Media Bill

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Viscount Colville of Culross]

9: Clause 1, page 3, line 11, leave out subsection (6) and insert—
“(6) The requirements in this subsection are that—(a) that the relevant audiovisual services (taken together) comprise a public service for the dissemination of information and for the provision of education and entertainment, (b) the range of audiovisual content genres made available by the public service broadcasters (taken together) include but not be limited to content about—(i) religion and other beliefs,(ii) science,(iii) arts and cultural content,(iv) social issues,(v) matters of international significance, and(vi) matters of specialist interest, and(c) there is a sufficient quantity and range of programmes within each genre.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would statutorily require OFCOM to report on whether public service broadcasters have made available an appropriate amount and range of programmes in named societally valuable public service genres both on broadcast channels and on their online Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) platforms. Without specifying these genres in law OFCOM will not be required to monitor them.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I declare an interest as a freelance TV producer who has worked for all four public service broadcasters. I thank the Voice of the Listener & Viewer and the Media Reform Coalition for their support in putting this speech together, and the commercial public service broadcasters for their information. I am also grateful to noble Lords who have attached their names to this amendment.

I welcome a lot of the Bill. However, I have tabled this amendment because I am convinced that the public service remit set out in Clause 1 is not worthy of the name. The White Paper says that it replaces the

“outdated set of fourteen overlapping purposes … with a new, shorter remit, focussed on the things that”

the PSBs

“are uniquely positioned to deliver”.

Unfortunately, this new remit does not deliver either of those things for audiences or for the industry.

I degrouped this amendment so that noble Lords would have a chance to direct their speeches specifically towards the need for genres within public service broadcasting. In looking at Clause 1, I ask the Minister: are the Government really not going to insist that our commercial PSBs commission and broadcast any content on science, on the arts, on social issues, any content of international significance—or, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds said earlier, any content on religion? In a society where there is a desperate lack of knowledge about those matters, surely the media, which has been so privileged and protected in this Bill, should be mandated to battle against ignorance and bring illumination and context to the lives of people in this country. It has never been more important than now to have reliable information easily accessible by everybody. Surely, this is the antidote to the swirl of fake news and conspiracy theories which so dominate the internet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I am very grateful to noble Lords for their support on this amendment. I think it proved that I was right to degroup it so that we could have a specific discussion about the need for genres.

The Minister said that it is going to be fine because we have Ofcom, which will oversee the remit and make sure that the PSBs give us good, broad content. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, warned us, this does not give Parliament anything like enough power to hold Ofcom to account. This is an issue we have had in this Chamber a number of times, on different Acts. We discussed it quite a lot on the Online Safety Bill and were very concerned by the enormous powers that were given to Ofcom and the inability to control them. In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, suggested a parliamentary committee that could look at the way Ofcom carried out its powers.

There is obviously a battle between regulation and competition, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said. The Minister is obviously content that new subsection (6) in particular is going to help direct the PSBs to deal with this problematical and knotty area. However, I remain unconvinced and extremely concerned that the fiercely competitive economic environment in which our PSBs find themselves will drive them inexorably away from serious factual programming and towards entertainment.

I hope that between Committee and Report the Minister will meet me and other noble Lords to discuss this issue, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.