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8.30 pm
Tessa Jowell: Perhaps I can revert to the hon. Gentleman's point later. I shall continue to set out the case and logic for our amendments. As I said, the general framework in clause 314(1) will pick out aspects of the standards objectives that apply specifically to advertising rather than including the other standards in clause 312, which apply to other sorts of programmes as well as advertising.All the standards objectives in clause 312 apply to television, radio programmes and advertisements when they are relevant.
Let us consider amendments Nos. 117 and 118. The simpler of the two, amendment No. 118, rectifies the omission of referendum broadcasts, to which equivalent provisions to those for party political broadcasts apply. I expect cries of delight from the Opposition Benches.
Amendment No. 117 clarifies clause 314(7). It rectifies a weakness in the Bill's drafting, which has been discussed and came to light in proceedings on an appeal to the Appellate Committee. The interpretation of the provisions appeared likely to cause argument. The appeal was by the BBC against the Court of Appeal judgment that its refusal to broadcast the ProLife Alliance's party election broadcast in 2001 was unlawful. The Department was informed that an argument had been advanced that the draft Bill precluded the application of standards, especially those of taste and decency, to party political broadcasts. It was argued that a party political broadcast need not comply with the standards set by Ofcom under what is now clause 302 because clause 314(7) meant that
transmission could not be prohibited on the grounds of standards. Such a change of policy was not the Government's intention and the Appellate Committee was informed of that. The amendments put the position beyond doubt: the standards objectives apply to all broadcast material.I confirm to the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) that all the objectives in clause 312(2) apply to all programmes, including advertisements.
Mr. Whittingdale: Once again, the steam has gone out of the issue and the Government have proposed an acceptable formula. As the Secretary of State knows, there was genuine concern that the word "unsuitable" was vague and capable of several different interpretations. That contrasted greatly with the existing wording in the codes of the ITC and the Radio Authority, of "misleading, harmful or offensive". It was not clear why the Government wanted to substitute "unsuitable" for the existing wording, and it caused the industry anxiety. However, after the vote in the House of Lords, the Government have tabled an amendment that is acceptable to the industry. We do not therefore wish to oppose the amendment.
On the other two amendments that the Secretary of State has tabled, I was delighted to hear that the ban on political advertising will also take into account a ban on advertising in any future referendum campaign. She was careful not to say when such a ban might have to be used, but I trust that it will not be for some considerable time. On that basis, I have no further comments.
Lords amendment No. 116 disagreed to.
Government amendments (a) to (e) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 115 and 116 agreed to.
Lords amendments 117 to 129 agreed to.
Lords amendment: No, 130.
Tessa Jowell: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Government amendments (a) to (l) in lieu thereof.
Tessa Jowell: The Government are asking the House to overturn amendments made in another place to remove all restrictions on religious bodies holding broadcasting licences. We do not think that it is right to remove those restrictions in their entirety, but we have listened carefully and sympathetically to the many points raised in debates in this House and the other place. The amendments offered in lieu address many of the concerns raised by this issue.
Earlier today, I spoke to the Bishop of Manchester and outlined to him the steps that the Government intended to take, and the argument on this issue that we intended to put to the House tonight. I had met the bishop some weeks ago in his capacity as leader of a
delegation of Members of the House of Lords and others who were concerned about this issue. He felt that progress had been made as a result of those discussions.Before explaining why we think that the restrictions should be reintroduced, albeit in a modified form, I would like to emphasise that the Government are not in any sense anti-religious, or opposed to religious broadcasters or religious broadcasting. We recognise that faith communities play an integral part in the life of the UK and should be reflected in the broadcast media. We also firmly recognise that religious programming is an important element of public service broadcasting, and have amended the Bill to ensure that it can better be reflected in the Bill's definition of public service broadcasting.
Our amendments require public service broadcasters to include programmes providing history, news and information about different religions and other beliefs, as well as showing acts of worship and other ceremonies. In terms of the BBC, the 1996 agreement between the corporation and the Government identifies religious programmes as a specific strand to be provided within the corporation's television and radio services in the UK. The BBC remains committed to religious broadcasting across its services. Its statements of programme policy for the current year include an undertaking to provide 112 hours of religious programming across BBC1 and BBC2, which I welcome.
The Bill will remove all unnecessary restrictions on religious bodies holding licences. Religious bodies can already hold a wide range of licences offering significant broadcasting opportunities, including local analogue radio licences and licences for radio and TV cable and satellite services. The Bill will widen those opportunities still further, allowing religious bodies to hold licences to allow them to provide national and local digital radio services, digital terrestrial TV services and TV restricted services.
Those changes brought in by the Bill have been widely welcomed. Listening to some of the commentators, however, one could get the impression that there was a complete ban on religious broadcasters holding any licences. That is not the case. The only remaining significant restrictions on religious bodies holding broadcasting licences will relate to Channel 3 and Channel 5, national analogue radio licences and multiplex licences.
To put all that in context, under our proposals religious bodies will be unable to hold 20 licences for broadcasting programmes—the 16 ITV licences, the Channel 5 licence and the three national radio licences. They can, however, hold any of the almost 900 cable, satellite and digital broadcasting licences. As a matter of fact, religious bodies currently hold about 40 UK broadcasting licences of one sort or another.
Our policy, reflected throughout the many debates on the Bill, is to have as few restrictions as necessary. We allow religious bodies to hold different kinds of broadcasting licences where that is consistent with satisfying as many viewers and listeners as possible and giving equal respect to everyone's beliefs. We wish to avoid a situation where, through scarcity of
broadcasting spectrum allocated to a particular kind of licence, some religions achieve access to the airwaves but others do not. Where there is no broadcast spectrum scarcity—such as with cable and satellite—there are no restrictions, because there are sufficient opportunities for several religions to offer services, and for other non-religious services to co-exist with them, to offer a diversity of services. It follows that restrictions could be removed in the event that significant new broadcasting spectrum became available. That would not require primary legislation, but could be done by order.It also follows that in the event of any new classes of licence being introduced, we will carefully consider whether religious organisations should be able to hold them. There will not be a presumption that they cannot. The decision will turn, as now, on a question of broadcast spectrum scarcity. As I will explain later, we are proposing to amend the Bill to reinforce that point.
I should like to concentrate on the case for the continuing restriction on national analogue radio licences. There are at present only three national analogue licences, and there is not enough spectrum to allow more services of that kind. Given that, we believe that it would not be appropriate for one of those licences to go to a religious organisation. That is because we do not think that a religious radio service, however popular it might be with many, would have sufficient appeal to justify its having one of only three national licences. To that is added our concern that it would be invidious, and perhaps unfair, for only one religion to have a national station while the others did not.
The effect of the Bill will be to increase substantially the range of licences that religious organisations can hold. The restrictions that remain relate to areas of broadcasting where the opportunities to broadcast are limited due to scarcity of spectrum.
It has been suggested that a decision on whether to award a licence to a religious body should be left to Ofcom's discretion. I do not agree. One of the aims of the present, limited disqualification is that scarce spectrum should be used to satisfy as many viewers and listeners as possible. Although I wish neither to denigrate the religious stations that exist nor to deny that they do a good job on their own terms and have a very loyal listenership, all the evidence is that such services do not have mass appeal.
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