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10.45 pm
Mrs. Anne Campbell: I shall be brief. The Broadcasting Bill has raised an interesting mixture of technical and political issues. We have touched on several matters that have not been mentioned so far on Third Reading such as our failed attempt to strengthen the equal opportunities provisions. I hope that we shall redress that, perhaps in the next broadcasting Bill.
I would offer my congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) on persuading the Government to relent on the facilities for people with disabilities, particularly in respect of subtitling, signing and audio description for people with vision disabilities. That was a major triumph for which many people will be grateful for many years to come.
I am sorry that we did not succeed in amending the Bill to strengthen the notion of quality, as it is a key issue. There has to be a balance between quality and hard commercial decisions, particularly when they involve new technology that is not certain to get off the ground. However, most of us feel that any effort that is put into providing digital terrestrial television would include the facility to produce high-quality programmes.
Parliament is always better at being reactive rather than pro-active and I regret that we have not been able to take account of the way in which the technology is developing.
Several hon. Members referred to converging technologies--telephony, computers and television--but few of us are in a position to make projections as to the implications of those converging technologies.
We shall need another broadcasting Bill within a short time as the way in which the Government have framed the clauses on cross-media ownership will prove unworkable and will become totally irrelevant within two years.
Reference has been made to set-top boxes and open standards. I expect that manufacturers are convinced that open standards are a good idea. If they were not convinced before, they will have been persuaded by the fact that IBM licensed its operating system to other manufacturers and made a great deal of money, whereas Apple Mac chose to remain technically isolated and lost its market share. There are two lessons to be learnt from that. First, open standards work and can be advantageous in the market and secondly, technical superiority does not necessarily prevail. It is rather curious that the market does not always win. Most people who are familiar with computing technology would agree that Apple Mac is far superior to IBM, yet IBM has triumphed because of its marketing rather than its technical quality.
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale):
I did not expect us to have an opportunity to debate the Bill on Third Reading. I apologise for not being present at the beginning of the debate.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), I served on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill that became the Broadcasting Act 1990. As an adviser to Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television, however, I felt unable to serve on the Committee that considered this Bill: the future of Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television's ownership is clearly affected by some its provisions.
The real question, which has been lost in many debates on the Bill, is why we should have such a Bill at all. Essentially its purpose is to provide a framework for digital television, and in that respect the Government must be congratulated: we seem to be ahead of the game compared with other western European countries. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet said, it is impossible through legislation to drive what will happen in either technology or the market, but at least when the Bill is passed, Britain will have a framework. As our debates on the 1990 legislation made clear, people talk of prescribing quality, but it is impossible to guarantee where the money will come from to pay for that quality.
The lesson that we have learnt over the past five or six years, in radio as much as in television, is that those in the industry know far better than us politicians what will work and what the British people, as viewers and listeners, will accept, support and subscribe to. It is somewhat ironic that Classic FM, although never
prescribed in the 1990 legislation, has had such a success with only a glimmer of a legislative framework establishing what it should do. It has been successful because those who run it know how to run a radio station.
One of the main arguments during our debates on the Bill has concerned the future of Channel 4. When we debated the 1990 legislation, we were accused of giving Channel 4 an opportunity to secure its own advertising revenue, and of effectively selling it down the river. We put its remit on the statute book, and by and large that has worked. Channel 4 has been extremely successful in selling its own air time, to the point where channel 3 is receiving money back from it instead of the money going the other way. That should tell us that, while we have a close interest in the quality of our broadcast media, we often underestimate the ability of the talented people in broadcasting to know what works best. As a result of that ability we have some of the best broadcasting in the world, and we are all concerned about its future.
As the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) pointed out, there are clouds on the horizon that we cannot ignore and I shall deal with two. We have not dealt with them in the Bill, but that is not the end of the world: we can still consider them. First, there is a gross inequality in what some channel 3 licence holders pay for the right to hold a licence. We should have provided for an early review of the matter, but that is still possible; we do not have to put it in the Bill.
Secondly, there is a gross anomaly because channel 3 pays almost £400 million a year to the Treasury while BSkyB, Channel 4 and other commercial broadcasters pay nothing. We must look ahead five or 10 years. As the right hon. Member for Gorton has said, if the ITV audience continues to shrink, as it must when all the other channels come on stream, what will be the ultimate solution? There will have to be a more equitable take of advertising revenue across the television spectrum and more people are beginning to realise that. That is as important for the Chancellor as what we pass in the Bill. The House will need to return to that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) alluded to the fact that in many ways new technology is great for urban areas but does not do much for rural areas. In large areas of my constituency, one planning restriction or another means that a satellite dish cannot be put on the roof. Cable television is 10 to 15 years down the line, but large parts of north Yorkshire will not be able to receive Channel 5 unless my hon. Friend the Minister for Science and Technology, whom I am glad to see in his place, and his Department agree to release channel 35 in the spectrum to Channel 5. That channel will be in direct competition with Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television. Perhaps I should conclude on that happy note.
Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston):
It has been fascinating to take part in the debates on the Bill. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with hon. Members of all parties in the past few months. I congratulate my hon.
I do not mean to be disrespectful to the Minister when I say that the Bill has been legislation on the hoof. The way in which we deal with such matters shows that there is an underlying weakness in our procedures. Fast-moving technology meant that some of the Government's first ideas were overtaken by events and better ideas emerged. A good example of my concern occurred last night when we dealt with sensory impairment. I intervened on the Secretary of State during that debate. There was good will among all parties when we dealt with the clause relating to that, but we were not able to address some of the technical issues on the delivery of resources. We could not even answer some of the basic questions about the cost of the requisite technology. That was unfortunate.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) correctly explained how technology has taken a grip on the media. In Committee, I raised that issue in the context of local services in my area. Local newspapers are owned by Trinity Holdings, which has a monopoly on all such newspapers in my area. I do not regard that as a threat because it has exercised proper editorial control over the various parts of its empire and there is a diversity of newspapers in the region. It may seek to take a share in or buy a radio station--there is plenty of swapping and changing in this sector. Again, if it kept that clear editorial control, that would not be a problem. The public interest issue needs to be dealt with in the context of such companies seeking to give viewers, listeners and readers the same thing, with one particular editorial slant. Clearly, that is not in the public interest.
Our problem with the cross-media ownership debate, some of which became more heated than anything else during an interesting Committee, was that we were starting not with a blank sheet of paper but with a hotch-potch of different mixes of media ownership throughout the country and in different mediums. As a consequence, the debate was about what were, after all, arbitrary figures. That shows that we have not been able to deal adequately with some of the important issues.
In Committee, the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) referred, in an exchange, I think, with the Minister, to the Internet site of The Daily Telegraph. What comprises the circulation of The Daily Telegraph? Is it made up just of the hard copies that it sells to people through its normal outlets? Does it include the 100,000 copies, or whatever the figure is, that it gives away to British Rail customers, or does it include its Internet site? It is difficult to give a definition of circulation.
The same is true of some of the more sophisticated magazine sites on the Internet. Where does one draw the boundaries between what is conventionally a magazine in hard copy, what is in electronic form and, increasingly, magazines that provide electronic clips? When we have video on demand on the television networks, we will be able to watch a film or a news item at our leisure and when we choose to do so. Broadcasting and magazines will become remarkably close.
One of the weaknesses of this complicated sector is the procedures that we have used. I commend to hon. Members the report of the Hansard Society Commission
on the legislative process, which was published in, I think, 1991. In appendix 5, it sets out a case study on the Broadcasting Act 1990 and gives some good reasons why legislation such as this requires a different approach. It makes an extremely powerful argument that we should have hearings from experts during the passage of such legislation in future. I hope that Procedure Committee members will consider the matter carefully in the context of that case study of the Broadcasting Act and of this Bill.
The Minister does not entirely disagree with my view. In an interesting exchange of letters, I brought to his attention an essay that I was using as a source, unusually because it was written by Boutros Boutros-Ghali. In our exchange of correspondence, the Minister agreed that, in this sector, the methodology that we were adopting was a weakness. I hope that I am not misinterpreting what he said.
In Committee, the Minister said:
We have debated a number of particularly important issues. Obviously, the role of the media in a democracy and free society is important. We need to exploit the technologies that are available to us in the interest not just of our internal broadcasting media but of Great Britain plc. Massive export opportunities arise from the technologies at our disposal. We have a huge area of talent and expertise from which we can benefit.
"However, I remind members of the Committee that we are dealing with an interim Bill. No one here is in any doubt but that we shall have to return to the issue within the next three, four or five years."
I intervened and said, "In two years." The Minister said:
"The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston says two years, and he could well be right."--[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 4 June 1996; c. 462.]
That is the difficulty. It is interim legislation in an area of rapid change.
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