Channel 4: Consultation

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many responses they received to their consultation on A potential change of ownership of Channel 4 Television Corporation, which closed on 14 September.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter, and at her request, I beg to move the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, the consultation on the potential change in ownership of Channel 4 received around 60,000 responses. We are grateful for the public’s engagement on this matter and, indeed, for the response from the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and her Liberal Democrat colleagues. We are now working hard to analyse every response and to ensure that all evidence feeds into any final decision.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, is there not a lot of evidence that the overwhelming response, particularly from those with individual or organisational experience of the collective creative industries, was to warn against the privatisation of Channel 4? Will the Minister publish the advice that the department has received and, once he has analysed and considered it, would it not be a good idea to drop this piece of ideological vandalism?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is rather getting ahead of the process. No decision has been taken yet and we are carefully processing all the responses received. The consultation ran from 6 July to 14 September; as I said, it received around 60,000 responses, including more than 100 from the industry, all of which will be carefully analysed before any decisions are made.