Media Bill

Andy Carter Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important point, because we want to ensure that everybody has access to television. That is why I made those comments in my speech. We are looking at this matter. There are a number of ongoing reviews to make sure we have evidence bases. I am happy to stay engaged with him on that subject.

From Wimbledon to the FIFA World cup final, live sports are among the most important fixtures on our television schedules every week. To protect British viewers’ access to major sporting events, the Bill will modernise the listed events regime. In line with the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s recommendation, we have acted to close the streaming loophole.

Millions of us tune into the radio every single day to spend time with our favourite presenters or our favourite music. Whether it is Cambridge 105 Radio or LBC, we rely on local radio to keep us entertained and informed. Few know more about this issue than my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South, and I thank him for his tireless work to champion this vital sector. But as modern technology continues to transform how, when and where people tune in, we must ensure that stations across the UK have the right support in place so that they can reach their listeners.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s kind words. One of the issues we have discussed and debated in this Chamber over the last 12 months is the BBC’s decision to reduce local news on many of its local radio stations. I am very supportive of this Bill and welcome the steps to cut red tape for local commercial radio, but can she assure me and this House that there are sufficient provisions to ensure that local news continues on local multiplexes?

[Lucy Frazer]

I was pleased to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and to take part in a session on his local radio station. As he knows, the BBC is operationally and editorially independent but, of course, local news is important. We have measures in this Bill to protect local news.

Because listeners increasingly listen to radio using smart speakers, the Bill will require that major smart speakers ensure that the UK radio stations that listeners love remain available on request. The Bill will also remove a number of outdated and burdensome regulations that are holding back the commercial radio sector, while strengthening protections for local news and information.

Finally, one of my central priorities as Secretary of State is to protect media freedom so that our world-leading media can continue to thrive. The Bill has media freedom at its core. One of its most significant measures is the removal of a long-standing threat to that freedom by repealing section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Section 40 and the possibility of publishers having to pay the legal costs of the people who sue them, even if they win, has hung over our media like a sword of Damocles. The Bill removes the sword for good.

The Labour party, of course, is no friend of the free press. The shadow Secretary of State has, in the past, called for boycotts of some of this country’s most well-respected papers. The Labour party has accused the Government of muddying the waters of this crucial legislation by including the repeal of section 40, but for us the water is clear. The position is clear: we will protect our free press.

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[Damian Collins]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. It should be easier to find through app stores. Although they are not directly in scope of the legislation because they are not broadcast formats in their own right, that question should be asked—is it easy to find? It should be easy to find on a connected device when it is turned on, and it should be easy to locate the apps.

Ofcom also has to consider whether the business model that underpins connected devices is fair to public service broadcasters. There is no doubt that the business model for Amazon and Google is to try to create a connected device space where all the entertainment exists and is tailored to each person. They also want to build the ad tech into that, so that they are the principal beneficiaries of the ad revenue, by monetising the placement of that content as well and diverting it away from broadcasters who have traditionally sold audiences to make money. That is the underlying problem that public service broadcasting faces today. The sale of audiences to generate advertising revenue to invest in programmes—the model that has fuelled independent public broadcasting for 50 years—is not broken, but it does not work in the way it used to; it is much more diffuse.

The revenue challenges that come from that are extremely real. That is why, on Channel 4, although I am pleased to see the Government’s changes to the remit, we need to keep a watching brief to see whether they go far enough. We have not gone as far as Channel 4 asked to go in its counter-offer to privatisation, which was the ability to go to the markets to raise money from private investors to create a programming fund that would invest £1 billion over two years in new programming. If we simply allow Channel 4 to acquire a stake in the making of programmes that it will broadcast, which will make revenue in the future, will that be enough now to meet the challenges that it will face? Given the ongoing pressures this year on declining ad revenue for TV broadcasting, we need to make sure that that will be enough. We should not assume that the measures in the Bill, which are welcome, will be the last word on that. There may be more challenges to come.

I would like to add two further points. It is right that we try to create more parity between the regulation of on-demand online services and broadcast television. If a viewer turns on their connected TV device, as far as they are concerned Netflix is as much television as the BBC, and there should be some parity in the way the platforms are regulated, the obligations they have to their users and the notifications they give about the suitability of the content. That should apply to advertising too. Often the debate we have is around advertising that targets children, but children are not watching live television; they are watching it on demand. The danger at the moment is that we have a highly regulated live broadcast television environment, but an almost completely unregulated online one. We should be far more worried about the ad rules that apply on YouTube than those on ITV, because that is where the children are. It is vital that the work on the Government’s online advertising review is completed at pace. The project has been worked on for a number of years. There needs to be proper enforceability of the advertising codes that have stood us in good stead in the broadcast world, but do not yet work in the same way online.

Finally, on media ownership and media freedom, which the Secretary of State mentioned in her opening remarks, we should give some consideration—maybe the Bill is not the right place—to the ownership of UK news companies and news assets, particularly if they are acquired by organisations based in jurisdictions overseas where maybe the regard for press freedom is not the same as it is in the UK. The Bill does not address that concern. If we have an ongoing concern about a vibrant news media landscape, there should be some concern about the companies that own media organisations—where they are based, what their interests are and what interest they have in the way the news is reported here. We do not want to see the press regulated in any way—we want to avoid that and in many ways the measures in the Bill are a nod to that as well—but we want certainty about safeguarding media freedom in the future.

[Andy Carter]

My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point about news media. What does he think about the ownership of public service broadcasters? Should there be legislation in place to consider who is allowed to own a public service broadcaster? For example, ITV could be bought and sold tomorrow on the stock exchange to somebody in a different country who has very different values and views on what content might be put out on ITV. Should that be in scope as well?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. Whether it be ITV or a newspaper such as The Daily Telegraph, which is currently up for sale, what is the motivation of someone acquiring them? We might assume they would not seek to censor what was going on, but would they have a different view on creative content, news, the stories they want to tell and what obligations exist for them? That is not something we have had to consider before, but in a market where such media assets are attractive to global investors, we should not be unconcerned about the motivations of investors who might buy those companies.

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[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler). I fear that I may repeat much of what he just said. I am pleased to be speaking in this debate, a week on from the King’s Speech debate in which I spent quite a bit of time calling on the Government to get on and introduce the Media Bill. For once, they listened to me—that’s nice.

The Media Bill we are debating is the first piece of media legislation for 20 years. The media landscape has changed beyond belief in the last two decades—it is vastly different from the world we lived in 20 years ago—so the Bill is vital to supporting broadcasters and audiences in the modern age. As the media landscape has changed, it is important that we support legislation without delay to give certainty to this important sector. We should recognise that the Bill will probably govern the media landscape for the next 20 years, so it must be forward-thinking, outward-looking and open, just as the previous legislation was.

I declare my interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary media group and the all-party parliamentary group on commercial radio. Let me start by saying that I welcome the Bill, which responds well to the needs of the sector. Because of time limitations, I will focus my remarks on three specific areas of the Bill. I will do something that I rarely do, and put television ahead of radio.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to simplifying the existing remit for public service broadcasters. PSBs are what make our television landscape renowned around the world, but they face unprecedented competition for viewers, programming content and talent in an era when global streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are producing original content and becoming increasingly dominant in the market. It is good that we have more content producers, but even better, they are choosing to make content here in the UK because of our regulatory framework.

TV prominence is about ensuring that UK viewers can easily find public service content that they value. We are living in an increasingly global marketplace, but there is still an appetite for programmes that reflect British values. In fact, around seven in 10 UK adults want UK life and culture to be represented on screen, and a similar number agree that PSBs make programmes designed for UK audiences. Why is it important that we introduce legislation to protect PSBs? Surely, viewers will want to watch the programmes that they make.

Until now, in return for providing public service content, the Government, through Ofcom, have allocated frequencies to broadcasters. In a relatively uncomplicated world, those channels have been easy to find on electronic programme guides: ITV, and STV in Scotland, on channel 3; Channel 4 and Channel 5 on their respective channels. Once someone has tuned in their TV to the nearest transmitter, they press the number on their remote control and the channel is there.

In a future world where the internet is used to deliver the linear TV and video on demand, the tech companies and platforms will decide where products and programmes appear. In fact, at the moment, if Samsung or LG decided not to include the BBC iPlayer app on their TV screens, there is nothing the BBC, UK viewers or the Government could do about it. If Amazon decided to double the charge for Channel 4’s on-demand service to appear on its Fire Stick, there is little Channel 4 could do about it. From speaking to Channel 4, I know that when Amazon moved the location of the Channel 4 app on the Fire Stick, there was a significant alteration in the viewing of Channel 4. It matters where the apps are located on the relevant platform.

If we want to make sure that British viewers can easily find BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, and STV in Scotland and S4C in Wales, we need to agree the framework that will ensure that platforms carry those services. I fully support that. I also urge the Government to look carefully at using the word “significant” rather than “appropriate”. That will determine where the channels are found on those platforms.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I wholeheartedly agree that it is not just about the schedule. As I said earlier, I was not aware that we had a schedule. We do not use Freeview; we open the Fire Stick or PlayStation and look at the apps. The prominence of the apps is important. If someone does not have terrestrial TV or an aerial hooked up, that is the only way that they are able to consume the public service broadcast content.

[Andy Carter]

There may be an age divide that determines whether someone looks at an electronic programme guide or the Radio Times, or whether they just look for a tile. The notion that viewers want to continue to use linear TV is important. That is why it is so critical that we legislate in the right way to make sure that British viewers can find it.

The changes in the Bill will impact Channel 4 more than any other PSB, given its unique publisher-broadcaster licence. Channel 4’s status, introduced by the Conservative Government back in the 1980s, has significantly aided the development of the independent production sector in the UK over the last 40 years, which is now worth nearly £4 billion. The removal of the publisher-broadcaster restrictions will allow for Channel 4 to produce its own content, as opposed to simply commissioning or acquiring all of its content from third parties. Why does that matter? For the first time, it will allow Channel 4, when it produces content, to own the rights for that content, which it can then sell around the world, creating another stream of revenue which will allow products and programmes to be funded on Channel 4.

The Government have announced plans to increase Channel 4’s independent production quota as part of the changes. However, there will be many small production companies in areas such as the north-west of England, which have seen a rapid growth in independent production businesses, who are still unsure about the full impact the changes will have for them. Will the Minister, in his response, expand a little more on what the changes will mean for those businesses and give some assurances that they will still be able to thrive once Channel 4 receives its new licence and the Bill receives Royal Assent?

Channel 4 has indicated that it will maintain its existing commitment to spend 50% of its budget for main channel commissions outside London. That is really important to regional production. Ofcom has announced that it will be consulting on whether changes will need to be made to Channel 4’s regional programming making quotas. Is the Minister able to provide a timeline for that consultation, so we know when any changes will come into effect?

I want to touch on local TV and echo some of the comments from other hon. and right hon. Members. I have received representations from the local TV networks who are concerned that the current Bill does not guarantee local TV service prominence in the new TV ecology, and neither does it grant powers on a par with those of local radio services. At some point, the sector will start to provide streamed linear programme services. Will the Government be giving consideration to including local TV as part of the licensed public service channel designation in the Bill to help ensure sustainability for the sector? It really is important that there is an understanding for this sector going forward, because it is making decisions today on the future of its business plans.

Finally on TV, if we are looking to the next 20 years, because this is the only Bill we are likely to see in the media landscape, we should be conscious that the previous broadcasting Bill ran for 20 years. On the Government’s management of a digital terrestrial television switchover, I have been reassured in my conversations with the Minister that he wants terrestrial television to remain accessible for the foreseeable future. I very much agree with him on that. When he is summing up, could he give an indication of the criteria he might want to set before broadcast TV services on Freeview are considered for switch off? That was in place for DAB digital radio. There was a clear criteria in terms of when that might happen. Things have moved many, many times over the years, but it would be helpful for the digital terrestrial sector to understand what the Government might be thinking.

Before I turn to the provisions on radio, may I put on record my congratulations to all those who have worked in commercial radio over the past 50 years? Independent local radio, as we once knew it, celebrated its 50th anniversary just a few weeks ago. It was 50 years ago in October since LBC and Capital Radio arrived on our airwaves in the capital, 50 years since Radio Clyde in Glasgow launched and 50 years since BRMB in Birmingham launched. They were the four stations in 1973 that appeared on our AM radios. Over the 50 years, we have seen a plethora of local, regional and national stations arrive on AM, FM, DAB and now online via Radioplayer and smart speakers. Today, commercial radio is delivering record audiences. Back in the early 1980s, we were all convinced that video was going to kill the radio star. Actually, radio is in rude health. We have regional brands, national stations and hyperlocal services focused on their own towns and cities that are doing remarkably well. We should all recognise in this House how strong commercial radio is today and how much we value the services that people who work in that sector provide for us.

There is unanimous agreement across the BBC, and across commercial and community radio, that the Bill, on the whole, works for radio. It contains crucial measures that will help to safeguard the future in the face of changing technology and shifts in listening habits. The radio sector continues to deliver significant public value, providing trusted news, entertainment and—particularly important—companionship for about 50 million listeners every week. UK radio broadcasters make a substantial contribution to the creative industries, and BBC and commercial radio combined generate more than £1.5 billion in gross value added for the UK economy.

I especially welcome the provisions to support the future of the UK radio industry on voice-activated smart speaker platforms, and the removal of outdated regulatory burdens such as music formats on analogue licences for commercial radio stations. When there was a limited number of stations in each market, it was right for the Government to regulate the number of stations that could provide each particular type of service, but today, when there are a great many services, it should be for the market to decide. If country music is not working, it is possible to switch to jazz without spending too much time bothering the regulator.

There are, however, a few parts of the Bill that I should like the Minister to clarify for the industry. Part 5 deals with the safeguarding of local news and information on DAB services, and it would be helpful if the Minister could explain how those powers will work in practice. For instance, how would a multiplex decide which services must carry local news? Would the multiplex owner be responsible for the enforcement against a digital sound service provider, or would that be the responsibility of Ofcom? What would happen if a service carrying local news stopped broadcasting? Would the obligation be transferred to another service holder, or to the multiplex owner? As for Ofcom’s new role in producing guidelines for the regular broadcast of local news, can the Minister tell us when and how Ofcom will be consulting on that process?

Part 6 contains clauses relating to futureproofing. Will there be scope for expansion of the provisions to cover on-demand and online-only radio content provided by UK broadcasters, as opposed to linear content? Finally, may I ask whether the Government will consider an amendment to protect access to radio in cars, which still accounts for about a quarter of all radio listening, by bringing non-voice activated infotainment systems within the scope of the Bill?

I want to touch briefly on the proposals

“for the repeal of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013”,

a decade-old provision that has never been brought into force. While I appreciated the opportunity to observe the perspective of my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), whose knowledgeable account of the forming of that legislation was extremely insightful, I am afraid I disagree with the points that he made. It does not seem right to me that publishers who are taken to court could be forced to pay the legal costs of a judgment if they are not a member of an approved regulator, regardless of whether they win or lose the case. I am a firm believer in the freedom of the press. I have spent time working as a journalist, and there have been times when journalists have written about my activities. There are, occasionally, times when I do not like what the press have written, and there are, occasionally, times when I believe that the press have got it wrong. Healthy democracies, however, need objective journalism which is free from state involvement.

The reason I do not agree with my right hon. Friend is this. The Leveson report recommended a system of

“voluntary independent self-regulation”,

envisaging

“a body, established and organised by the industry”

which

“must be funded by its members”.

Lord Justice Leveson said that that body should include all the major players in the industry—national newspapers, and as many regional and local newspaper and magazine publishers as possible—

“although I am very anxious that it remain voluntary”.

[George Eustice]

What Lord Justice Leveson actually said was that the members of the body would only be recognised as a regulator if they had sought recognition from an organisation called the Press Recognition Panel. Leveson very clearly rejected the model put forward by Lord Black in the other place, for the very good reason that there was no independent accountability and no body to recognise that independent regulator.

[Andy Carter]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s comments and I recognise his knowledge in this area. He was involved at such a deep level that he has experience and expertise in this field.

For me, the media regulatory landscape has changed significantly since section 40 was introduced, with the Independent Press Standards Organisation now regulating nearly 2,000 print and online titles, including the vast majority of UK national, regional and local newspapers. I feel that that has left us with an obsolete law on the statute book which was never enacted. Removing the section was a Conservative party manifesto commitment in 2017 and in 2019, so I welcome its proposed repeal by the Bill.

In concluding my remarks, I want to offer my thanks to the Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), to the Secretary of State and to officials in DCMS for all their positive engagement with me, with the industry and with those in the House who have long been pressing for this Bill to be brought forward. I know that the Minister is just as keen as I am to see the Media Bill on the statute book, and I am grateful to him for taking note of the issues that I have raised today. I look forward to his addressing those issues in his reply, as well as to our continued engagement over the coming months so that we can pass this Bill as soon as possible.