Media Bill

Debate between Lord Watson of Wyre Forest and Lord Addington

Report stage & 3rd reading
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 7. The listed events regime is something that we all agree should happen—for sporting events and events of national importance. This amendment, initially moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, is an attempt to make sure that in the current viewing world, they are still relevant in the way that they should be. Not everybody watches these listed events on an ordinary television and, if you do, you may be watching on internet television. One of the joys of this is that you have highlights and replays and can watch out of sync. I would hope in this modern world that those are guaranteed, because if you do not guarantee that these sporting cultural assets, which the nation has said should be available to everyone and there is cross-party consensus on, are made available for free then you are going to take them away.

Also, if there is any danger of these highlights being taken away—when it comes to the Olympics, for example, determined as I am, even I cannot watch 15 events at once, especially not at various times—we must make sure that they are readily available. This is the second go at this. I hope that the Minister can give us a definitive reassurance that we will have this available to us now, in this Bill, because if not, the Government have thrown away, in effect, half the listed events.

[Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 1 and to echo some of the concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, in her Amendment 8. It is a very great honour to speak to her amendment. I congratulate her on her very important recognition with her BAFTA award last week. She has been a tireless campaigner for children’s television, which is why these two amendments are perhaps the most important that we are discussing today.

To put at the heart of the Bill the notion of public service broadcasting and to modernise it for the digital age should surely be what we are trying to achieve today. I am a member of probably the first generation of comprehensive school children who were taught using terrestrial colour television—creative programmes such as “Words and Pictures” and—dare I say it?—“Play School”. I still remember “magic e” when I write speeches for the Lords. What is sitting here is a failure to realise that we are the generation that lived in information scarcity and our children are swimming in an ocean of information abundance. That notion at the heart of public service broadcasting—good, thorough content creation that is age-appropriate and relevant to the educational journey that we ask our children and their families to go on—is what we should be addressing.

I hope that all Front-Benchers will be able to take the comments made by the movers of those amendments very seriously when they respond to the debate.