Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. I think that we can all agree that the Media Bill is warmly welcomed and that the sooner we can get it on to the statute books, the better. My remarks, surprisingly, are offered from a Scottish perspective, and I declare an interest as a board member of Creative Scotland.

I hope that the Minister will ensure that this Bill does not inadvertently upset the finely balanced infrastructure of the screen sector in Scotland or ignore the best interests of the Scottish consumer. Many noble Lords, including the Minister, joined me the other day at a lunch with STV, which was were very supportive of the Bill. Prominence for PSBs across all user interfaces is essential for smaller PSBs such as STV. This is important on linear and on-demand services, so that STV Player is available and easy to find across a range of platforms. I welcome these protections in the Bill.

Like other noble Lords, I am not sure that I fully appreciate the differences between “significant” and “appropriate” prominence. MG Alba and Gaelic broadcasting, as we have just heard, would, I am sure, be content with either. I join fellow noble Lords in being concerned that the only mention of Gaelic—note that it is “GAL-ick” if talking in a Scottish perspective, please, not “GAY-lick”—is within Part 1 of the Bill, which asks Ofcom to adjudicate on whether there is sufficient minority language content. This feels inadequate compared with the protections for S4C.

I want to highlight my concerns for the Scottish independent sector of the proposed changes to Channel 4’s remit. Channel 4 has a strong commitment to representing the whole of the UK. It has a long-established role as an innovator in the creative industries and its purpose is to be different. The arguments against privatising Channel 4 rested on its unique model. Channel 4’s own website says:

“Our content is the key to Channel 4’s success. As a publisher broadcaster we don’t produce content in-house, we commission it – helping independent production companies across the UK grow and nurturing new and existing talent”.


At the moment, we are being asked to rely on safeguards from Channel 4 that any move into in-house production will be a gradual one. Compare this to the BBC, where 16% of its content is from the nations and regions. At the moment, only 9% of Channel 4’s current content meets this level, so just giving Channel 4 the power to produce programmes, uncapped and without measurable quotas on the level of, for example, locally produced content required on PSBs, risks undermining the independent production and distribution sector which Channel 4 itself acknowledges is the key to its success. I hope therefore that we can give this issue some further thought as the Bill progresses through this House.

I also have concerns that the Bill does not serve the best interests of the Scottish consumer in what it does not cover. The Scottish Affairs Committee reported that almost a third of households in Scotland used only digital terrestrial television—DTT—services. Currently, these services are only guaranteed until 2034. The universality belief that lies behind public service broadcasting in the UK should hold true in any future model, as no one must be left behind.

A recent study by EY predicted that, regardless of rollout, more than 5.5 million properties in the UK will not have a high-speed broadband subscription in 2040. The one report that the Minister did not mention from the Communications and Digital Committee, the recently published Digital Exclusion, which I was privileged to be a part of, noted that even if rollout continues across the UK, many of the most vulnerable in our population will remain unable to access good-quality broadband services.

DTT is free if you pay your licence fee, yet currently these services, described by the Digital Poverty Alliance as “a lifeline”, have no guarantee of certainty to ensure that people are not left further isolated. I appreciate that DCMS has a broadcast framing, but our committee’s report highlighted the lack of a joined-up strategy for digital inclusion across government. Can the Minister say whether research on network rollout, take-up rates, gigabit provision and providing IP connectivity to geographically hard-to-reach households has been considered before rejecting a commitment to supporting DTT? I hope that the Government can reconsider, so that the commercial viability of the Freeview service is not lost while millions are still relying on it.

Many Scottish Members in the other place have lamented the omission of Scottish national sporting events in the proposed listed events regime in the Bill. I suspect that this is partly because, miracle of all miracles, our national football team has qualified for the Euros this summer. However, on a more serious note, the Bill’s removal of existing obligations for PSBs to provide socially valuable but perhaps not so commercially valuable content—for example, about religion and belief or science and technology—could have very negative unintended consequences. I associate myself with the remarks of everybody else who has spoken about that. I have written a list, which is endless. The Covid pandemic and recent events have demonstrated that, in today’s world, an understanding of science and religious literacy matter more than ever before.

I hope that this Bill enjoys a smooth and rapid progress through this House. I hope that it is not like the Online Safety Act, as it is now, where it was not until the very last moment of its passage that it was appreciated that your Lordships had made some very good points and the Minister eventually moved a number of welcome amendments. I live in hope that things might be a bit smoother for this Bill.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

I hope that the Minister might be persuaded by my arguments and those of other noble Lords, and that he might agree to work with us to find the right balance between baby and bathwater before Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 1 to 3 and 7, to which I have added my name, and in doing so, I declare my interest as laid out in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland.

The Bill will set the standard for public service broadcasting and is much welcomed. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has spotted that currently the Bill removes any overarching principles for public service broadcasting, which I believe is a glaring omission.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, has just excellently introduced, the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain have been at the foundation of our public service broadcasting for over 100 years. These overarching principles mean that the values, objectives and practices of public service broadcasters are very different from those in the private sector.

A 2022 report by the Ada Lovelace Institute highlighted the importance of the Reithian principles that guided public service broadcasters in what stories they chose to tell, how they were told and presented, and what programmes were commissioned. By extension, they reflect, support and stimulate the nation of the UK in all its diversity and creativity, and therefore support our world-leading creative industries.

Public service broadcasters already face criticism that they do not sufficiently reflect the public whom they serve, which is why the BBC and Channel 4 attempted to address that by moving parts of their workforce and commissioning outside London—but more of that in amendments to come. In contrast, private organisations such as Netflix are designed to maximise market share and shareholder revenue. They use recommendation systems to drive user engagement with their content. They may have some consideration of social values, but public service organisations are currently legally mandated to operate with a particular set of public interest values at their core. Without these amendments, we would lose that. PSBs are building their own recommendation systems to compete in this new digital age but, as the Ada Lovelace Institute report highlights, they will not work unless public service broadcasters are clear about their own identity and purpose.

Amendment 3 reinstates the role of PSBs in supporting our creative industries in all their diversity. The regional production of drama, comedy, music and other visual and performing arts programming plays a vital role in enabling new talent to be heard, local creative economies to be sustained and regional culture to be supported. The UK’s network of PSBs provides a platform for artists, musicians, songwriters, producers, composers and choreographers, enabling them to reach a wider audience and to gain exposure. For example, many people’s first experience of ballet is only through the Christmas Day ballet production. It is a two-way relationship: as government and funding bodies encourage live performing arts companies to make the most of digital viewing opportunities, it is in partnership with the broadcasters that those skills can be developed.

Amendment 7 recognises that education is not solely the preserve of children and children’s broadcasting. Education is a crucial part of the public service broad- casting requirements. Several of the statutory requirements set out in Section 264 of the Communications Act 2003 relate to educational objectives. The noble Baroness’s amendment picks up on them and ensures that PSBs continue to have a role in lifelong learning.

Engaging adults in lifelong learning, to ensure that we continue to invest in the development of crucial skills, is a theme that emerges from numerous Select Committee reports from your Lordships’ House. Lifelong learning is vital to the success of the UK economy. Broadcast media has a unique power and reach as a medium for inspiring adults to take advantage of learning opportunities and can engage unconfident learners who would not normally consider the possibility of lifelong learning. It is therefore essential that requirements are in place that encourage broadcasters to produce high-quality educational programmes and to give them sufficient prominence to attract viewers.

This is our opportunity to ensure that we clearly define public service values for the digital age. Public service broadcasters are already delivering against the Reithian principles and—as far as I understand from my conversations with some of them, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said—we believe that they have no objections to these amendments. As a group, the amendments seek to ensure that PSBs continue to provide content considered of value to society, if not to the shareholders. I wholeheartedly support them and hope that the Minister will too.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I support the first four amendments in this group—Amendments 1 to 3 and 7—and will not repeat what has been said so far in the excellent two speeches. However, I support them for a different reason: I think that they lay the ground for later amendments, particularly Amendments 9, 13 and 32. I will make a serious point about those amendments now, partly because I may have to be on a train when the Committee gets to them.

If we take seriously the Reithian principles to inform, educate and entertain, it means doing what the inscription from George Orwell outside the BBC spells out: that people are enabled to be confronted by, or to hear and see things, that

“they do not want to hear”.

That is essential to public service broadcasting and democratic education. That is also why, when we get to Amendments 9, 13 and 32, it becomes so important to cite in the Bill some of the genres that need to be not just glossed over or assumed but recognised as essential to inform, educate and broadcast in an entertaining way. As was said earlier, not everything has to be serious; often we are informed and educated by being entertained. The reference to “EastEnders” was pertinent: we gauge the public conversation by what we see being conversed about in things such as soap operas.

That is why—I would say this, wouldn’t I?—portrayal of religion is so important and needs to be named, as well as children, the arts, science, and so on. These are often called minority interests but in fact, because something is of interest to minorities does not mean that the majority should not be aware of what those interests are. Whenever we talk about religious broadcasting —I refer to my previous interest as the chairman of the Sandford St Martin Trust for nine years—it is not about proselytism or propagating a particular world view; it is recognising that you cannot live in the world and understand it if you do not understand religion. That should be obvious, given what is going on in the world at the moment. We cannot understand the Sunni/Shia divide and how that impacts on politics in the United Kingdom if we do not get informed and educated about that. So it is not about proselytism; it is about education, social cohesion and so on.

That raises another question that I wish to put at this point. How is Ofcom supposed to be able to report on whether PSBs are fulfilling their remit if there are no metrics in the Bill to say what fulfilment of the remit might be? At Second Reading we were told that it will be left to “flexibility”. Flexibility is as flexible as you want it to be, but it is quite possible to go through a whole year and just have a subjective account of what constitutes, for example, religious broadcasting or children’s broadcasting, which puts it into a narrow silo and which, for example, counts out entertainment as a medium for these things. If there are no metrics, how are we and Ofcom to know whether the remit has been fulfilled? I have been told that it cannot be the number of hours you allot to a particular genre, or a percentage quota. I am very happy with that, but what are the metrics going to be? There have to be some; otherwise, it is totally subjective.

We can speak nobly about creative industries, the creative process and what ought to constitute public service broadcasting, but if we do not put some detail in and nail down those things, name the genres and say something about metrics other than flexibility, we cannot guarantee that the remit is being fulfilled.

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[Lord Wigley (PC)]

Well, I hasten to add that I have no intention of going beyond that time. If that is a new rule, of which I was unaware, I certainly think it is a highly retrograde step because in Committee we should be exploring all the implications of all amendments. That is something we will no doubt return to at another time.

I welcome this debate and these amendments, particularly the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, moved his amendment and made reference to Wales as well as Scotland. I do not intend to go in depth into the Scottish context. I welcome the fact that amendments have come from that side of the Committee, with their intentions shared in other parts of the Committee, no doubt. I discussed some of these matters with friends in the Scottish National Party but, quite frankly, I feel incapable of addressing the Scottish context, which is very different from the Welsh context in terms of structure and the location and strength of the language in the country as a whole.

I would like to make this point at the beginning of my remarks. On page 6 of the Bill, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, it says

“‘recognised regional or minority language’ means Welsh” ,

et cetera. But Welsh is not a minority language. Welsh is a national language in Wales and is officially recognised as such in statutes passed by Westminster. Therefore, it is inappropriate for that terminology to be used in this context.

In saying that, I should perhaps clarify, in case there is some uncertainty about it, that I come from a very different background to most Members in this House. Welsh is my first language; Welsh is the language that I speak almost all the time at home; Welsh is the language of 90% of my community and village, and 70% in the county in which I live. I have two children and six grandchildren. All six grandchildren speak Welsh as a first language; those six grandchildren have two grandparents who are Welsh-speaking and four who are not Welsh-speaking. That is the reality in Wales today: Welsh is a language that has been grasped by people of Wales, in Wales, but also by people have also moved into Wales. It is part of their heritage. In fact, there are 20 Welsh-medium schools in Cardiff now, teaching through the medium of Welsh. That is the reality.

Welsh is a language that has a diversity within it as well. People come on holiday to Wales and they see Jason Mohammad on Welsh television. The sound is off in the pub, so they turn it up to hear what he is saying. They are amazed when they find that Jason Mohammad is, of course, speaking in Welsh. He is one of the Welsh community, a fluent Welsh speaker, and he learned it as a second language. We have rappers, such as Sage Todz, who raps in Welsh and in English. There is no problem with that. They are an ethnic part of the Welsh community, and the language belongs to the whole of Wales. It belongs to those who speak Welsh and to those who do not speak Welsh, because it is part of our culture.

There have been changes in places such as Merthyr Tydfil, where I lived before I entered Parliament. The language was almost dead when I was there. It is partly thanks to television and partly thanks to education that things have changed since then. We will be coming on to some of these aspects in a later bank of amendments. However, I want to make the point as strongly as I can that the context of the Welsh language is a very different one to being treated as a minority language or a regional language.

This does raise questions in relations to Welsh and to Gaelic, whether they should be seen just in a Scottish context—or in a part-of-Scotland context for Gaelic—or in a Welsh context—the whole of Wales, as far as Welsh is concerned, where it is an official language throughout the whole of Wales—or should they be seen in a British context? That is the implication in some of these amendments. If they are being seen in a British context, do they have a claim to existence, in respect and with regard to nurturing, within England itself?

There was a time when I was on the board of S4C —the Welsh language television service—where some of our programmes were being picked up in England, particularly things like rugby, understandably, where there were audiences of 100,000 and more from within England. That raises the question: how many people in England actually speak Welsh? We do not know that, because in successive censuses—in 2001, 2011 and 2021—there has been a refusal to ask that question in England. It may be 100,000; it may be 200,000; it may even be half a million. We do not know.

We know that many, many young people leave Wales to look for work, and they live in England. They tune into S4C, and, of course, it is very much easier to do that now than when I was on the board in earlier times. The fact that there can be audiences of that scale indicates that a question must arise if you are talking about minority languages. What is the position of minority languages such as the Gaelic language and the Welsh language in England? What intentions will there be to find out how many speakers there are? What are the appropriate requests and demands of those? In terms of television, which we are discussing, there is now no problem: television knows no boundaries, and Welsh-language television can be seen in the United States, in Patagonia or wherever, because of the facility technology affords to it.

There are a number of questions that arise in that context. This is not the time to follow this through, but they run through to questions as to whether the Welsh language and the Gaelic language should be available, in some schools at least, in conurbations in England if we are saying that the Welsh and Gaelic languages are British languages. I just assume that this is the position from which the Government come on such matters. In which case, what are the Government going to be doing about it?

I am grateful for these amendments being tabled because it puts into context our interpretation of the words “regional or minority language”, which are on the face of the Bill. I suggest that this needs to be thought through again, in order for it to have a respect, or even a meaning, as far as we in Wales are concerned.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Creative Scotland. I thank my noble friend Lord Dunlop for his work to champion the Gaelic Media Service and add my support to his amendment.

I just want to respond a little bit to the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, that the Welsh and Scottish situations are not the same. No, they are not, and we feel rather hard done by because, as the noble Lord said, the two pillars of education and broadcasting have done much to support the Welsh language. I think that my noble friend Lord Dunlop’s amendments are just trying to reverse what I call the devolution deficit that has done no favours to the Gaelic Media Service.

We heard at Second Reading about the economic benefits of MG Alba. It sustains 340 jobs in the Highlands and Islands and produces gross value added of over £17 million. It is very interesting today that the Scottish Government’s new Deputy First Minister is not only a fluent Gaelic speaker and the first-ever Scottish Minister for Gaelic, as my noble friend said, but she also has responsibility for the economy. Despite its impressive economic record, however, MG Alba is facing a huge generational challenge at this very moment of having to transition to a digital service on its existing funding.

My noble friend Lord Dunlop has already set out that Scottish Government Ministers have been very vocal about their so-called strong and consistent support for the Gaelic language service. What I support about my noble friend’s amendments is that, by denominating the Gaelic Media Service as a public broadcaster, they are not committing the UK Government to funding, but they could ensure that the Scottish Government are held more accountable for their—in real terms—dwindling support for MG Alba.

If the Minister is minded in his reply to say that this issue should wait for the BBC charter review, I respectfully warn him that he is in danger of conflating two issues. The Media Bill is the appropriate place to confirm that there should be a Gaelic broadcaster. It is the place that confirms again that there should be a Welsh language public broadcaster, so why not Gaelic? The charter review would simply be a mechanism for the delivery of this. Frankly, if MG Alba has to wait another two years, it may be too late for the future of the Gaelic Media Service.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise humbly to take part in what has been a very rich and informative debate. I would particularly single out the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I apologise that I did not take part in the Second Reading of this Bill due to other commitments. I declare for general purposes for the whole of this Bill that I was formerly an editor of the Guardian Weekly and spent 20 years as a journalist, so that is the background that I bring into this.

We have uncovered some important technical drafting detail here, both from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I hope that we will certainly be seeing some government amendments on Report addressing those issues. However, I really just wanted to offer general Green support for the importance of having linguistic diversity broadcast across these islands, and I really wanted to stress that this is a terribly important issue.

We were talking in the last group about the British broadcasting ecosystem having a general claim to being world-leading. I am afraid that English characteristic monolingualism is something of a global joke. It is really important that we acknowledge that there is multilingualism on these islands, and it needs to be supported and encouraged.

I experienced a monolingual environment in the Australia of my childhood. Having exposure to only a single language impoverished my youth. Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Irish and Cornish are treasures of these islands, and they need support. They preserve tradition and knowledge, and they contribute to cultural diversity.

I note that, last week, the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee heard evidence on the proposed Scottish Languages Bill, which aims to establish official status and improve educational support for languages. The chair of the professional association for Gaelic secondary teachers noted that Gaelic-medium education is, in effect, now stopping at S1 or S2. In 2023, only 1% of primary school pupils were in GM education, but 46% of primary school pupils in the Western Isles, for example, are in Gaelic-medium education and 54% study Gaelic. If we are going to have broadcasters that truly serve across these islands, we clearly need to see the delivery of all these languages.

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[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I hope it was fairly clear from what I said at Second Reading that I would be very likely to support the amendments that we heard in the first group and, in particular, to support Amendment 9, which has just been so powerfully introduced by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.

Many of us at Second Reading, as has been reiterated already today, believed that we had a very good understanding of what a PSB was from the Communications Act 2003. Our fear is that the Bill that is now before us is much less clear because of the changes that have been made to that Act, removing the Reithian values and removing the list of genres—from music to the arts, from science to religion. All we now have is a vague requirement of a range of appropriate genres.

These points have already been well made in our deliberations today, so I will not repeat the arguments for them. I wish to pick up just one point: namely, where does Parliament have any say in the future in what will happen to our public service broadcasters? From the debates that have taken place both in this House, at Second Reading, and in the other place, we know that one of the Government’s arguments about this streamlined arrangement for PSBs is that we should not be worried because, as far as the BBC is concerned, much more detail will be provided within the royal charter and, for the other public service broadcasters, it will be provided for within the licences. However, I asked a question at Second Reading to which I did not get an answer. It was a simple one: does Parliament have any say whatever in the royal charter or the licence agreement? My understanding is that the answer is no. I hope that, when the Minister responds on this group, he will confirm that I am correct, and I hope that, in doing so, he will acknowledge that that argument means, therefore, that there is no opportunity for Parliament to have a say on this important issue.

In response to the first group of amendments, the Minister told us that there was a second way in which we need not be concerned. He told us about the rather pointless, as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, pointed out, five-yearly “high-level”—as the Minister called it—review, because so much would have changed. He pointed quite rightly, however, to the annual report that Ofcom would have to do, collecting the annual statistics on the genres covered. We should get some confidence from that, because he pointed out that that is contained in Section 358 of the Communications Act, which will be continued.

Well, I had a look at Section 358, which talks about annual reports with statistics on the genres covered, but I noted that, very interestingly, that Section 358(3) states:

“In carrying out a review … OFCOM must consider, in particular, each of the following”—


and the first is

“(a) the extent to which programmes included during that period in television and radio services are representative of what OFCOM consider to be the principal genres for such programmes”.

So Parliament is not going to have a say there, either.

We look to the Bill itself, which also talks about the new streamlined way in which the whole approach to PSBs is set out and how Ofcom will review it. Clause 1(5)(b) states that the requirements of this subsection are

“that the audiovisual content made available by the public service broadcasters (taken together) includes what appears to OFCOM to be … a sufficient quantity of audiovisual content that reflects the lives and concerns of different communities”—

and so on. So, yet again, we have a Bill before us that refers back to a previous Bill and also to something where Ofcom is making decisions on issues in which Parliament has not had the opportunity to be involved.

These amendments are the only opportunity for Parliament to have its say. I, for one, strongly believe that we need to give very clear guidance to Ofcom on what Parliament believes is the appropriate role for a for a public service broadcaster. This amendment gives that very clearly. It would reinstate what was contained within the Communications Act 2003. I very much hope, therefore, that the Minister will accept not only the amendment but the legitimate role that Parliament has in saying what it believes should be the guidance given to Ofcom for the review that it carries out into the nature of our public service broadcasters.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I too have added my name to Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, which, as he has explained, seeks to define what an “appropriate range of genres” actually is. What worries me is that his amendment has a list and, without that, I do not think that there is any definition of what we think an appropriate range should be.

We are not alone in believing that new subsection (6) is inadequate in its lack of clarity over both what an appropriate range of genres is and how it is going to be monitored by Ofcom. Concerns have been expressed through briefings to noble Lords from the Citizens’ PSM Forum, which welcomes and endorses these amendments. The only change that I suggest is that instead of “religion and other beliefs”, I would prefer “religion and other faiths”, as I think that will ensure that conspiracy theories and the like are not accidently captured by this.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 13 in my name hopes to force a discussion raised by these Benches and by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. The amendment seeks to introduce a safeguard so that, if Ofcom believes that delivery of PSB content on broadcast linear services is less than satisfactory, it will have the powers needed to set a quota to ensure that a certain proportion of public service content remains available to linear audiences through a broadcast signal. In short, quality should remain available to those families up and down the country who rely on their TV rather than watch online content.

This new clause makes no prescriptive requirements on how that should be achieved, nor does it set a specific figure on how many programmes might be available; it simply allows Ofcom to monitor the effects of the Bill. There is, and there is likely to remain, a section of the population for whom a broadcast signal is their sole connection to media, news, entertainment and information. Therefore, it is important that those people— some of whom more likely to be older citizens, families in rural areas and those struggling with bills as a result of the cost of living—are able to access their media. My husband regularly updates, as I told the House before, so I have ended up with an enormous television screen and lots and lots of choice willy-nilly, but I know that that is something that lots of families may not be able to afford.

This case has been argued extensively by the campaign group Broadcast 2040+, which is made up of a number of concerned organisations. We recognise that the direction of travel is that people are watching content online more than ever, but that does not mean there should be diminishing content on broadcast linear services, especially where that content caters to a local audience. That belief goes beyond the Bill and into wider worries about the impact that a digital-first strategy would have on traditional means of broadcasting, and, as a result, on audiences.

My new clause, therefore, introduces this safeguard and gives Ofcom the power to take action and monitor the effects of the Bill. As well as encouraging the Minister to accept this new clause, I also ask him to update us on whether the Government intend to support linear broadcasting beyond 2034, and, if they do not, what plans they are putting in place to manage possible transition away from linear services. This is just the beginning of the conversation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 32, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for her support and for adding her name. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interest in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland.

My Amendment 32 seeks to protect the provision of digital terrestrial television—DTT. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, outlined, the current provision of DTT is due to run out in 2034. Without this amendment, we could see a decline in the universality of free-to-air public service broadcasting and the further exclusion of vulnerable parts of our population who are already digitally excluded. This amendment safeguards the long-term future of these services to ensure that broadcast TV and radio that is free at the point of consumption will continue to be available across the UK.

The recent World Radiocommunication Conference in Dubai secured digital terrestrial television’s place as the exclusive primary service in the crucial 470 to 694 megahertz frequency band across ITU region 1. This has secured reliable access to the radio frequency spectrum and regulatory conditions needed to deliver broadcast services such as DTT across the UK, and it solidifies their central role in the broadcasting landscape. However, I note that a further debate on spectrum use and future needs is scheduled for 2031, meaning that the call for certainty to 2040 and beyond is even more vital.

Let me be clear that I am not trying to act against the tide of progress towards IP delivery of television. However, I have spent far too much time looking at digital exclusion—most recently as a member of the Communications and Digital Committee of your Lordships’ House—not to understand the fatal flaws in believing that broadband provision will be the universal answer within 10 years. Our committee’s recent Digital Exclusion report noted that, even if rollout continues across the UK, take-up would not necessarily follow. Social broadband tariffs are still expensive; they are an additional monthly cost for the financially vulnerable—often with half the speed—and far too many people who could benefit from them do not even know that they exist.

Living in Scotland, I appreciate the fragility of the broadband network: how easily it is adversely affected by the weather and how so many parts of the country do not receive the speeds that are advertised by the providers. In fact, just this afternoon, I picked up on an email from a colleague from Alzheimer Scotland who has just done a piece of work on the impact on the elderly and vulnerable of BT moving all the telephone lines to digital. It is a shocking piece of work, looking at how this group has been left behind and how the telecom companies’ assurances about addressing the needs of vulnerable people have not been fully acted on.

A recent study by EY predicted that, regardless of rollout, more than 5.5 million properties in the UK will not have a high-speed broadband subscription in 2040. In contrast, DTT is free if you pay your licence fee. Yet, currently, these services, which the Digital Poverty Alliance describes as a “lifeline”, have no guarantee of a secure future. The Ofcom Online Nation report confirms that 6% of UK adults lack an internet connection at home. This is higher in Wales and Scotland, higher among older audiences—20% of people over 65 do not have an internet connection at home—and higher among people with disability, 11% of whom do not have one. As things stand, these populations face the threat of terrestrial TV being switched off forever within a decade, and many of the most vulnerable and excluded are in danger of being left further isolated.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie]

16: Clause 14, page 16, line 43, at end insert—
“(4A) After subsection (6) insert—“(6A) When determining the number of hours OFCOM consider appropriate under subsections (1) and (3), they must ensure that the number of hours would result in at least 50% of programmes broadcast, measured both by hours and expenditure, being made outside of London and 16% from the nations of the United Kingdom other than England, in proportion to their relative populations.””

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[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 16 and 17 in my name and in doing so I declare my interests as laid out in the register as a board member of Creative Scotland. The noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, who has added her name, has asked me to apologise to the House as she cannot be here in time today due to a prior engagement in Northern Ireland, but she wanted me to indicate that the points I will be making have her strong support from a Northern Irish perspective. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle for their support, which is greatly appreciated.

Never before have I stood up in this House and felt such a weight of responsibility on my shoulders. My amendments have the backing of all three devolved Administrations, the screen agencies of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, industry bodies from across the nations and regions as well as countless numbers of independent production companies. The noise outside this Chamber and outside London is deafening, and it is united.

The Media Bill is to be welcomed, and I know the Minister and the Secretary of State—and, indeed, all of us—wish it to pass quickly. However, if it passes unamended, it will have ignored the vibrant but delicately balanced screen ecologies in the nations and regions of the UK, and it risks removing the foundations upon which those thriving screen sectors have been able to build: namely, commissions from PSBs, the very channels for whom representing the lives and experiences of the nations and regions of the UK should be at their heart.

According to the Office for National Statistics, around 68 million people currently live in the UK. About 10 million people live within the M25, but, like much of our politics, our media can often be seen as being too London-centric. My amendments seek to ensure that public service broadcasters provide a suitable range of programmes for the roughly 58 million people who do not live in London, and that a proportionate share of those programmes are made outside London by the talented people who live and work all across the UK. That these should be measured by both hours and expenditure would ensure that PSBs did not simply fulfil their regional quotas with low-value daytime live discussions.

Section 287 of the Communications Act 2003 required Channel 3 to provide a sufficient amount and a suitable range of regional programmes, including news and current affairs, regulated by Ofcom quotas obligated by its licence. If it were not for those quotas then the plurality of news in the nations and regions provided by ITV and STV, in addition to that of the BBC, would be lost. Equivalent requirements and national and regional quotas apply to the BBC under the BBC framework agreement.

The BBC and Channel 4 have already responded to criticism that they do not reflect the public they serve by moving part of their workforce outside of London to regional centres in Salford, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow. During the debate around the proposed privatisation of Channel 4, its chief executive, Alex Mahon, speaking at the opening of the channel’s new studios in Leeds, argued that privatisation would inhibit the channel’s plans to expand outside London and help the levelling-up agenda. Ms Mahon led a campaign against privatisation by declaring that Channel 4 was “for all the UK”, and regional producers in the nations and regions stepped up to support it. However, as soon as privatisation was taken off the table, Channel 4 abruptly stopped developing its commissioning capacity outside London, recently making its most senior commissioner in Leeds redundant and losing one of its small Glasgow-based commissioning team.

Ofcom requires that the BBC must ensure that in each calendar year at least 16% of the hours of network programmes made in the UK are made outside England, and at least 16% of the BBC’s expenditure on new network programmes is applied across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is in line with the three home nations’ share of the population. My amendments would simply extend those requirements to all public service broadcasters, ensuring that these public assets deliver fairly for all the UK.

If we do not have such regional quotas then we risk not having any of the production centres of which we are so rightly proud, and in that case Amendment 54 from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, becomes somewhat academic. As much as I wish to support him in requiring Ofcom to ensure that the out of London nations and regions production criteria support inward investment in regional production centres, while encouraging the pipeline of talent from across the UK to thrive, without national and regional quotas the only option to fulfil any regional out of London production would be by brass-plating.

Channel 4 is a commercially funded but publicly owned PSB. It does not produce regional news content as ITV and STV do, but to date it has played an extremely important role in the success of the UK’s creative industries, pioneering innovation in, investing in and stimulating the production sector and acting as a world-leading accelerator. However, despite Channel 4’s “for all the UK” campaign, it has had to be dragged kicking and screaming by Ofcom into accepting the rise of its out of England quota to only 9% in 2020, and it has recently argued for that 9% minimum to sustain across the next decade, on the basis that producers outside London are too small.

This Bill will remove the existing publisher/broadcaster restriction and give Channel 4 valuable new flexibility to make some of its own content. While I understand the Government’s desire to ensure that Channel 4 is able to grow and better compete in the age of streaming giants, they are giving away the very thing that makes Channel 4 unique among PSBs, at no cost to the taxpayer but of considerable importance to the regional creative economy and independent production sectors. They are doing so without demanding anything in return. As a publicly owned PSB with its own stated strong commitment to represent the whole of the UK and to stand up for diversity across the UK, surely the Government must ensure that Channel 4 fulfils this remit for the benefit of the UK as a whole, supporting the sustainable growth of the industry outside London and across all four home nations.

My amendments do nothing other than echo the voluntary commitments that Channel 4’s chairman and chief executive have already made. In November last year, Sir Ian Cheshire issued a statement saying:

“Channel 4 remains entirely committed to its presence, programme-making and impact across the Nations and Regions. This includes its commitment to regional producers, voluntary investing 50% of its commissioning budget outside of London”.


I am asking the Minister therefore to write this voluntary commitment into the Bill, along with a separate nations’ quota in line with that of the BBC. According to the independent producers’ industry body, PACT, increasing these quotas to 50% outside London and 16% outside England would cost Channel 4 only an additional £136 million over 10 years—just over 2% of its anticipated budget for new programmes across the next decade. The benefit to the creative economy across all the UK, to British audiences and to Channel 4 itself would be significantly higher.

Channel 4’s resistance to increasing national and regional quotas to match the BBC’s has caused what I can only describe as a real stushie among the independent producers, the freelance TV talent, the devolved Administrations and the screen agencies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, all of whom have written to Ofcom—and I am delighted to see its chairman in his place—and made public their desire for national and regional quotas and their support of my amendments. I am grateful to the three screen agencies—Screen Scotland, Northern Ireland Screen and Creative Wales—and PACT, as well as the many independent producers who have engaged with me and many other noble Lords in preparation for this debate, and who recently felt so strongly about this that they made the effort to come to the House to brief us in person. I can only apologise to them that voting on the safety of Rwanda rather truncated our discussions on that day.

The independent producers who recently wrote a public letter to Ofcom, urging it to reconsider the lifting of the current production 91% “made in England” production quota for Channel 4, are long-term, trusted suppliers of Channel 4, ITV and the BBC, as well as Netflix, Disney+, Sky, Amazon and National Geographic among many others. They cannot be dismissed as being “too small” for the PSB broadcasters to work with. The key to fostering and safeguarding the regional TV production sector lies in securing network commissions, not just ad hoc regional talent and skills schemes.

Quotas work. Both the BBC and Channel 4 have met them regularly and this has fostered significant economic and creative growth across the UK since 2003. Quotas are critical to ensuring that the infrastructure of the thriving creative industries that have been so successfully built up over the last two decades is maintained and not jettisoned. Quotas are essential to ensuring that our PSBs truly reflect, on-screen, the voices and stories of the people they serve throughout the different parts of our United Kingdom. This is in the best long-term interests of those broadcasters. If the Minister is not minded to accept my amendments as tabled today, I ask him and his team to work with me and the regional agencies to ensure that the commitment to representation throughout the UK for public service broadcasting is reflected robustly within the provisions of this Bill.

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[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lord, I thank everybody from around the Committee who contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, I think we have given due warning of trouble ahead to the Minister. I am grateful for that. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, reminded the Minister of the very strong feelings in the sector across the nations and the regions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, despite the rosy picture we may be able to paint, there are marked inequalities in the system. To ensure that this moves in the right direction we need intentionality, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned.

I note that the Minister mentioned figures up to 2022 and the creative hubs in the regions, but they are no good if the commissioning relationships are not made from those hubs. I put to my noble friend that that is what the sector has been concerned about since 2022. Frankly, Channel 4 sees quotas as a target, not as a minimum—the figures from PACT show that it is just making it, year on year—so they do work and it is important that we build on what is there and do not jettison it.

I am very grateful to the Minister for his offer of further discussions with us and Ofcom, but I am mindful of the question from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam: where is the parliamentary scrutiny and where are we setting this? We have heard the strength of feeling. Do we really want to leave it to Ofcom yet again? As many Peers said, we need to ensure that the spirit, not just the letter, is setting the right direction. I thank the Minister for his offer of further talks. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.

Media Bill

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

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

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 2 and 4 in my name. I am grateful to my co-signatories, to other noble Lords around the House and to the Citizens’ Forum for Public Service Media for supporting these amendments, particularly given the pace at which all this has come together. I am also very grateful to the Minister and the Bill team, who found time on very busy days for a helpful meeting earlier this week on these amendments. At the time, we thought we were talking about a discussion we would have in June; it turns out that we are talking about it today, but I am very grateful to him and his team for finding time for that.

These amendments are all about the underpinning ethos, values and distinctive purpose of our PSBs. In tabling them today, I have tried to respect the Government’s intention to streamline and update the overlapping requirements in the 2003 Act, to which the Minister has referred previously. I have tried to do that while addressing the very strong feelings of this House and the sector that, in the process of modernisation, too much of value has been lost.

Amendment 1 would reinstate the principle that public service broadcasting content, taken together, should inform, educate and entertain. This three-legged stool is the foundational principle on which public service broadcasting was built and on which its global and economic success stands. Removing the Reithian principle from the Bill effectively limits the definition of the public service remit to a narrow focus on market failure. It fails to uphold the fundamental principle that PSBs exist to serve society in its broadest sense, with content that is culturally, democratically and socially valuable. Its removal also means that there is no longer any mention of the word “education” in Clause 1, and that the vital role of public service broadcasting in providing content of educative value for citizens across the life-course is no longer protected. Amendment 1 would restore the underpinning philosophy that broadcasting should do more than just reflect. It should help us to imagine other ways of being; to learn about things of which we never expected to know nor care about; and to expand our interests beyond our own lives and concerns and into the lives and concerns of others. It is a principle that has never lost its currency and, in an age when misinformation and disinformation threaten our democratic processes and civic cohesion, it is a principle we cannot afford to lose.

Amendment 2 goes a little further and would clarify what Parliament believes to be content of civic, social and cultural importance, thus protecting the type of content that can so easily be under threat in the face of economic challenge and ruthless competition. Without this clear guidance on what Parliament expects to see in return for public service broadcasting status, and indeed what viewers want, I struggle to see how Ofcom can fulfil its role in holding broadcasters to account. My noble friend Lord Colville championed this point in Committee, and I am grateful to him for working with me on this streamlined amendment. Amendment 2 would also retain the requirement that public service broadcasting should stimulate and support a thriving cultural and creative sector—the very sector on which it depends for its own survival. This modest addition to the Bill enshrines the symbiotic relationship between public service broadcasting and the health and success of the creative industries—a sector that this Government have identified as key to growth and that is currently, unfortunately, at serious risk. I know that the Minister and the Secretary of State are genuinely committed to the future success of this sector. I hope that he can accept this amendment today so that the protections afforded by the 2003 Act remain in place at the time that they are most needed.

Amendment 4, my final amendment, is even more modest. It would add no more than six words requiring public service broadcasters to make available content for children and young people that is educational in nature. I have no problem with the stated ambition of the Bill that content reflect young people’s lives and concerns and help them better understand the world around them, but this is not the same as content that is educational. As I argued in Committee, education is one of the aspects of public service broadcasting that parents value most. Amendment 4 would not require all broadcasters to move into the same space as BBC Bitesize, for example—the specific detail of PSBs’ educational content would still be determined at the level of operating licences—but it would enshrine in legislation the importance of educational content for children and young people in opening up and equalising life chances, which is an aspect of PS broadcasting that licence fee payers deeply care about.

The overall aim of these amendments is to address the concerns so clearly expressed in Committee and by audiences and citizens’ groups that a better balance needs to be found between the intention to streamline and the retention of what makes our public service broadcasting so distinctive. My amendments would reinstate and protect the foundational ethos and core principles and purposes that have long defined our public service broadcasters and underpin their domestic success and the global leadership position they currently enjoy. I very much hope that the Minister might be persuaded by our arguments and be able to accept these amendments at the Dispatch Box. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 1, 2 and 4 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and will speak to Amendments 3, 5 and 6 in my name.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for their support for my Amendment 6 and the Minister for our rushed discussions as we try to pull all this together. My amendment extends the same nations and regions quotas that apply to the BBC to Channel 4—the only other publicly owned public service broadcaster. It includes a two-year timeframe from the passage of the Bill for these quotas to apply.

In Committee the debate on the nations and regions production quotas attracted the largest number of speakers and support from around your Lordships’ House, for which I was very grateful. This amendment is supported by devolved Governments and industry bodies across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Committee the Minister reassured us that he and his colleagues in DCMS had heard the strength of feeling on this issue from the sector, particularly in relation to Channel 4’s “out of England” quota, which is currently set at 9% of eligible programmes and expenditure. He noted that Channel 4 has said that it would support a managed increase in its programme-making commitments in the other home nations. He also offered a further meeting with Ofcom to discuss this in detail.

I am sorry that this will clearly be one of the casualties of wash-up, but I had hoped that this revised amendment, restricted to Channel 4 and giving it two years to enable a managed increase, might have found favour with all parties. If the Government are not minded to accept my amendment, I trust that Ofcom will take note of the strong feelings expressed that the current Channel 4 quota of 9% just will not wash.

I turn to Amendments 3 and 5, which were previously tabled in Committee by my noble friend Lord Dunlop, who cannot be here today and sends his apologies. The issue is that the responsibility for Gaelic broadcasting is split. The Gaelic Media Service, MG Alba, is established under UK legislation while Ofcom is the arbiter of whether there is sufficient Gaelic language broadcasting. The funding of the Gaelic Media Service was devolved in 1998 to Scottish Ministers, who have, for the past 10 years, frozen funding to MG Alba. The SNP is posing as great supporters of Gaelic and Gaelic broadcasting. However, as ever, the support is all for show. They are all talk and no action.

I have tabled modest amendments to the Bill that would make MG Alba a PSB for the limited purpose of guiding Ofcom in the discharge of its responsibility to assess whether there is, taken together in the round, sufficient broadcasting of minority languages. It would have to look specifically at the sufficiency of Gaelic broadcasting. If it was found that there was insufficient Gaelic broadcasting, the responsibility for responding to this would fall on the BBC—it is happy to accept that as it supports these amendments—MG Alba and, by extension, its funder, the Scottish Government.

These amendments are narrowly focused to be discrete and not upset the overall balance of the Bill. For example, they do not add any new responsibilities regarding prominence requirements. They would, as we head into an election campaign, be a powerful demonstration of a unionist government’s care for all parts of the UK, including its most peripheral in the Highlands and Islands.

Turning to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, which I am pleased to support, the Minister accepted in Committee that we need to strike the right balance with a remit that gets to the heart of what it is to be a public service broadcaster. We must not dilute that. He also stated in Committee that he did not object to any of the specific genres mentioned in the revised Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness. I hope he can accept that not having this in the Bill really would be a glaring omission.

I am grateful to the Minister for his engagement. I am sorry that we have not had the time to explore some of these issues further with him and his team at DCMS, but I support him in his efforts to see that this Bill passes. I thank him and all noble Lords from across the House who have been so supportive of my efforts to ensure that the nations and regions have the best possible Bill.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 1 and 2 because it is essential that, in the first clause of this Bill, Parliament gives directed guidance to Ofcom on the content that it would hope to see created by our great broadcasters.

In Committee, the Minister said that the original list of genres and the Reithian mission statement gave “little guidance” to Ofcom on how to focus its assessment of what it is important for public service broadcasters to deliver. Amendment 1 gives a mission statement to provide content that informs and educates viewers. I hope this will ensure that the PSBs do not descend into providing only entertainment and not any information or education.

Amendment 2, which encourages broadcasters to stimulate science and the arts, among other things, is so very important. This is not a list of genres, which the Minister feared, but it does provide a metric for content against which Ofcom can measure the work of our broadcasters.

As other noble Lords have said, we are giving great privilege to broadcasters in this Bill, which I strongly welcome. However, with that must be a burden of responsibility to ensure that they should be distinctive and British. In a world dominated by streamers creating global entertainment, I hope that viewers in this country will be able in future to turn to our PSBs and find content that informs them about subjects that illuminate and bring context to their lives.

I, too, am grateful to the Minister for meeting me and my noble friend Lady Bull to discuss the changes to Clause 1. He was encouraging of the idea of extending the guidance for the public service remit, so I hope that he will support these important amendments.

I have also put my name to Amendment 6 to Clause 14 because I believe that Channel 4 is ready to increase its quota to the nations from the present 9%. The channel’s CEO, Alex Mahon, said as much in her speech to the creative industries last month. I hope that, in the present negotiations for the next licensing round of Channel 4, the Government will give guidance to the channel to increase its quota. It may not be as much as 16%, in line with the BBC, but it needs to be raised from the present 9%.

The television industry in the nations and many regions is collapsing from lack of work. Now is the time for action. I call on the Minister to accept this amendment.