Children: Television

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rawlings]

I am sure that that is exactly one of the areas that we will be including in the communications Green Paper. While the whole world outside will be celebrating the Olympics and the Jubilee, your Lordships will have the pleasure of the exciting communications Green Paper and the Leveson review, which will be looking into all forms of broadcasting.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, given that there is inevitably limited space on the front pages of EPGs, does the Minister agree that greater priority should be given to ensuring that public service broadcasters and, as part of that, quality children’s programmes should appear on the front pages, rather than the Secretary of State’s declared policy of giving priority to local TV?

[Baroness Rawlings]

Regarding local television, the Government want local services to achieve EPG prominence on Freeview through acquiring a sufficiently high channel number. The Government hope that this will be Channel 8, which is currently vacant in England and Northern Ireland, and another high number for services in Wales and Scotland where Channel 8 is already in use.