Digital Economy Bill

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

My Lords, I put my name to this very important amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Wood, has said most of what I was going to say, so I will be brief, but I add that we live in such a rapidly changing world, in which the existence and preservation of public service broadcasting is ever more crucial.

As the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, mentioned, we were at a breakfast yesterday hosted by Channel 4. The topic for discussion was fake news—a frightening phenomenon that threatens to undermine democracy as we know it and to distort people’s understanding of the world. It is still the case that the main source of news, and the most trusted, is TV. Given the rise of fake news, PSB content—impartial, well regulated and fact based—is more important than ever.

Alongside being universally available, what is crucial is that PSBs are easy to find. As the noble Lord, Lord Wood, said, this is increasingly difficult—the number of clicks you need to get to BBC Alba is, I believe, 15 on Sky Q. Then there is the specific matter of children—children’s content lurks below numerous foreign cartoon programmes.

Change is needed. Ofcom and the Lords’ Communications Committee have argued it and these amendments provide it. Will the Minister not agree that the Bill offers the opportunity—dare I say an historic one—to ensure changes that are essential if public service broadcasting is to survive, in a time in our history when its survival is more important than ever?

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment, so I shall speak briefly in support of it. It simply seeks to modernise the prominence regime for our digital age, expanding the existing legislation to cover on-demand services, such as catch- up television, on-demand TV menus and electronic programme guides.

At Second Reading, I shared my own and others’ experience of how frustrating electronic programme guides and user interfaces can be. Navigating them and finding a particular channel can be a particular challenge for people with a sensory impairment. Finding BBC News on electronic programme guides or finding the iPlayer on smart and connected televisions can take a considerable time. Likewise, finding BBC Parliament to allow people to take in your Lordships’ proceedings can be quite difficult—I am assured that people do still attempt to do this.

The Commercial Broadcasters Association has argued that giving public service broadcasting children’s channels extra prominence would create problems for investment in UK children’s content by their members. Moving public service broadcasting channels to higher electronic programme guide positions would mean displacing commercial broadcasting channels, with a detrimental impact on audience share and revenues. This, they say, would ultimately damage investment in children’s content. However, I am advised that greater prominence for public service broadcasters’ channels has a cross-promotional value which ultimately redounds also to the benefit of commercial channels. As I see it, there is no real threat to commercial broadcasters from this amendment.

This is a straightforward amendment which simply seeks to update the letter of the legislation for an increasingly digital age and bring it in line with the spirit in which it was originally conceived. I trust that the Government will see their way to accepting it.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Low, and to support Amendment 226A, relating to public sector broadcasting prominence, about which I spoke during the Second Reading debate. This Bill presents an excellent opportunity to update prominence rules so that they work as they should in our digital world. Given the amenable response from the Minister on earlier amendments, I hope there will be an equally forthcoming response on this one.

The current legislation, from 2003, places a requirement for PSBs to have appropriate prominence to ensure that the flagship PSB channels, such as BBC1 and BBC2, are prominent on electronic programming guides. However, as I raised at Second Reading, the BBC’s children’s channels, referred to earlier, do not enjoy this prominence and sit below 12 commercial children’s channels on some electronic programming guides. As a former member of the S4C Authority, I know from experience that this is a particular issue for both S4C and BBC Alba. S4C is a vital service for hundreds of thousands of people in Wales who speak Welsh and who want to be able to watch programmes in their own language. This content must be easily available on electronic programming guides and—as I will touch on in a moment—on demand. I believe, quite simply, that PSB content must be prominent, whether it is “Y Gwyll”—an excellent Welsh detective drama series known outside Wales as “Hinterland”, which has been sold to almost 200 countries and shows what it is possible to achieve—or great children’s dramas such as “Wizards vs Aliens”, filmed at Roath Lock in Cardiff.

Perhaps a more recent issue, but nevertheless one which must also be tackled, is the need to modernise prominence rules to ensure that they cover on-demand services, such as catch-up TV and connected TV on-demand menus. As I raised at Second Reading, young people in particular are increasingly watching public service content this way and spending less time watching linear TV. At the same time, finding the iPlayer on connected and smart TVs is getting to be a longer and more arduous process, making it harder to watch programmes—including S4C. I am told that there are more than 100,000 requests for S4C programmes on iPlayer every week, showing just how popular this content is.

Both S4C and MG Alba have stated their support for extending prominence to cover on-demand and catch-up TV. They have issued a statement which I should like to quote:

“The extension of the PSB prominence principle to include the PSBs’ on-demand players is of great and growing importance. Its significance is not only for the future of public service media content and how it is consumed by the public, but it is also particularly vital for the availability of Welsh language content as S4C is the only Welsh language PSB available—serving Welsh speakers throughout the UK”.


It also has a considerable following in parts of the UK outside Wales.

Although this is certainly an incredibly technical area of legislation, I see it as another simple problem with a straightforward solution. Had smart TVs and the iPlayer been common when the original legislation was devised, I have no doubt that they would have been included at that stage. We now have an opportunity to do something about this and I hope that the Government will take it.