Deregulation Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to make just two points in relation to the Bill, as some others that I might have made have already been covered adequately by Members of this House. My first concerns Clauses 21 to 27 and Schedule 7 on public rights of way. I welcome the briefings from the Open Spaces Society and the Ramblers, which I am sure many of us have received. They are basically in support of these clauses, whose purpose is to speed up, streamline and simplify the process for getting the official maps of public paths up to date. At the moment, many of them are not. It is urgent because there is now a cut-off date of 1 January 2026—that seems a long way ahead but we might get there very quickly—which means that if the process has not been completed, any pre-1949 unrecorded routes will be extinguished. That will be damaging for the rights of walkers, riders, cyclists and carriage drivers. I should say that I am a very keen hill walker myself, so I feel close to this issue. These clauses came from Natural England’s stakeholder working group on unrecorded public rights of way, so they represent a consensus by representing the public path users’ body, the landowners, the occupiers and the local authorities. That is a pretty impressive consensus, so I hope that these clauses will go through unamended and unaltered because they represent something very important.

My second point is quite different, and it is really a sin of omission. It concerns Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It is essentially a provision that adversely affects the commercial television companies—that is, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. I should say that I used to be chair of the All-Party Group on ITV and am now the vice-chairman, and I have had very helpful briefings from some of the broadcasters.

To repeal Section 73 would be a clear deregulatory measure. Many representations have been made to the Government, who seem to say two things in reply. The first is that there is ongoing litigation between the public service broadcasters and TV catch-up. This has been going on for some years. In fact it has been going on for such a long time that it is getting to the stage of being like Jarndyce and Jarndyce. In any case, it is not appropriate to wait for ever for litigation that is so prolonged. That is not right. Secondly, Oliver Letwin, a Minister at the Cabinet Office, has said that this Bill is not the right vehicle for such change. My goodness me, those of us who have been around for a long time know that, time and again, Governments have two excuses for opposing things: either an amendment is technically defective—well, I am not amending anything yet—or the Bill is not an appropriate vehicle for such a change. That has been a standard excuse from Governments over the years. Oliver Letwin, after saying that the issue is rather complicated so the Bill is not appropriate, then does the other usual thing, which is to pass the buck. He says, “Try DCMS”. We have now tried the Cabinet Office, DCMS and BIS. Government departments seem to be passing this issue from one to the other. I shall argue in a moment that it is a clear deregulatory measure and that the buck should not be passed any longer—particularly because if nothing happens now, we will be stuck until after the election and heaven knows how long it will take.

Originally, Section 73 had a purpose, but that has gone. The passage of time has eroded it. Indeed, the Bill says that other measures have become obsolete with the passage of time. British television is at the heart of British creative industry. It is vibrant and dynamic and it has great content and global reach. The way in which Section 73 works undermines investment in our commercial television sector and is quite an outdated measure. There is no longer a level playing field. What happens is that what are called third party aggregators, often large companies, take the content for free without payments to those who have created it. That seems quite wrong. The simple fact is that Section 73 is an historic measure, designed effectively to deliver a subsidy from public service broadcasters to encourage cable rollout in the 1980s. That is a long time ago now.

Section 73 prevents public service broadcasters having any form of negotiation for the supply of PSB channels to the cable platform in the UK. There is not even a commercial opportunity for them to negotiate. It is perverse that, for example, PSBs subsidise Virgin Media, which is owned by Liberty Global, a multimillion-pound global TV distribution platform. We have British television companies, some of which are doing fairly well but which are not that affluent, subsidising an enormous global player. If Section 73 were to be repealed, that at least would enable some form of commercial arrangement to be reached on cable transmission but within the overall Communications Act framework. That framework includes the “must offer” obligation of PSB channels to key platforms such as cable and satellite, subject to the agreement of terms.

British television content is the envy of the world and its continued success depends on its ability to get a return on investment. I am in the Labour Party and I am talking about business and so on. This Bill provides an important opportunity to repeal Section 73. I urge the Government not to miss the opportunity to consider amending the Bill to repeal the section. I do not know what we are waiting for. It is not as complicated as the Cabinet Office says. It is fairly straightforward. There has been so much discussion and negotiation. I think we ought to get on with it. It would be best if the Government brought forward their own amendment. I hope the Minister will agree to that, but, if not, I would like the Government at least to accept a Back-Bench amendment on this issue.