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Nick Harvey: I echo the disappointment of the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) that at the end of our long and tortuous process and after there have been sensible compromises and progress toward a consensus on so many issues, the Government have not met their opponents halfway on this matter. They continue to want to include a blatantly discriminatory measure in primary legislation to provide who can and cannot hold broadcasting licences on the basis of who those people are. No account is taken of what they would want to do with the licence or their programme format or content or market ploy. The Government simply want to use primary legislation to ban people on the basis of who they are. That is fundamentally wrong. Despite the Secretary of State's confident assurances about the human rights implications, I am convinced that that will catch up with them in the fullness of time and they will be found to be wrong. It is not possible to begin to justify the proposal in fundamental principle.
9.15 pm
As hon. Members said, the Government proposal is not necessary. We have equipped Ofcom with a raft of tools that it can use to regulate the media, any number of which would be applicable. It has close powers over the format of radio stations and their programming. If they get into a realm that is faintly political—I questioned witnesses on this when they came before the Pre-legislative Scrutiny Committee—they are subject to the same rules on impartiality and balance as others in the media. The addition of the plurality test gives Ofcom a serious way of dealing with spectrum scarcity.
The Government have grappled with the absurd principle that the licences should be granted to the highest bidder. If they want to find a way out of the conundrum they should re-examine that idea. It is far fetched to maintain that British society, culture or democracy is under threat from people who want to play Christian music on the radio. I do not understand the Government's concern about that.
David Burnside (South Antrim): In the part of the UK that I come from, religion is, perhaps, slightly higher up the list of topics for discussion, both historically and at present, than it is in other parts of the UK. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is no support from any part of the political spectrum in my area for discrimination
against the religious sector's ability to have total access to broadcasting under the right regulatory framework? Does that not say something to the rest of the UK?
Nick Harvey: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says. If the idea does not raise hackles in his community in Northern Ireland, that gives the lie to the view that the matter is of great concern to all.
It is a human rights issue. I am told that the religious freedom rapporteur of the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, has decided to investigate religious disqualification in UK broadcasting law. That does not surprise me. One would expect that because it is so very wrong in basic principle. As hon. Members said, no other country is resorting to such crude methods to control who broadcasts.
We should remember that we are talking about religious persons as well as religious bodies. For example, the formula adopted by the Government will disqualify Olave Snelling, a broadcaster and former trustee with London Premier radio in the independent sector, from applying in consortium with others for national analogue TV or radio licence, yet she previously produced BBC national religious radio and TV programmes, for which she received licence fee-payers' money. We clearly thought that that was in the public good. If she wants to produce similar programmes for a similar audience, she will be banned from doing so and cast into darkness as an unfit person.
The Government have to go further. Re-imposing the disqualification will drive yet more of our UK religious broadcast companies into the hands of European partners and some of those will start to use serious financial muscle to challenge the disqualification in the courts. I believe that the Government's case will eventually come apart. I do not know what consideration they have given to the impact of that or what it will cost.
Mr. Timms: I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman's argument with interest. Does he accept that the central concern of the effective and well supported campaign on the issue has been that religiously owned radio stations should have access to digital national licences, which the Bill allows? The central concern has not been analogue licences.
Nick Harvey: I hear the Minister's point. Among those who campaigned on the issues, different people will have had different concerns—depending on whether one talked to a bishop or to a more commercially mobilised operator. My concern is that it is fundamentally wrong to ban in primary legislation particular people or organisations from being allowed even to apply for a broadcast licence. We have regulators who are perfectly capable of sorting the wheat from the chaff and of deciding what constitutes a balanced programme for the public within a scarce spectrum. The Government are simply wrong and will have to go back to the drawing board.
Mr. Lansley: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) on this matter, but I should like to reinforce one or two points.
The exchange with the Secretary of State on the availability of spectrum under spectrum trading adequately demonstrated that, although the Government contend that the argument is about scarce spectrum, it is not. They cannot offer an answer when tested on their proposition in the light of additional spectrum becoming available. They are proposing a ban that will apply regardless of the amount of additional spectrum that is made available, even though Ministers could then make an order to modify such change.
When the Secretary of State compared the proposed ban with one on political organisations, she demonstrated that the argument is not about spectrum scarcity. The Government say not that they are stopping political organisations owning such licences because of the scarcity of spectrum, but that—they said this to the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee—political organisations should continue to be banned from holding licences because they are not satisfied that such organisations or those holding office in them would be able to operate with the necessary impartiality. Nobody is disputing that point; we are disputing that that proposition should not apply to religious bodies.
The hon. Member for South Antrim (David Burnside) got to the point of the matter. One can well understand how granting one political party access to licences would be seen as undermining other political organisations that are directly in competition with it. Indeed, the entire population would probably regard such a move as unhealthy for our democracy. I do not find people from religious bodies saying, "If church X has access to a licence, church Y will be unhappy about it." I do not find people contending that religious organisations and persons—we must keep remembering this—holding office in them are somehow in competition with one another for a limited amount of spectrum, the purpose of which is to proselytise and evangelise.
The religious context is unlike politics and the other contexts in which we have imposed bans because there are people who live their lives in a religious context. It is not right for us to discriminate against those who participate in religious bodies as office holders and want also to be active broadcasters, perhaps owning licences. I do not want us either to discriminate against those who live their lives in a religious context and want broadcast organisations that reflect their lives and provide them with a service.
Mr. Paul Marsden (Shrewsbury and Atcham): I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that there is deep unease among many constituents and many Members on this issue? Is it not another example of the Government's control freakery and their need to be able control everything in sight?
Mr. Lansley: The hon. Gentleman is making his own point about the Government. He has his own experience of the Government, which no doubt justifies his remarks. I shall not make such a crude political remark at the end of a stimulating and consensual debate in almost every other respect. However, the hon. Gentleman is right about the degree of concern. For reasons that are becoming increasingly difficult to discern, the Government are persisting in a blatant piece of legislative discrimination. We have reached the point where we cannot find any realistic prospect of religious
organisations coming forward to apply for licences, as my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford said.
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) was getting to the heart of the matter when he referred to the highest bidder? Is it a question of the Government choosing mammon rather than God?
Mr. Lansley: I hope that that would not be the case.
I do not think that the Government were getting anywhere near the heart of the matter when it came to the issue of the highest bidder. When these licences are to be provided, there is a backstop power so that the licences cannot necessarily be exercised in ways that would be contrary to the intentions that lie behind the legislation.
That is the curiosity. We do not have practical examples of what would contravene the Government's intentions. The Government talk about having to define licences that cannot be obtained, but at the same time leave in amendment (f), which is proposed in lieu of the Lords amendment, a mechanism that would require Ofcom to make determinations before people are able to apply for and exercise other licences. This strand of discrimination is still running right through the structure of the proposed legislation.
It seems that within that structure, if the Government have realistic concerns about the nature of the way in which the licences would be held and used by religious bodies or persons associated with those bodies, Ofcom has the powers to deal with that situation. At the point of acquisition or of merger, if a large organisation is involved, the media merger rules and the media plurality test could bite. They could bite on anybody who was likely to prejudice the achievement of the standards objective that is set out in clause 312. If that objective was not contravened or if the licence was not of sufficient size to justify such a test, the fact of the licence itself and Ofcom's control over it mean that anyone who owns such a licence would not be able to use it in ways that would be prejudicial to the public interest. I find it difficult to understand why this discrimination is persisting. In these circumstances I would prefer that we accepted, with the Lords, that the discrimination should be done away with rather than sending anything back in lieu.
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