Media Bill (Third sitting)

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 7th December 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. As I said—and as the hon. Lady the Member for Barnsley East mentioned in her remarks—the issue of regional prominence is important. It is our view that we should replicate the current regional prominence arrangements under the linear regime in the online space, given that the nations and regions are a core component of PSBs. We designed the regime to give Ofcom the discretion to determine various ways of delivering appropriate prominence across different platforms, and that includes delivering regionally.

We expect that Ofcom will set out different options, depending on what would be proportionate and reasonable for RTSSs to deliver, having regard to technical considerations. One method, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South suggested, would be to ask the viewer to submit a postcode at the time that their smart TV or other device is first set up. That would be sufficient to enable regional prominence. Stakeholders will have the opportunity to submit their views on how regional prominence should be delivered in due course, when Ofcom consults on the code.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that part of this is about viewer or listener choice? For example, my phone would currently geolocate me in London, but I might be far more interested in listening to—and I do, actually—BBC Radio Devon or watching the evening news back in Devon and Cornwall, than I might be in the content based purely on the location. That is the point. The types of choices now available to viewers would have been unimaginable in the era before IT, when we were merely relying on broadcast signals.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

As I said earlier, the Bill does not, at the moment, suggest that prominence should be required on mobile phones, because they are not primarily used for watching TV, but the point that my hon. Friend makes is absolutely correct. More and more applications and devices are going to be influenced by the location from which they are being used. It will therefore become more important that TVs and all other devices are clearly geolocated in order to allow appropriate prominence of regional programming.

Proposed new sections 362AT to 362AY give Ofcom a dispute resolution function, should negotiations between providers of designated IPSs and RTSSs fail. Our overall intention is to allow PSBs and platforms to pursue mutually beneficial commercial arrangements in the first instance, but if that is not possible, it is appropriate for the regulator to have the necessary powers to intervene in support of effective negotiations.

In addition, proposed new sections 362AZ to 362AZ11 provide Ofcom with the necessary powers to enforce the new prominence framework, which include information-gathering powers and the power to issue notices requiring the provider to take remedial steps and/or pay a financial penalty in the event of a breach. Many of the providers we are talking about are large, sometimes global, organisations, and it is important that Ofcom feels confident that it can take robust enforcement action when required.

Schedule 3 contains further changes to the Communications Act 2003, which are required as a consequence of the new provisions inserted by clause 28. Taken together, we believe that the provisions in the clause will deliver, for the first time, a new, much-needed and bespoke prominence regime to ensure the availability and discovery of PSB content online to the benefit of audiences and PSBs alike. I hope hon. Members will support the clause, and I ask the hon. Member for Barnsley East to consider withdrawing her amendment.