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10.29 pm
Mr. Kaufman: The Secretary of State was wise to say nothing in introducing the Third Reading of the Bill as there is little to be said for it. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie), in his kindly way, was overgenerous in his comments about it. The Bill has been washed up rather than passed: it is part of television's past. Although it has sections relating to digital television, they hold the fort rather than look to the future.
Since the Bill began its passage through Parliament, there have been huge changes in the communications scene--including in television and broadcasting--in this country. However, those changes appear to have had little or no impact on the Bill, despite the many amendments that the Government have made to it. We are seeing a change in the television climate that makes the Bill largely irrelevant.
When Independent Television was introduced 40 years ago, it was a revolution. It doubled the number of television channels and changed the nature of, and the approach to, broadcasting. We shall soon have Channel 5, but a new television channel is no longer a revolution--it is a possibly interesting increment. During the Bill's passage, the scope of non-terrestrial television has expanded. The number of viewers who are linked up either by satellite or by cable has increased during that time and will continue to increase after the Bill becomes law. There will be 12 more satellite channels this autumn--a number introduced by Granada and one by Warner Bros.
Recent developments--which are highly relevant to discussions about the sporting events that have taken place--reveal the direction in which we are moving and the increasing irrelevance of the Bill even before it becomes law. This country has witnessed its first pay television sporting event--the Bruno-Tyson fight--and, although BSkyB did not make money on it, 600,000 people paid £9.95 to watch it. That is the way of the future.
The Premier league has sold its television rights for the next four years to BSkyB--with highlights rights to the BBC--for a much greater price than it paid for them when
it entered into the present five-year contract. It is only a four-year contract this time. With the arrival of digital television, the Premier league clubs do not want to be excluded from broadcasting their own matches on pay per view--as they may be doing in the new century.
Rugby league has changed from a winter to a summer game simply because it proved more lucrative when selling television rights. The Rugby Union game has been turned upside down by the perfectly legitimate purchase of its television rights by BSkyB. While that is going on and while we are arguing about who shall own ITV channels, ITV is shrinking. The ITV audience has shrunk substantially and it will shrink even more. The BBC audience is shrinking too, and it will shrink even more. My hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy was accurate when he said that the prospects for digital terrestrial television are not great. The prospects for satellite digital television are far greater, especially with the possibility of the launch of a new satellite, which Mr. Murdoch will use.
Meanwhile, the BBC, which has made grandiloquent statements about the future of digital terrestrial television, does not have any money to launch digital terrestrial television. It has talked nonsense about obtaining the huge sums of money required from the private finance initiative and by economies on candle ends within the organisation. That shows how unrealistic and impractical the present BBC regime is and how increasingly unfit it is to run the BBC, which has also been shown by the serious attack on the World Service that the BBC has now undertaken.
The National Heritage Select Committee will shortly decide whether to conduct a new inquiry into the BBC and, like the inquiry that we conducted three years ago, it will inevitably be an inquiry into the whole subject of communications. When we conducted our last inquiry, we set the pattern for much of the activity that has taken place since and I hope that we shall be able to do that again. Indeed, some of the Government's setbacks on the Bill, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy referred, would not have happened if the Government had had the good sense to pay greater attention to the Select Committee reports.
Mr. Gale:
It is a pity that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) has been so uncharacteristically churlish, because many people have put a lot of hard work into the Bill. His remarks were wholly out of keeping with the courteous and constructive approach of the Opposition Front-Bench team, certainly in Committee. I wish to thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friends the Ministers for the courtesy and consideration that they have shown, throughout the passage of the Bill, to the suggestions made by--it is fair to say--hon. Members from both sides of the House, on the Floor of the House and in discussions.
Few of us feel that the Bill has not been improved during its passage. It was never going to be a perfect piece of legislation because, as the right hon. Member for Gorton rightly said, the technology has changed as we have been speaking and will continue to do so. The right hon. Gentleman is profoundly wrong because the future is not in satellite, which is merely a delivery system. The long-term future will be in fully interactive cable services, but that remains to be seen.
Mr. Kevin Hughes:
I want briefly to refer to radio licensing and, in particular, a local radio station. Last year, the Radio Authority reconsidered the franchise covering my constituency, the Doncaster area. It advertised for a local radio station for the Doncaster area. At that time it was served by a Sheffield station called Radio Hallam.
There were two bidders for a local radio station in Doncaster. Doncaster has a population of around 300,000, and the metropolitan borough is, geographically, the largest in Britain. If that is put together with neighbouring areas, the population would be about 500,000. The Radio Authority, after advertising for a local station, saw fit to give the licence back to the regional radio station, Radio Hallam. Therefore, Doncaster still does not have a local radio station. Instead, it has three regional stations--Radio Hallam, Great Yorkshire Gold and Kiss FM. I understand that the Radio Authority's decision was challenged and one of the bidders sought a judicial review. Unfortunately, the Radio Authority's decision was upheld. Recently, the Radio Authority has said that there may be an opportunity to reconsider the Doncaster situation.
When I met the Radio Authority's chief executive he tried to fob me off with a small garden-shed medium-wave-type station which most hon. Members know would probably not get off the ground. We need an FM station with decent coverage; a decent commercial radio which could do the business, make money and provide a service for the Doncaster area.
I raise this matter because, the Radio Authority having agreed to reconsider the situation, at least one of the bidders is still interested in providing a proper commercial radio station to cover the Doncaster and Bassetlaw area. I do not want the Radio Authority to fob the people of Doncaster off yet again. We are not an outpost of Sheffield. We are fed up with being thought of as one. We have three regional radio stations. The Doncaster evening paper is basically The Star of Sheffield, with an additional two or three sheets.
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury):
I intervene briefly to hand out some medals and to flag up an issue. I have medals for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, her Ministers and the staff of the Department of National Heritage for this remarkable Bill which has achieved a great deal. Legislation will never lead the technological way. It will always be the other way round, I suspect. But I have watched the Bill from the sidelines and it has made remarkable progress. I had hoped that it would address a particular problem, but it has not, so we shall have to wait for the next broadcasting Bill.
I want to flag up the fact that most of the effort seems to go into Britain's highly populated urban areas. However, many people in the United Kingdom live in sparsely populated areas which will never be cabled and where it will probably be impossible to receive satellite programmes, but who cannot receive the news and current affairs programmes which apply to them. I raise this on behalf of my constituents in Wylye, Steeple Langford, Hanging Langford and Amesbury. They cannot receive their local news from the BBC or from commercial television. They have to receive somebody else's local news in which they are completely uninterested. That must have an impact on the advertising revenue of the commercial stations.
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