Deregulation Bill

Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ford (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I also rise to support the amendment, and in so doing declare a very particular interest as chairman of a public service broadcaster, STV. We are on Report and had a very full debate on this issue in Committee where, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, there was very little between any of us in understanding and appreciating the issues in front of us. I do not think there is any issue with saying that the original legislation is very out of date. It is not just the pay TV platforms that are benefiting from this; every day, new online content creators and online aggregators also benefit hugely from public service investment in all this. There is no doubt or dispute that the regulations are massively out of date, and the debate on the iniquitous nature of the investment in public service broadcasting has been very well rehearsed.

My concern really is that the Government have a complete open goal here and have had it for quite some time. The Deregulation Bill, as we said in Committee, is a perfect vehicle for dealing with this as removing “unnecessary and outdated regulation” is exactly what it was set up to do. This is outdated and unnecessary regulation. However, the Government have chosen to go down the route of a consultation instead of taking the open goal in front of them. This consultation has now been very widely trailed over many months. At the Royal Television Society conference in early September, the Secretary of State said that now is the time to reconsider all the regulation around broadcasting. He signalled very strongly to the audience that day that the consultation was pretty imminent. That was September. We have managed to have a consultation—the Smith commission—on new powers for Scotland. We have managed to negotiate all that in that time, yet we have not managed to even get out of the blocks on a consultation on deregulation of this section. It is pathetic, quite frankly.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is excellent. It is simply belt and braces. There is no reason why the Government cannot accept it. But if for some reason the Minister is going to tell us that he cannot accept it and that there are sensible reasons for that, I would really like the House and the whole industry to hear, on the record, the timescale for this, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, there is a strong whiff of kicking this into the long grass.

The question of the general election is a complete red herring. This ought not to be a party-political matter. Losing hundreds of millions of pounds of income out of this country every single year instead of retaining that investment in the country and reinvesting it into the creative industries ought not to be an issue between any of the political parties. It should be a no-brainer. I do not understand why the general election should even be a feature in thinking about the timescale for this. I would really like the Minister to give us some very clear assurances about the Government’s intention and the timescale that they are going to adopt here.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I am the first to agree with my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones that this review is, if anything, overdue and that it is quite wrong for the public sector broadcasters to be subsidising cable operators in this way. But what I find absolutely fascinating is that the debate on Clause 64 hinged on the Government putting the cart before the force. Now my noble friend is putting exactly the opposite thought forward, and I would be grateful if, when he winds up on the amendment, he would explain why.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment. There is a clear case for removing a superfluous piece of legislation such as Section 73, which is causing demonstrable damage to the public service broadcasting system and leaking value each and every day. Deregulation to remove harmful out-of-date legislation makes sense and is the point of the Bill, but I do not think anyone can sensibly argue that the prominence we give to public service broadcasters is damaging or harmful or needs deregulating. Put simply, what is the point of public service content if it is not discoverable?

Prominence enables huge levels of investment in original UK content by our public service broadcasters each and every year. Prominence is a key pillar of the PSB system and removing it or even watering it down would be nothing short of a death knell for public service content in this country. Prominence not only ensures that people can actually find the public service content we require our PSBs to produce, but it enables the PSBs that are funded by commercial means to maximise viewing figures and therefore maximise the value of the advertising they sell. This is what enables them to pay for what is often loss-leading content, such as impartial news and current affairs coverage, which we as a society have deemed important and require them to produce because the market simply would not produce this kind of content by itself. I very much hope that the amendment will be accepted, and I support it.