Broadcasting (Radio Multiplex Services) Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 13th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

Well, I will be honest: it is usually Radio 4, Radio 5 or Radio 5 live sports extra, particularly when it is carrying the cricket commentary.

[The Minister for Digital and Culture (Matt Hancock)]

Does my hon. Friend not think that many people also carry digital radios with them wherever they go not least so that, on a Friday, they can listen to his wonderful speeches in Parliament?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that is not the case.

In her most recent intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) asked whether I use digital radio to listen to community radio stations. Of course, there are very few of those operating, but if the Bill reaches the statute book and is followed up by an order and some activity from commercial radio stations, it will enable me to have even more stations on my little digital radio than there are already—and there are already plenty on there from around the country.

Incidentally, I made sure that my last car, which I bought a few years ago, had a digital radio. I understand that virtually all cars now have digital radio as standard. At that time, it was an option, and people had to pay a little extra if they wanted it—I wanted it mainly because “Test Match Special” was no longer broadcast on long wave, and to reach it I had to get Radio 5 live sports extra.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Digital and Culture (Matt Hancock)]

It is a pleasure and an honour to be called to the Dispatch Box to respond to this debate.

Like everybody else, I put on the record wholeheartedly my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for introducing the Bill. He gave a great exposition of the Bill and set out in good detail what he hopes we can achieve. I also put on the record my thanks to the officials in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who have worked with my hon. Friend on the Bill and prepared me for it. We have in DCMS an incredibly dedicated radio team who care deeply about the success of radio in this country, and I thank them. I had proposed to try to answer directly many of the questions that had been asked in the debate, as well as set out, quite briefly, what is in the Bill, but because that was done so well by my hon. Friend at the start, I shall be relatively brief.

I am grateful to all Members who have contributed to this debate. Perhaps we should start with the position of the Labour party and the Labour Front-Bench team. It was, I think, the maiden performance, at length, from the Dispatch Box by the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). She was elected only in June and gave a great performance with lots of questions. So impressive was her performance today that I wonder whether she, like an increasing number of her friends, will be opting for a job outside Parliament soon.

I will go through the hon. Lady’s questions in detail. I was really impressed that she started off with the important matter of rural areas. It was addressed in the trials, and in Ofcom’s response to the trials. We will go through the technical details that will lead to the orders in a further consultation. Given the hon. Lady’s interest and the fact that we have support for this Bill from all parts of the House, I am sure that the question about rural areas will be properly addressed.

On the frequency plan, the hon. Lady seemed to imply that it was not possible to vote in support of the Bill until that plan was in place. I caution her against such an approach, as the process has already started. The frequency trials were very positive. Of course further consultation will address the technical details, but those technical details are a matter for the orders and statutory instruments that follow the Bill rather than the principles that we are debating today. The same is true about the comments made by Radiocentre and the Community Media Association. Those are matters for the regulations.

The hon. Lady rightly raised the matter of skills. The Ofcom report was clear that the trials delivered exactly the sorts of skills that we should be looking for in this space. She also talked about money, saying that this all comes down to funding. Well, I caution her against that view. Although Labour thinks that everything comes down to public funding, we think that human ingenuity is quite impressive, too.

As it happens, in this spending review period funding for community radio support was increased and guaranteed out to 2020, but it is amazing what people can achieve if they are given the permission to do so. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay set out many times in the course of his speech, this Bill is ultimately a permissive piece of legislation: it is about allowing people to do things that, currently, they cannot do. Therefore, it is about a further unleashing of human ingenuity.

The hon. Lady asked, perfectly reasonably, why this Bill and the clauses in it are not part of the Digital Economy Bill. The reason is that we wanted to see the conclusion of the trials before putting out the legislation. We published the Digital Economy Bill back in the summer, but the trials had not concluded at that point, so we did not want to put these details in that Bill. There have been odd noises from the Opposition Benches about why the Digital Economy Bill was not delayed. I do not think that we can delay in bringing forward the transition to digital, whether in this or the other Bill.

The hon. Lady also raised a question that had been mentioned by a number of others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), about the matter of public only or public and private. I know that some of her friends on the Front Bench think “public good, private bad” but we on the Government Benches reject such an approach, because we think that there can be a contribution from both public and private. That question will be addressed in the consultation. Again, this Bill is permissive on that basis. It does not require either public or private backing. However, there is an important balance to be struck in the consultation, which is that, ultimately, small-scale digital radio is about enabling communities and community support. We do not want it to be completely gobbled up by large commercial providers for whom there are other options. We want to ensure that there is space for the innovative and for the very small. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said, people need to be able to start a radio station from their garden shed. That is what this is all about. There is a reasonable case for limiting the commercial element, but there is also a case for small commercial operations, and we will address the balance of those cases in the forthcoming consultation. I hope that addresses the points made from the Opposition Front Bench.

Let me now address some of the questions asked by other Members. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) asked how the masts will work in practice. Of course, individual radio stations will not necessarily have to put up their own masts; the whole point is to have a network of masts. The masts can go on to existing masts that are used for other things, and they can go on to buildings. In fact, we have just relaxed some of the planning regulations on masts. Like my hon. Friend, I represent a rural constituency. I had the great privilege of opening our local digital mast, which has gone up next to a school in north Suffolk, which means we can now get BBC Radio Suffolk on digital radio. The technology is there and the planning system is in increasingly good shape to allow this. Therefore, although a radio company could put up its own mast, there are also ways to start up a radio station without having to go down that hardware route.

My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), who is a great supporter of radio, provided not only insight in the debate, but entertainment. In fact, one could say that as well as the music, he has provided the lyrics. He made a passionate case about the positive impact of radio in times of distress, such as the serious storms and flooding in his constituency just over a year ago. He paid tribute to his local radio station in what I thought was a very balanced way. There is no reason to think that DAB will be any less reliable and resilient during storms. By allowing for more localised digital content, we can get even more local information in times of distress. I hope that he is reassured on that point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) made an important point about political balance in community radio. Of course, anyone in broadcasting has to follow the law of the land and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and ensure that their output conforms to what is required. He made a strong case for radio, mostly on the grounds of cricket. I remember well the time he astonished not only the entire Indian parliamentary cricket team, but the rest of the British parliamentary team by taking a wicket in Dharamshala. I also recall spending an awful lot of time recovering the ball from the boundary.

[Oliver Colvile]

I must say that I, too, was deeply surprised. My right hon. Friend might also recall that although there were only 250 people in the grounds, the match was being watched by 19 million people on Indian television.

[Matt Hancock]

I have no doubt that all 19 million were totally astonished. It just shows that if you put on what might be regarded as niche broadcasts—in this case, a cricket match between the UK and Indian Parliaments—sometimes many, many people will watch.

[Andrew Bingham]

Does the Minister recall that I was actually commentating for Indian television when my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) took the wicket?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I remember that. On a slightly more serious note, I think there was a reason why 19 million people in India were watching that cricket match, and it was not due to the quality of the commentary, the bowling or the fielding. It was because there is very heavy regulation on the number of broadcast channels in India, so there was nothing else to watch. Putting ourselves in the eyes of the viewer or the ears of the listener, it is far better to have more stations, especially local ones, so that people can do something better than watching my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport and I play cricket.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) raised the issues of signal power strength and financial restrictions. Her point on financial restrictions is actually slightly out of date. Since 2014, we have slightly relaxed the financial restrictions on community stations precisely because of the argument that she made—that a community station still needs to raise the money to continue to run. Maybe I can write to her with the full details of the changes that we have made and she can tell me whether she thinks we have gone far enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made the case that small-scale multiplexes should be able to run on a commercial basis as well and asked when all this will be in place. The answer is that, should the Bill proceed and, alongside it, we consult on the details of the orders, our goal will be to have the system in place by early 2018 before the trials finish at the end of March 2018. We are on the path to get that timing right, but we need to get the Bill through to make that happen.

My hon. Friends the Members for Charnwood (Edward Argar) and for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) professed not to be technological. In fact, towards the end of the debate, that crept into everything. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill)—the Suffolk Bury—made the same argument. Many people, and I count myself as one, are incredibly enthusiastic about and excited by technology, but technology is only any good if it caters for people because of what it does, not what it is. People who are not enthusiastic about technology can still use digital radio including, for instance, to listen to “Test Match Special.”

As long the gradual move to digital is handled correctly, it has the potential to free up spectrum that can be used in other ways. It has to be done carefully. I come back to a point made a lot at the start of the debate: this is about adding a capability, not turning off analogue. By coincidence, I met the Norwegian Minister on my way here this morning and she told me about the progress Norway has made in starting to turn off the analogue services. We are not there yet. We still hope to do it, but we must make sure that enough people are on digital first and that we support those who are still on analogue in the transition.[Official Report, 16 January 2017, Vol. 619, c. 4MC.] There have been some big changes in the past couple of years, including in the car market. Nearly 95% of new car radios are digital. The change is happening and it is a good thing, but we must do it sensibly and carefully, and the Bill has no impact on those plans.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds mentioned BBC Radio Suffolk and Radio West Suffolk, which I visited in the last Parliament. It is true that, as a student, I was on Oxygen 107.9 FM, a radio station in Oxford where I learned how to handle a radio mic. I had the same sort of experience as my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane and it taught me a huge amount. I was the minority sports correspondent and I had a lot of fun. In fact, I am sure that the radio show was more fun to make than to listen to.

I pay tribute to the work of those who are helping with the expansion of digital radio, and particularly to Ford Ennals, who has done an enormous amount of work outside this House to make sure people understand what digital radio is—indeed, he is often on the radio talking about why digital radio matters.

Currently, about 200 smaller commercial radio stations covering small markets and 244 commercial radio stations transmitting mainly on FM and medium wave are not broadcasting on digital radio. The details of the Bill have been well discussed and set out today, and the purpose of the Bill has been well set out. I am delighted the Bill has cross-party support and support from everybody who has spoken in the debate, and I hope it can make progress. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay for bringing it forward with such panache.