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Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge): I simply want to ask whether the 5 per cent. target for sign language represents 5 per cent. of all programmes that are broadcast or 5 per cent. of those after the excluded programmes have been removed? Can the right hon. Lady clarify that?
Mrs. Bottomley: As I have explained, there is room for exemptions for all the numerical targets, but they will be a minority. Programmers will be set the 5 per cent. target, but they may be allowed some exemptions. As the letter to Sir George Russell makes clear, however, those exemptions must be a minority and dealt with exceptionally.
Mrs. Campbell: That was not the point I was making. I asked whether 5 per cent. was 5 per cent. of all programmes broadcast or 5 per cent. of those remaining after the excluded ones had been taken out.
Mrs. Bottomley: It is 5 per cent. when the excluded ones have been taken out, but the key is that there must be the strictest interpretation of the exclusions.
Mr. Dafis: Does the Secretary of State have any calculation of what the percentage of the total would be?
Mrs. Bottomley: What I made clear was that I expect the exemptions to be an absolute minimum, so I expect broadcasters to achieve their targets as set out on the face of the Bill.
The change is very significant. The credit should go to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West for his persistence and vigorous championing of this cause. People with sensory disabilities have every reason to appreciate all that he has done.
I very much hope that the House will accept the new clauses.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey):
One of the highlights in Committee was holding a debate on this extremely important issue and making some progress--in fact, defeating the Government when we tabled the original amendment, which the amendments before us water down considerably. Argument raged around the idea that audio-description, subtitling and sign language would grow of their own accord. Those of us who voted for the amendment in Committee knew that, on the contrary, a quota was needed. I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted that, but I am extremely disappointed by the low levels of quota that seem to be being accepted.
We are talking about a quota of only 5 per cent. for sign language, but that is 5 per cent. of an already lower total, because exclusions will be allowed. The Secretary of State has refused to estimate what that 5 per cent. may be as a percentage of total programmes broadcast; it is a pity that she did not feel able to do so.
When she replies, will the Secretary of State tell us why programmes will be allowed to be excluded? All three different ways of communicating with people with sensory deprivations are extremely sophisticated in their own right. Anyone who has seen someone signing a song knows that it is the most incredible experience to see how effectively sign language can communicate. I wonder why any programmes should be excluded. By doing so, we are saying that people who have these disabilities can be excluded from a whole section of programme making. I can think of no reason why there should be exclusions.
I am disappointed by the low percentages of coverage of the targets to which new clauses 32 and 33 refer. I do not see why we could not have tried to do better for the many millions of people who suffer from sensory
deprivations, to try to include them in the digital revolution at a time when the technology has finally allowed extra space in the spectrum to enable us to broadcast these extra visual helps to those with sensory deprivations, without interfering directly with mainstream channels.
There is no need for the terrible box at the side in which one must watch the signer; these services could be broadcast on a completely different channel. The watering down that has resulted in new clauses 32 and 33 has denied us a real opportunity to include in the digital revolution millions of our fellow citizens who suffer from these disabilities.
I welcome the Government's acceptance of the principle that a quota is the way to progress. I am bitterly disappointed that the Secretary of State could not have ensured that the percentages for coverage with these new services for those with sensory deprivations were much higher than the 5 or 10 per cent. of a total that, because of her issue about excluded programmes, is already lower than what our original amendment, tabled in Committee, would have allowed.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West):
The announcements by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mark several significant steps forward for people who are profoundly deaf and for the blind. On the face of it, the three amendments that I forced through in Committee--admittedly, with the help of the Opposition parties--set very high thresholds, and made a very significant move forward. I shall seek to explain why the House should accept this compromise.
Mr. Hughes:
I will come to that, if the hon. Lady stops seeking to interrupt.
I am very grateful to all those people who helped me to put pressure on for those things--not only people in the lobbying organisations, but Members on both sides of the House. Specifically, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), the former Secretary of State, was very influential, and I gather that my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich--
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham):
Eltham.
Mr. Hughes:
I gather that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) was influential in these matters as well.
The Bill provided a one-off opportunity. We had to achieve a very specific agenda for the profoundly deaf and for the blind--to get thresholds on to the face of the Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, had we not had the specific and escalating threshold for subtitles in the Broadcasting Act 1990, we should not have been in the position we are in now.
My right hon. Friend adopted a slightly different approach, but she has set in train the same thing. We have the 10 per cent. threshold for subtitling, which is the same as before; we have the 10 per cent. threshold for audio-description; and now, by order, we shall have the 5 per cent. threshold for the in-vision signing.
Provided that the House adopts my right hon. Friend's new clauses, their structure enables my right hon. Friend or any other Secretary of State of any party to increase those thresholds by order at any time that appears sensible. My right hon. Friend has sought to produce a compromise, holding the ring between the interests of the profoundly deaf and the blind and those of the industry trying to expand into this new digital era.
The broadcasters' arguments were over-egged. In private, they would tell one, "Well, of course we said that this would make digital television unaffordable, but perhaps we were laying it on a bit thick, and, yes, we could afford these things, although we would prefer to spend a bit less on them." One should bear that attitude in mind when being lectured by their documentaries about what the Government or Opposition or anyone else should do.
In achieving that balance, my right hon. Friend allows anyone to monitor what is going on, and allows a future Secretary of State to say, "There has been so much progress technically that I can now increase this threshold or double that one, and I can put pressure on the broadcasters." Therefore, the facilities available to the profoundly deaf and to the blind will escalate.
Mr. Maclennan:
I admire the trenchant way in which the hon. Gentleman moved his amendments in Committee. I recognise too that politics is the art of the possible. But does he accept that the order-making power to which he refers could be used in either direction--to lower as well as increase the targets? That is the risk of the approach that we may be urged to adopt.
Mr. Hughes:
Yes, I certainly considered that. I think it extremely unlikely that a Secretary of State would lower the targets, or be able to get that through the House. I had many dealings in government with the private Members' Bills on disability of a couple of years ago, so I know what strong feelings are generated on both sides of the House when it comes to this important subject. I therefore believe that the movement will be upward.
The list of excluded programmes worried me a lot. They were an invention by the Department. The consultation document issued by my right hon. Friend included a wide range of programmes that would be excluded, some of which were already subtitled and enjoyed by profoundly deaf people. For instance, "Top of the Pops" has a large audience of deaf people. The hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) has already mentioned deaf signing for songs, which can be a moving spectacle. I myself have heard a number of deaf choirs sing in churches.
All this is well understood, so it was quite wrong to include such programmes in the list of exclusions. The same goes for sports programmes; in general, they should not be excluded, either. Euro 96 has been subtitled and enjoyed by many deaf people. The point that the industry has strongly made, to me and my right hon. Friend, is that there is scope, with the new digital services, for experimental programmes--mostly live services--that
might cost almost as much as the original programmes' budgets. It was therefore right to allow programme makers to negotiate lower targets with the ITC, so as to get the services under way.
As my right hon. Friend said in her letter to Sir George Russell,
"programmes to which different targets apply are likely to be those which are predominantly live, though this might change as technology develops."
Certainly, technology is changing all the time, and in-vision signing and subtitling will be generated automatically, at least on some programmes, to a standard acceptable for those sorts of programme. Other programmes, however, will always need more detailed subtitling work.
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