Media Bill

Debate between Baroness Featherstone and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Committee stage
Monday 20th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 42, 50 and 51 in this group. I again draw your Lordships’ attention to my registered interests.

The UK’s public service broadcasters—the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5—and national broadcasters S4C, STV, and MG Alba, play an essential cultural, economic and social role, supporting British democratic values and underpinning the UK’s creative economy. They produce high-quality, distinctive content, informing, educating and entertaining audiences across the UK. Audiences support this. Seven in 10 UK adults want to see UK life and culture represented on screen. A similar number think that PSBs deliver well on programmes made for UK audiences. Six hours and nine minutes is spent watching BBC TV/iPlayer on average per person per week, which is more than Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video combined.

Currently, prominence is one of the main regulatory benefits provided to the PSBs, but the existing regime has not kept pace with technological change. It applies only to linear channels—for example, BBC One—delivered through the channel menu, also known as the electronic programme guide or EPG. The Media Bill updates the rules so that they will apply not just to PSB linear channels but to on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer. This is hugely welcome, but there is further opportunity to ensure that PSB prominence arrangements are future-proofed and watertight, protecting access to the content that people love and enjoy for future generations.

Amendment 42 is on the prominence of the EPG. While the Media Bill seeks to ensure that PSB on-demand services will appear prominently on regulated TV platforms, and PSB linear services within the EPG will continue to benefit from the existing prominence regime, there are no protections for the EPG itself. A growing number of IP-only households watch videos via a broadband connection. This is expected to exceed 50% of total households by the end of this decade. All this has led to more people watching content on demand. It does not mean the end of linear, which remains the single biggest way that people watch video content and delivers 82% of audiences’ consumption of BBC TV content. The familiarity of linear TV will continue to make it a popular discovery route for audiences, even as they move away from digital terrestrial television.

The PSBs have responded to the continuing need for live TV by investing in an online linear solution freely, but linear TV is being eroded. The EPG has been downgraded within TV user interfaces and the linear schedule hidden away. This comes at the expense of PSB. In internet-only homes, without a linear programme guide, the BBC gets just 22% of our normal consumption. The current rules do not enable Ofcom to support audiences by safeguarding this popular and familiar way of watching TV. The Government should use the Media Bill to update the Communications Act 2003 to safeguard linear TV, an important and familiar viewing route. This would also support audiences as the digital transition continues. The amendment would require Ofcom to give the EPG itself the degree of prominence that it considers appropriate. This is in keeping with the existing linear prominence framework, with high-level legislation underpinned by Ofcom guidance and codes. This is a flexible and future-proofed approach.

Amendments 50 and 51 concern the definition of “appropriate prominence”. The Media Bill gives PSB on-demands appropriate prominence but does not define what this means, leaving it open to interpretation. Ofcom will be the regulator of the prominence regime and sufficient direction and clarity about the outcomes that Parliament wishes to see is crucial in order to allow Ofcom to implement the rules robustly. As recommended by the CMS Select Committee, the PSBs should receive “significant” rather than “appropriate” prominence. The best way to secure this is for the Bill to set out explicitly what “appropriate” means. A further amendment to the Media Bill should also set out more concretely the areas of Ofcom guidance that the application of appropriate prominence should cover: for example, search, recommendations and personalisation, acting as a further safeguard. I beg to move.

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, Amendments 46 and 47 are in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. We had a bit of a knock-around on “prominence” at Second Reading—was it “appropriate”, “significant” or, as the right reverend Prelate ventured, neither? Indeed, he was right; the word itself should be enough, for the Oxford English dictionary defines it as

“the state of being important, well known, or easy to notice”.

We want the PSBs, on any screen that offers choices between PSBs and streamers, to be important, well-known, and very easy to notice. It is vital, as commercial operators do not always want us to choose the PSB, because their gods are commercial. As we know, things can get very small and difficult on-screen when customers choosing it means less income—think about how hard it is to find that tiny “unsubscribe” notice when we want to get out of emails from some commercial arrangement we no longer want. It is not in commercial entities’ interests to make life easy for us; that is why we have to mandate and prescribe “prominence”. We on these Benches do not believe it is sufficient to leave it to Ofcom to define. I have heard the arguments about “appropriate” being perfectly adequate, and we beg to disagree.

For clarity, I am trying to get across that we on these Benches believe that prominence must be defined in legislation to guide Ofcom, and not be left open-ended for it. That definition should be crystal clear: that in every and any situation where channel choice is being offered, the PSB logo or whatever should be of equal or greater prominence to any other choice offered on the electronic programme guides.

The dangers of not specifying what prominence means or seeks to achieve in the Bill could include a loss of funding. PSBs often rely on public funding or subsidies to fulfil their mandate of providing programming that serves the public interest; without prominence, they may struggle to attract viewership and advertising revenue, leading to financial difficulties that could jeopardise their ability to produce the sort of high-quality content we want them to. PSBs may find it challenging to reach a wide audience, particularly in a crowded media landscape where viewers have numerous options for their entertainment; that could lead to a decline in their influence and relevance, making it harder for them to fulfil their role as a source of impartial news, educational programming and cultural content.

The public service mandate could be undermined, as PSBs are tasked with providing programming that serves the public interest, including news, current affairs and educational content. Without prominence, they may struggle, and their content may be overshadowed by commercial broadcasters or streaming services prioritising profit. It could also be a threat to media diversity and cause a loss of trust and accountability. Lastly, if public service broadcasters are not given prominence in a democratic society, there are issues around this that could arise: an erosion of media pluralism, a threat to freedom of information, diminished public discourse, a loss of accountability, and the undermining of democratic values, social cohesion, education and lifelong learning, and cultural preservation.

As this is a probing amendment, I encourage the Minister to think about bringing back his own amendment as an instruction to Ofcom in dealing with prominence, to say that, however it writes it regulations, PSBs must have equal or greater prominence than any other offer on the screen.