Stephen Timms
Main Page: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)Department Debates - View all Stephen Timms's debates with the Leader of the House
(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hunt
We have no plans to ask the BBC to sell off Radio 1. There may be possibilities in the case of some of the BBC’s commercial assets, such as BBC Worldwide, and we await any proposals that the BBC may have. However, we are committed to a publicly funded, publicly owned national broadcaster as a benchmark of quality in the broadcasting system. We believe we are one of the few countries in the world to have competition at the quality end of the broadcasting market as well as the popular end, and we want that to continue.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Policy on broadband is a joint responsibility of the Secretary of State’s Department and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and he has indicated that he will dip into the licence fee to support the roll-out of high-speed broadband. Can he confirm that any new funding from that source will not be available until 2013 at the earliest, which is three years late, when Labour’s phone levy would have been generating £150 million a year in three months’ time, not in three years? Given his aim to reduce the licence fee, can he give any assurance that that level of funding will be available even three years late, and given the complete absence of significant new funding for high-speed broadband, is he embarrassed that his pre-election promises on high-speed broadband have so quickly turned to dust?
Mr Hunt
Let me confirm a few things that the right hon. Gentleman ought to be aware of, given that he was a Minister responsible for the matter. The first is that the money that his Government had allocated to ensure that everyone in this country could access broadband at a minimum speed of 2 megabits per second was less than half the total cost of doing that. That was why, when we examined the situation, we decided that we would honour the pledge but would not be able to do so by 2012 and extended it to 2015. As in so many areas, his Government simply did not leave enough money in the pot.