Broadcasting (Radio Multiplex Services) Bill

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Brennan]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I think it may be the first time I have done so, and that makes it even more pleasurable.

As the hon. Member for Torbay will know from the extremely able presentation made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) on Second Reading, we support the Bill. We will not vote against it today in Committee and we wish him well with it. It is a great opportunity—one that I have never had—to get a private Member’s Bill into law. I hope that the Bill, with the fair wind that the Government are giving it, will make its way into law in due course, once it has been through both Houses. However, it is our duty as Her Majesty’s official Opposition to scrutinise any Bill, and particularly a private Member’s Bill that has Government support—one that was, indeed, drafted by them; so I have some questions for the hon. Member for Torbay, and possibly for the Minister, if he is inclined to contribute. He may bring insights about some of the thinking behind the Bill. However, I am sure that there will be questions that the hon. Member for Torbay can handle for himself.

I shall say frankly that I am raising issues raised with the Opposition by the Community Media Association. The hon. Member for Torbay will be aware of its thoughts. It wanted amendments to be tabled, but I do not think that they were ready in time. However, after today’s clause stand part debate they may prove unnecessary; or the association may want to ask for them to be tabled later in the Bill’s progress.

The hon. Member for Torbay is right about the fact that discussions often arise about whether the words “may” or “must” should be used in a measure—or sometimes it is “will”. We sometimes spend many happy hours debating that in Committee; but in this instance the Community Media Association may be more concerned about including the words “must not” in clause 1. The first point that the association makes is that it might have been better if the clause instructed the Secretary of State not to make an order in relation to small-scale radio multiplex services, except where the description is of services to be provided primarily for the good of members of the public or a particular community, rather than for commercial reasons.

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

For the record, where in clause 1 is the provision that the hon. Gentleman is referring to? The Bill is essentially one clause; when he says amendment is needed to clause 1, a little more erudition would be useful.

[Kevin Brennan]

I do not want to be ruled out of order; often the Minister seeks to run Committees as if he were chairing them. I think that my remarks so far have been perfectly in order.

[The Chair]

For the benefit of the Committee let me say that so far the shadow Minister’s comments have been in order; but I do not think that the Minister was trying to say they were not. He may want briefly to clarify. Let us move on.

[Matt Hancock]

I am sorry; I am unintentionally taking more time than I meant to. I wanted to know what, in clause 1, the hon. Gentleman was referring to.

[Kevin Brennan]

As you will understand, Mr Pritchard, I do not want to refer to an amendment that has not been tabled. You will have noticed that I have not done so; but I have alluded to the view that an amendment could be tabled to clause 1. If that non-existent amendment had been tabled and you had ruled it in order it might be inserted, for example, after subsection (4)(c) of the new section that the clause would add to the Communications Act 2003. In that fictitious world that might be where it would be.

An order under the Bill could

“require small-scale radio multiplex services to be provided on a non-commercial basis”

but the Community Media Association’s view is that that is not a sufficient guarantee that the services will be operated primarily for public and community benefit. The association feels that there is a risk that, where a small-scale radio multiplex service is run on a commercial basis, charges to small-scale and community radio content providers could remain excessive, and opportunities to reduce their costs through the sale of spare capacity could be lost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

To come back briefly, the hon. Gentleman referred to some things that the Minister was going to do in the consultation. He said he thought that that was what the Government were going to do. Perhaps the Minister will intervene and confirm that so that it is on the record from the horse’s mouth.

[Matt Hancock]

I will be brief because it is not my day; the Bill is promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay. The Government support the Bill and I support everything that my hon. Friend has said. We have heard arguments both on Second Reading and in Committee in favour of having small independent commercial operations being able to take advantage of this Bill, as well as making sure there is enough protection to allow community stations that are not profit-making to make use of it. We will take all of those arguments into account. The Bill does not set the final position on restrictions for holding small-scale DAB licences and does not contain stipulations about licence ownership or operating on a commercial basis.

[The Chair]

Order. It is easily to forget that an intervention has been made on the shadow Minister, but this is an intervention rather than a contribution to the debate.

[Kevin Brennan]

I can fix that by saying I will now sit down.

[Matt Hancock]

I apologise. I thought I was being called to speak rather than to intervene. Having put all that on the record in my long intervention, there is nothing further that I need to say.