Media Convergence: Communications Committee Report

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, in congratulating my noble friend Lord Inglewood on his lucid introduction and on his excellent chairmanship of our committee. This was an extremely timely report. Even since it was written, digital media in the UK have developed further. Only yesterday, we heard in committee about the growing success of digital regional media.

The tablet that I am holding represents convergence. There are newspapers in digital form delivered over the internet with news clips embedded. There are news and sports apps with clips and text commentary. There are programmes made for television delivered on demand through non-broadcast apps. There are broadcasters’ catch-up services. These are subject to wholly different regulatory regimes: contrast the Ofcom regime over commercial and public service broadcasters with that over newspapers. Incidentally, I welcome today’s judgment on the alternative royal charter.

My noble friend Lord Inglewood is right.The Government’s response was disappointing. It was effectively a holding response. It did however anticipate last July’s White Paper, Connectivity, Content and Consumers: Britain’s Digital Platform for Growth. Much of the focus of both the response and the White Paper was on child safety on the internet and connected television. That is a clearly defined area where action is required. It is a matter of current concern and I commend the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for their proactive stance and the subsequent actions of ISPs and mobile phone service providers. I commend the Government, too, for the new tax break for animation and high-end television production.

However, the Government’s response to our report promised a holistic strategy for the communications sector. There is little sense in the White Paper of such a strategy in the area of content, despite talk in the White Paper of getting ahead of the curve and despite a long gestation period of more than two years in setting out a strategy. The imperative in an age of converging media—which is common ground between the committee and the Government—is to maintain public trust in the regulatory regime applied to different types of content on the internet, despite the blurring of boundaries. We proposed,

“a new content standards framework”.

The questions are: what content falls into what regulatory regime, and into what regime, if any, should content fall? The Government in their proposals assert that,

“people still expect different standards from their TV, radio, newspapers and social media”.

The committee’s paper examines that proposition extensively. One size certainly does not fit all, and the committee recommended a “graduated approach to regulation”. However, we strongly recommended that research be carried out into public expectations of standards for various media content. Do the Government themselves have plans to do this?

The Government use the phrase “flexible, industry led approach”. I would prefer the initial leadership to be provided by the Government, but either means being clear about what kind of new elements need to be built into a new Bill, even if they need to remain flexible.

The Government promised to outline:

“Targeted updates to our legislative framework”.

However, they do not set out what they believe should be done by primary legislation in a new Bill and what can be done by voluntary action. Indeed, there is clearly some doubt about whether there will be a new communications Bill in the first place. What are the Government’s intentions? Will there be a Bill in the remaining months of this Parliament? I certainly hope that there will be.

There was some discussion of Ofcom’s ex ante competition powers in the White Paper. We are promised a consultation on this, but surely it will be an important part of any Bill. Competition must be able to flourish, and great content to flourish on a plurality of platforms. We need a debate and some certainty about Ofcom’s future role in this area. The committee itself was not convinced that we need to go further than ensuring clarification, rather than extending some powers.

There are other areas where primary legislation may be relevant, on which Ofcom itself gave a useful detailed response in June. These include some of the committee’s recommendations on, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood mentioned, giving the Secretary of State power to vary Ofcom’s powers by super-affirmative resolution so that where appropriate it could introduce a common co-regulatory framework for TV and TV-like content; the guidance that should be given to Ofcom on the establishment of any co-regulation system, and imposing a duty on Ofcom to advise the Secretary of State on the timing of any such order; the whole question of the removal of the duty of impartiality for non-PSB news services; a more proactive role for Ofcom regarding the internet, as the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, has stated; and perhaps the issue of EPG prominence, especially in the light of the kinds of television that we saw, as the noble Lord also mentioned, in the BBC’s Blue Room.

The need for flexibility in legislation is common ground. The landscape is changing rapidly. As the Government rightly point out in the White Paper, YouTube did not exist back in 2003 when the Communications Act was passed. There are, of course, areas where voluntary action may be more appropriate. Clearly, linear viewing will remain strong, certainly in older generations, but, as viewing habits begin to markedly differ, have the Government taken a view on the idea of a common system of age rating classification for on-demand material, which could be by the BBFC, as the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, said?

There are other areas where we need more public debate. Is it not essential, as the committee recommends, that we assess the role of public service broadcasting in the age of convergence? It faces risks and threats but also great opportunities. As we have heard, there are major issues about retransmission for public service broadcasters and the carrying terms for PSB channels. The Government say that they want to see zero net charges—that is, fees cancelling each other out. However, some of the commercial PSBs claim that their investment is being put at risk by an,

“outdated system, which tilts the channel and platform relationship in favour of pay-TV platforms such as Sky and Virgin Media”.

They say that,

“these arrangements require PSB channels to subsidise pay-TV platforms by providing their main PSB channels to pay-TV platforms for no payment, or in the case of Sky to actually pay them to carry them to carry those channels”.

As a result, there is concern that none of the revenue that pay-TV platforms make from these business models reaches the PSBs that make the original investment, or the talent who make our programmes possible. PSBs are the cornerstone of our current broadcasting ecology. Their role is changing rapidly but, rather than welcoming the fact that these reviews by Ofcom take place, the Secretary of State has proposed that Ofcom’s duty to review PSBs every five years should be phased out.

I sense in all this no really coherent strategic intent, and perhaps no real intent at this stage to amend the Communications Act 2003. I look forward to the Minister’s reply but if we are not careful we will bumble along until well after the next general election, and that would be a mistake, as I think the committee’s report clearly shows.