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Mr. Maclennan: I do not want to delay the House, but I would be grateful if the Minister would explain how his system would prevent the emergence of a single powerful player and the consequent limited choice and constantly increasing prices for the consumer. How will the technology stop that?
Mr. Taylor: The technology comes within the context of the overall competitive regulatory environment, as I explained to the House yesterday and is also made clear in the regulations that I tabled on 26 June. The framework of competition law obliges fair access for all broadcasters to the systems and the regulatory and competition authorities can take certain steps. That clear framework will enable us to encourage the necessary private sector investment to come into the market. The technical prospects behind the process of simul-crypting will enable the transmission signal to
contain a series of instructions that will enable the decoder to react to the different broadcasters. Therefore, through simul-crypt, the technology enables the operation to work, and the regulatory framework of competition law means that no one can resist the application of a broadcaster to send a transmission signal. That is a sufficient framework.
We are talking about a system for the future into which, as of this date, no one has put any money. My hon. Friend the Minister of State has spent hours in Committee attempting to get the framework right. The Bill is designed to provide a clear and solid framework so that people are encouraged to come forward with proposals for investing risk capital in the industry.
Mrs. Anne Campbell:
The market solution which the Government are proposing led, with the introduction of video recorders, to competition between Betamax and VHS. I was one of the unfortunates who bought Betamax, believing it to be a superior technical solution, but, in the end, I had to throw it away because I could not get the videos to play on it. Will a similar situation arise in this case? Shall I buy a set-top box only to find that I shall have to throw it away after six months because I cannot use it?
Mr. Taylor:
That is the first time in the House that the hon. Lady has, to my knowledge, admitted making a technological error. There is a first even at this stage of the Bill.
Manufacturers and other parties in the industry are well aware of the Betamax problem. That is why standards committees work constantly to ensure that such mistakes do not occur. Ultimately, a commercial judgment has to be made in the marketplace. It is not for me to tell any company that it should not try to go down a particular avenue if it believes that that will give a reward. If it has a dominant market position and abuses it, the competition regulations will come into force. That is the right way to proceed. Otherwise the Government will have to put up the risk capital. I am sure that the hon. Lady would not find much favour from the shadow Chancellor if she were to propose that.
The simple reality is that no one has as yet put the money on the table to enable us to make the transfer to digital satellite or digital terrestrial television. The Bill must encourage private sector investment as much as possible. Any ill thought through regulations, or any attempt to be over-prescriptive, is likely to have a counteractive effect.
Our proposals use a competition framework and then we have found a way, through technology, to stimulate convergence.
Mr. Taylor:
I am under great pressure, not least from those on the Opposition Front Bench, to make progress, so I shall not take any further interventions. I look to the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie) to withdraw the new clause.
Dr. Moonie:
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. David Mellor (Putney):
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 146, in schedule 7, page 155, line 3, at end insert--'Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976--
Mr. Mellor:
I, too, do not wish to detain the House too long, so I shall be brief. I do want to say, however--I hope without any self-aggrandisement--that brief though my contribution and the debate may be, it raises an issue of fundamental importance to the coverage of televised sport in Britain. I am strengthened in that belief by the fact that one of the attractive features of our debates on broadcasting is that it is possible for us to set to one side the narrow partisanship that has figured in so many debates in this place and to talk together as sensible, reasonable adults, sharing our interests and experience of the world.
Many hon. Members present today are deeply committed to sport. I am proud, therefore, that my co-sponsor of the new clause should be the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie), and to see others in their place, such as the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton), a director of Sheffield Wednesday, who understands from his own practical experience of football in just what a curious situation we find ourselves, with the threat of what I regard--I speak without any exaggeration from 11 years' experience as a Minister and nearly 20 years in the House--as the most foolish intervention by a regulator that I have ever encountered.
That intervention is the decision of the Director General of Fair Trading to refer the right of Britain's Premier league collectively to sell its television rights to a
television station. That has nothing to do with the merits of Sky against the BBC or ITV; it is to do with the fundamental right of sports organisations to band together in a league to sell their product collectively as the only way of making sense of the ability to televise, for the enjoyment of a wider public, the games that they play.
We have a situation that Alice in Wonderland would have difficulty embracing. Lewis Carroll at his most fanciful could not have imagined the situation that arose in last night's debate on sports rights, in which my hon. Friend the Minister of State properly said that the basic principle must be that sporting bodies have a right to sell their broadcasting rights to whomsoever they choose.
We have chosen--I approve of this--to trench on that right by having the crown jewels of sport. I warmly endorse, and was one of those who worked for, the further changes that are now part of the Bill. But how can the sincere and proper words of my hon. Friend the Minister of State sit with the ludicrous situation of a regulator, who is part of the Government machine, condemning the Premier league for doing precisely that?
Again, this is a moment that Lewis Carroll would appreciate. At the same time as politicians are condemning the Rugby Union for doing exactly what the Director General of Fair Trading wants, the director general is trying to translate the chaos that currently exists in international rugby union into the world of football.
What is the nub of the point that lay behind all the condemnatory words that were said yesterday about the Rugby Football Union? It is that the English Rugby Football Union has chosen to break away from the other four and to sell its television rights. It has said, "To hell with the rest of you; we are having our own deal." The response to that will be, "In that case, you don't play in our league." There is then chaos, confusion and anarchy.
In order to prevent that in Britain, for years now, long before the formation of the Premier league, the Football League had the right, and the Premier league asserts the right, to say, "Here is our fixture list. These are available for television transmission and we have the right to sell fixtures collectively." It is not as though it is a cartel. Teams remain at the top not because they choose to do so but because their results entitle them to do so. Over several years, the membership of the league changes, so it is not a cartel.
Here we have a curious situation. In the United States, under anti-trust laws, American regulatory authorities are restricted from taking nominated sporting leagues to task for selling their product as an entire package. Everyone knows that unless that happens, chaos and confusion will be the inevitable result.
If Manchester United has its own television contract and Chelsea has another, how on earth will fixtures between Chelsea and Manchester be managed if one says that its television contract gives its company the right to transmit a service and the other says to the contrary? That would be ludicrous. I cannot imagine how even some pointy-headed quasi-intellectual in the Office of Fair Trading could seriously believe that that lies within the world of practical reality.
The tragedy is that that threatens football's future just at a time when a situation for which we have all prayed has begun to happen: football has at long last managed to win through, to get resources flowing into the game and to bring in on the back of those resources international
players so that, for the first time in the experience of football spectators, great players from the continent are playing in our league rather than avoiding it like the plague. We are net importers of players, not net exporters. Every club benefits.
Last season, the distribution of the spoils from television coverage showed that although Newcastle walked off with just over £3 million and Manchester United with just under £3 million, the relegated clubs did well too--Queen's Park Rangers received £1.3 million and Bolton Wanderers received £1.2 million.
'.--(1) Any agreement to which this section applies shall be an excepted agreement for the purposes of Schedule 3 to the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976.
(2) This section shall apply to any agreement by or among persons engaging in or conducting the professional team sport of association football, or any other professional sport which the Secretary of State may separately by regulations prescribe, by which any constituent league or other body in that sport sells or otherwise transfers all or any part of the rights of that league's participants in respect of the broadcasting of games engaged in or conducted by those clubs in events organised by such a league or other body.
(3) The power to make regulations under this section shall be exercised by statutory instrument and a statutory instrument containing any such regulations shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament'.--[Mr. Mellor.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
24A. In Schedule 3 of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976 there shall at the end be inserted--
10. This Act does not apply to an agreement falling within section (Application of Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976 to sale or transfer of broadcasting rights for sports events) of the Broadcasting Act 1996".'.
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