Legislative Reform (Renewal of Radio Licences) Order 2020

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Friday 27th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as listed in the register. It is a pleasure to agree with both the previous speakers: the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the Minister. I do not think that I could take issue with anything they said.

To me, this affirmative approval Motion seems an eminently sensible move by the DCMS. We know that there is a considerable audience for commercial radio: as many as 36 million listeners per week. Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that communication and home entertainment have acquired even more significance.

As a BBC broadcaster for many years, I welcome the scope of the market—and, indeed, making it even larger—and the offering of alternatives, which helps keep the BBC on its toes. Local and national choice can only be good for competition, and therefore enriching for the audience, but, as we have heard, there is another pressing issue that we must consider carefully: largely for topographical reasons, many areas simply do not enjoy digital coverage at all, and sometimes only variable analogue coverage as well. I ask to the Minister to confirm that we will not move to a digital spectrum until we have sorted this out.

I speak from an area here in mid-Wales, in the beautiful Welsh Marches, as a case in point. In order to speak to your Lordships today and to broadcast from here, I have had to invest in a series of booster amplifiers and advanced technology—and it is still variable. I hope that I will not offer an example of that in the next couple of minutes.

I know that the Government want to extend digital and internet coverage to everyone—I applaud that ambition—but until it is realised, we simply must retain the broader spectrum of analogue and AM signals to allow listeners access to information, which is often vital to our general well-being currently, as we have heard. To that end, we need to continue to underpin the strong growth in DAB until everyone has the same access across the country. This is not unlike the need for petrol stations until electric charging points are so plentiful that we are not disenfranchising those people in rural and remote communities, particularly, where transport and digital access are thin both on the ground and in the air.

The other important point, which was made to me by industry representatives and which the Minister also mentioned, is that, should this legislative reform order not be enacted, scores of stations currently living on a financial tightrope might fall owing to the cost of having their licences readvertised. These include prominent stations such as Classic FM—a healthy and complementary alternative to BBC Radio 3, where I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, might visit us occasionally—but also stations such as Kiss, Heart, LBC and Jazz FM, as well as many much smaller independent stations. The sector contributes to the UK economy £638 million in gross value added and more than 12,000 jobs. In addition, it offers alternative support at the local and national level to broadcasters that the BBC may not be able to retain.

I support this Motion absolutely.