Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer on 27 January by Lord Gardiner of Kimble (HL4359), whether the introduction of retransmission fees could be beneficial to the creative industry if money generated from retransmission fees was used in original United Kingdom programming.

Currently public services broadcasters are not able to charge cable operators for the retransmission of their PSB services. This is an area where many competing interests – particularly those of broadcasters, platforms, and of viewers - must be balanced. Government is going to consult on whether the time is right to remove section 73 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, and whether this allows PSBs to invest more in high-quality content. But rather than doing so in isolation, we will be looking at this in the wider context, examining the framework of regulation that governs the balance of payments between broadcasters and platforms and rates surrounding EPG prominence.