UK swallow up half of your finance and resources? And why is this a “good thing”?

Instead, Hall made a woolly assertion about having a review about a Scottish Six new programme and a Scottish digital TV channel. Ah yes, the Scottish Six, an idea that’s been kicked into the long grass so many times that David Attenborough will be along any time now to make a programme about it. There was no time scale put on this, nor was there a starting point.

What they do know now is that the charter renewal team inside Pacific Quay had produced a blueprint for the future of the BBC in Scotland that would have transformed public sector broadcasting in this country as well as all of the other performing and dramatic arts. This in effect would have increased BBC Scotland’s creative budget to around £150m, in a move that would have virtually devolved all programme making to Pacific Quay.

This was initially supported by senior executives in London before local editors in the south-east began to lobby against it. The education and culture committee should have pressed Hall on this to the point of distraction, but chose not to.

There are still some in Scotland who believe that television made in Scotland would be inferior to that made in England. Such a view is insulting to the journalists and technical professionals who work inside Pacific Quay and who still daily spin excellence from the crumbs they are given by the mothership.

Radio Scotland drama productions are of a very high quality and, each year, when they give free rein to the talents of their staff, they produce documentaries such as their Iain Banks tribute and the investigation into the fall of RBS. In Mark Daly and Sam Poling, they possess two of the finest investigative journalists on the network.

Hall also said this to the committee: “I think one of the strengths of the BBC is that it should be integral and part of the nations that make up the UK and working really effectively in the nations of the UK. That’s an enormous strength for Scotland. That’s an enormous strength for the UK.”

So, during the next independence referendum, and just for the avoidance of doubt, we now all know which side the BBC will be on.