Deregulation Bill

Baroness Ford Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I rise to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and declare an interest as a producer at the BBC. The pay TV platforms already pay to transmit the digital channels from ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, so what can their objection be to adding the main channels of ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5? They say that the transmission fees would represent a double tax for consumers, but in the case of the commercial PSBs at least this is obviously untrue. Viewers do not pay to watch the commercial PSBs, but they have a news and current affairs obligation, which costs ITV, for example, at least £100 million a year. All that could benefit from the extra revenue provided by the new fees, which is what we have seen happen to channels in America.

There have also been scare stories from Virgin Media saying that full-blooded commercial negotiation could led to blackouts, with PSBs removing their channels from the platforms. This may have happened in the US, but it is not being threatened by the PSBs in this country, and it is clearly an absurd allegation as the commercial PSBs are legally committed to put their main channels on the digital platforms as part of their licence agreements. I agree, of course, with noble Lords who want the Minister to elucidate the timeframe and the terms of the review. When it is completed, the recommendations should not be put on the back burner.

The introduction of retransmission fees will allow PSBs to maximise investment in UK-produced programmes, so that we can build on the world-beating programmes that we all enjoy so very much.

[Baroness Ford (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I also rise to support the amendment, and in so doing declare a very particular interest as chairman of a public service broadcaster, STV. We are on Report and had a very full debate on this issue in Committee where, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, there was very little between any of us in understanding and appreciating the issues in front of us. I do not think there is any issue with saying that the original legislation is very out of date. It is not just the pay TV platforms that are benefiting from this; every day, new online content creators and online aggregators also benefit hugely from public service investment in all this. There is no doubt or dispute that the regulations are massively out of date, and the debate on the iniquitous nature of the investment in public service broadcasting has been very well rehearsed.

My concern really is that the Government have a complete open goal here and have had it for quite some time. The Deregulation Bill, as we said in Committee, is a perfect vehicle for dealing with this as removing “unnecessary and outdated regulation” is exactly what it was set up to do. This is outdated and unnecessary regulation. However, the Government have chosen to go down the route of a consultation instead of taking the open goal in front of them. This consultation has now been very widely trailed over many months. At the Royal Television Society conference in early September, the Secretary of State said that now is the time to reconsider all the regulation around broadcasting. He signalled very strongly to the audience that day that the consultation was pretty imminent. That was September. We have managed to have a consultation—the Smith commission—on new powers for Scotland. We have managed to negotiate all that in that time, yet we have not managed to even get out of the blocks on a consultation on deregulation of this section. It is pathetic, quite frankly.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is excellent. It is simply belt and braces. There is no reason why the Government cannot accept it. But if for some reason the Minister is going to tell us that he cannot accept it and that there are sensible reasons for that, I would really like the House and the whole industry to hear, on the record, the timescale for this, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, there is a strong whiff of kicking this into the long grass.

The question of the general election is a complete red herring. This ought not to be a party-political matter. Losing hundreds of millions of pounds of income out of this country every single year instead of retaining that investment in the country and reinvesting it into the creative industries ought not to be an issue between any of the political parties. It should be a no-brainer. I do not understand why the general election should even be a feature in thinking about the timescale for this. I would really like the Minister to give us some very clear assurances about the Government’s intention and the timescale that they are going to adopt here.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I am the first to agree with my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones that this review is, if anything, overdue and that it is quite wrong for the public sector broadcasters to be subsidising cable operators in this way. But what I find absolutely fascinating is that the debate on Clause 64 hinged on the Government putting the cart before the force. Now my noble friend is putting exactly the opposite thought forward, and I would be grateful if, when he winds up on the amendment, he would explain why.