House of Commons
Wednesday 28 April 1999
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Broadcasting (Regional Coverage)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]
9.34 am
Dr. George Turner (North-West Norfolk): I am delighted to have the opportunity to introduce this Adjournment debate on an issue of such importance to my constituents. My good fortune in securing the debate enables the House to discuss one of the major issues addressed by the Digital Television Broadcasting Bill, which I introduced last week under the ten-minute rule.
I shall briefly remind the House of the specific nature of the problem, which concerns terrestrial television. The services of each regional television broadcaster are transmitted from specific locations. However, in some areas, the lie of the land and the physical characteristics of UHF electromagnetic waves prevent some communities from receiving signals from the transmitters assigned to their appropriate regional broadcaster. Instead, the signal from a transmitter targeted at a different region may be the only one that they are able to receive. Those viewers can watch only regional programming services intended for others. That is the problem.
For many years, solutions that used additional transmitters or relays have been constrained by the number of channels possible when using analogue broadcasting, and by the severe interference problems when adjacent transmitters are not well separated in frequency. That also explains why analogue broadcasting has had genuine difficulty in providing more than four universal channels. Not surprisingly, many of my constituents cannot receive Channel 5.
Many thousands in west Norfolk are affected: the borough council has estimated the figure to be as many as 20,000 households, which represents an audience of up to 51,000 people. My constituents are angry about this situation. More than 5,000 of them were sufficiently motivated to write to the King's Lynn Citizen to say so. All of them want something to be done so that they are able to watch their own regional television programmes.
In preparing for this debate, I have taken the time to check whether my constituents are alone in the importance that they attach to receiving the correct regional television programmes. The facts are interesting. Since 1970, the Independent Television Authority, the Independent Broadcasting Authority and, most recently, the Independent Television Commission have monitored public attitudes towards a number of broadcasting issues, in particular viewers' preferences for a range of programme types.
Over the past decade, news items have come right at the top of the list of programmes that viewers say they are most interested in seeing on television. Of crucial relevance to this debate is the fact that, since 1995, regional news has overtaken national news as the most popular of all programme types. Indeed, in the most recently available survey, 90 per cent. of the British public said that they wanted to see regional news: that is 30 per cent. more than those wanting to watch soap operas. It is not surprising that my constituents and those of other right hon. and hon. Members are up in arms, because the programmes that they most want to see are the very programmes denied to them.
We should also bear in mind the growing importance of community and regional identities in our everyday life. My constituents are served by a health authority, social services, education services, library services, police and fire services, all of which are administered on a county basis within Norfolk. The Government have, through the establishment of regional development agencies, made it clear that local identity within regions is increasingly important. Ministers are currently encouraging communities to become involved in the development of community safety strategies and local transport strategies, and they see a strong role for the community in developing policies on access to the countryside. Is there not a serious democratic deficit if people do not have access to news and information about their own communities via the most popular and effective medium?
Heacham, in my Norfolk constituency, provides a clear example. Heacham is a particularly large village which, in television terms, is cut off from its own region. Residents can receive only Yorkshire Television. It is common that local events, even those filmed in the village, cannot be seen on television by residents. Although Yorkshire Television, to its credit, includes some items from Norfolk, residents are understandably dissatisfied that the bulk of its regional news programmes focuses on issues in Yorkshire.
Last week, I gave the House a specific example of a reconstruction of a serious crime that took place in Heacham. It was broadcast on Anglia Television, but could not be seen by Heacham residents, who were the most likely witnesses. People in Heacham do not shop in Bradford, they are rarely in Leeds, and they are not particularly interested in the local goings-on in Grimsby. Like the majority of viewers around the country, they want to know what is going on under their noses in their own communities.
Mr. Brian Cotter (Weston-super-Mare):
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would be interested to know that people in my constituency, especially in an area called Bleadon Hill, cannot get the correct regional programmes, and can only get programmes in the Welsh language, which is difficult for them.
Dr. Turner:
The hon. Gentleman's constituents must be even more cross than mine if they cannot even understand what they are hearing. As that intervention has shown, west Norfolk is far from alone in suffering from these problems. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport informs me that other affected communities are to be found in many parts of the country: in the Scottish borders, Fort William, all the border areas between Wales and England, parts of Yorkshire, such as Harrogate,
Shortly after becoming a Member myself, I secured a short Adjournment debate dealing with the problems in North-West Norfolk. As a former engineer, I could sympathise with the real difficulties explained to me bythe technical experts. There are myriad interference problems--as well as the need for our part of the country to be good neighbours with broadcasters in Europe. I am pleased to say that, following that debate, work commissioned by the Independent Television Commission and the BBC has identified scope for the addition of one more analogue relay in Heacham. I hope that that soon becomes a reality. I was glad to note that Heacham parish council had offered land for it. Nevertheless, although the relay will help everyone in Heacham, it appears that others elsewhere can be offered little help if solutions are limited to analogue broadcasting.
British television is now in the most significant period of change in its history following the arrival of digital broadcasting techniques. The new technology allows full use of modern computing techniques; it is also far more efficient than the analogue system with which we have grown up. Many more channels can be included in the same frequency space, and good reception can be achieved with transmitters working with anything from 10 per cent. down to 1 per cent. of the power levels used by analogue. The modulation techniques used are far less susceptible to interference problems between transmitters.
Digital television offers the possibility not only of introducing a range of new public and commercial services, but of eliminating anomalies in regional television coverage. This is a golden opportunity, and we must seize it.
Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney):
Twenty-five per cent. of all relay stations in the United Kingdom are in Wales. Unless the ITC has a programme for the diversion of those stations, digital terrestrial television will not reach millions of viewers, not only in Wales, but in the rest of the United Kingdom.
Dr. Turner:
My hon. Friend will be pleased to learn that our objective can be achieved through the use of the larger number of channels available to digital terrestrial television to make simulcasting possible.
Mr. John Healey (Wentworth):
My hon. Friend makes a persuasive case for the potential of digital television to solve some of the problems of regional broadcasting. Does he agree that digital television is the medium through which Government will be able to deliver a range of public services? Should not Government be considering questions relating to regulation and incentives for the securing of that public service access, while the ground rules for the new medium and its technologies are being established?
Dr. Turner:
That is an excellent point, to which I shall refer later.
Simulcasting involves a transmitter delivering more than one regional variation. If the transmitter broadcasting Yorkshire Television to my constituents also broadcast Anglia Television, viewers could choose which to watch. Alternatively, solutions in some areas might involve a different deployment of transmitters and power levels. Engineers in the industry have confirmed that those possible solutions are entirely feasible. The options will be made immensely easier as and when analogue switch-off frees the spectrum.
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