Media: Ownership

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Puttnam for securing this debate and, like many other noble Lords, I congratulate him on his exquisite timing. This has been a fantastic debate with many fine speeches. I particularly welcome and enjoyed the speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and my noble friend Lord Myners. The problem for people speaking late in this debate is that the hard work that we have done in preparing our speeches has rather gone to waste, so all the finely crafted phrases and wonderful lapidary comments I was going to drop in to the stunned attention of the House have been used by others rather better than I may have done.

I am left with a couple of thoughts which I hope to share with noble Lords. First, why on earth is there so much agreement? It is not just that the fox has been shot because there is still a long way to go for this particular fox. But there is a sense around the House that the agreement across the two sides—although there is quite a lot of disagreement on this side; we probably would not want to go too far into that, particularly about the BBC—reflects a wider concern about the way in which we have arrived at a twin track for regulating our media. We are at one in saying that the media are too important to be left on their own and that a free market will not be sufficient in that it will not satisfy our culture or deal with our democracy. But we have come up with a rather ugly compromise both in terms of the BBC, where the trust has to do the impossible job of cheerleading and regulating and, as others have said, in terms of Ofcom, which faces the possibility of having its wings clipped. In the wings, we also have the Competition Commission with its different focus on the economic outcomes of many of the issues before us.

Let us look back at the way in which we developed television and many of our media outlets in this country. We have done a sensible and interesting thing by trying to separate over time the delivery of the various channels from the money. In that sense, we have brought out the best in them by creating competition for quality. BBC1 was followed by ITV, and BBC2 by Channel 4 and Channel 5. But, of course, that all changes in the multimedia world, and the differences have been mentioned by many noble Lords. However, it is worth bearing in mind the essence here, that of trying to make sure that what we are separating out are the economics from the quality, which is still terribly important.

We need to think again as we go forward. I hope that one of the things that will come out of this incident is that we look once more at how this country regulates its media. Film and television in particular, but the published and electronic press as well, reflect the nation to itself. I am sure we can all recall the case of the primary school in the south-west of England where the pupils were asked to say what the number for our emergency services is. Rather than answering with the number 999, they said 911 because that is what they hear in the American television programmes and films they watch. There is nothing wrong with that because in some sense we want a plurality of cultures, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey said, but we have to be careful that we do not lose what we have in the rush to try and ensure that everyone is heard.

My final point is this. Given the centralised nature of broadcasting and the media in the UK, with the majority of our key decision-makers based in London—pace the BBC and its move—it is surely a concern in the English regions and the nations of Scotland and Wales that, while we should have excellent UK-wide services, there must be a fundamental requirement for high-quality content that addresses the distinctive cultural and democratic needs of audiences outwith the south-east.

We are on common ground that media content which purports to be for the public good and in the public interest can survive, grow and flourish, but this will not happen through market forces alone. There is a wider question about how we regulate properly for that, and this is a good opportunity for us all to reflect on it.