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Mr. Bryant: Because it is not local. The Chairman: Order. This is an intervention, not a debate on Red Dragon radio station. Mr. Whittingdale: My hon. Friend's intervention is most helpful. Perhaps we should attempt to find a radio station in Britain that he did not play a part in setting up. However, I am in some agreement with the hon. Member for Rhondda on one point. Nobody is saying that there should not be a requirement for some degree of local content and that is a trade-off for the relaxation in ownership rules, which most people would accept. It brings me to the key question: what is local? Most people who listen to a local radio station would say that local means that there should be regular local news items and local traffic reports saying what is happening in Acacia avenue. A local station should participate in local community events, and provide a platform for local musicians and entertainment groups. All that relates to content—about what is broadcast. I am not sure whether, in order to ensure that a station is local, it is necessary to prescribe the location of its studios, who it should employ and measures which are not to do with the content of what is broadcast, but its production. Mr. Bryant: I would be absolutely delighted if Red Dragon, FM which I listen to every day when I am in Wales, provided a platform for local bands. I admit that Kylie Minogue has family from Maesteg, but I do not think that that makes her a local musician that Red Dragon FM is positively promoting by playing her and Robbie Williams 25 times a day. The play list is very prescriptive. That applies to many commercial stations, as they know that it is what succeeds in the market. Mr. Whittingdale: I do not think that there is a great distance between the hon. Gentleman and myself. I agree with him that content is important and I do not dispute the duty on Ofcom to promote local content, although I suspect that if Red Dragon FM played nothing except local bands in garages in the Rhondda and none of Kylie Minogue it might lose listeners rather rapidly, although I am sure that there are extremely good bands in the garages around the Rhondda. Michael Fabricant: When Swansea Sound, the radio station based in Gorseinon, got its licence, its licence was concerned with the provision of Welsh language programming as well as ordinary programming. It built a recording studio as part of its radio station and now finds it under-utilised. Although people like hearing the news in Welsh, they are not so concerned about listening to Welsh music. Mr. Whittingdale: I am sure that the listeners and owners of Red Dragon FM will be fascinated that we have spent so much time arguing about whether or not Column Number: 741 it is local. Let me move on to a more general point. My concern is not so much about content, but about the additional prescriptive nature of the clause in relation to the other factors that the Government appear to consider necessary to prescribe in order for a station to be local. Those are essentially contained in clause 302(4), which says:
It seems to me that who the station employs, how much they train them and how they use their premises are not central to whether or not the station could be defined as local. For that reason a number of the commercial radio companies regard clause 302 as far too prescriptive and that this provision is against the spirit of light-touch regulation. Indeed, the Commercial Radio Companies Association said:
It continues:
The Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting (Dr. Kim Howells): I thank the hon. Gentleman and I have enjoyed listening to him. If he puts down his brief from Mr. Ralph Bernard and his colleagues, is he saying that nobody from a locality should be employed by a radio station, nobody should be trained and that the premises should be somewhere other than the locality? Mr. Whittingdale: Of course I am not saying that. I am saying that it should not be necessary to write into the Bill that Ofcom should be able to judge whether or not a radio station has premises that are local enough to its area in order for it to meet the requirements of the Bill. The broadcasters themselves should decide those matters and as long as the broadcaster is providing a content output that the listener believes to be local, that is what should determine whether or not they meet the local requirement. Mr. Bryant: The logic with which the hon. Gentleman is enticing us is that he would be quite happy if Capital FM broadcast Red Dragon from central London, with nobody based in Cardiff or indeed South Wales. As far as he is concerned, it would still be a local broadcaster. Mr. Whittingdale: My suspicion is that Capital FM would find it very difficult to meet the local content requirement if it were broadcasting from London and did not employ anybody from the Rhondda. However, if that were the case and if the listeners turned to the hon. Gentleman and said ''We think that Red Dragon is a brilliant local station. Its programming is becoming essential to our lives and to understanding the workings of our local community'', the fact that it Column Number: 742 happened to be broadcast out of London rather than the Rhondda valley would not be very important. It might be quite difficult to achieve, but the important factor is what people are listening to. It is the key.Mr. Bryant: I am sorry to harry the hon. Gentleman, but it seems to me that most commercial radio stations have learned in the past 10 years that it is valuable to them physically to place themselves somewhere where there a lot of footfall as local radio is about ownership. However that does not necessarily come from the market. Sometimes commercial broadcasters have to be told. Mr. Whittingdale: The hon. Gentleman is right that broadcasters have learned that that is the case. Michael Fabricant: Totally wrong! Mr. Whittingdale: My hon. Friend is disagreeing with me now. Michael Fabricant: No. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant) is totally wrong. My hon. Friend is right. Mr. Whittingdale: That is all right then. The central point that I am trying to make is that the provision in the Bill should apply to the content of the programmes. I see no reason why the factors listed in subsection (4) should be necessary to be prescribed by statute in order to meet the local content requirement. If they fail to meet the local content requirement they will be in breach of the conditions laid down by Ofcom. Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale): Even if, despite my hon. Friend's articulate rendition of all the arguments against the clause, the Minister still wants to keep the clause in the Bill, as he implied in his own intervention, does my hon. Friend not think that the Committee should consider the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire on the basis that it provides an opportunity for a self-regulatory regime with the powers in clause 302 merely as a long stop should the kind of problems that the hon. Member for Rhondda is suggesting might occur. My hon. Friend and I do not think that they will, but if they did that would be a long-stop power. Surely this should be a self-regulatory matter. Mr. Whittingdale: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. My preferred option would be that the Government take away clause 302, redraft it in a way that is far less prescriptive and less likely to micromanage the workings of individual radio stations. If the Minister is unwilling to do that, the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire will at least represent an improvement on the way in which Ofcom will operate in future, so I would certainly strongly support it. Michael Fabricant: Does it not demonstrate the ignorance of the hon. Member for Rhondda about the way in which broadcasting works, and indeed that of Labour Members, that Swansea Sound is based in Gorseinon near Gowerton, and not in Swansea and Southern Sound is based in Portslade and not in Brighton. The reason for that is that what is important Column Number: 743 is what comes out of a radio loudspeaker and not footfalls as the hon. Member for Rhondda said.Mr. Whittingdale: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, whose knowledge of the location of Welsh radio stations leaves me in amazement. Mr. Bryant: Just to correct the hon. Gentleman, it is self-evident that the ''rocking tower'' which was Capital FM was a significant part of how that station sold itself. It would not have chosen to move to Leicester square unless it thought that its location was important. Mr. Whittingdale: I have probably tried your patience for long enough, Mr. Atkinson. It is now for the Minister to respond.
9.15 amDr. Howells: One of the aspects of local radio that we value most is its localness—its ability to be part of the communities it serves, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda pointed out. To support his argument, let me say that it is sometimes a lot quicker to get from Leicester square to the middle of Cardiff than to get from Treherbert in his constituency to the middle of Cardiff, because the economy is booming, the roads are packed and the railways are full. It is precisely because we value the quality of localness that we want to have a long-stop power to preserve it, and that is what the clause provides. It is not about imposing new obligations on local radio stations, nor about getting involved in the detailed management of stations. It is about ensuring that local radio continues to play a strong and valuable local role. The clause is essentially forward looking. It represents no criticism of what local radio is currently doing; it is about encouraging radio operators to preserve and develop precisely the aspects that make local radio good. Let me try to put the change in context. We have taken enormous steps in the Bill to liberalise the radio market. From the current 70 owners of local radio, the new rules make it possible for us, in time, to have only two dominant owners of local radio in the United Kingdom—both of which, incidentally, could be foreign owned. We believe that those changes will allow the industry to grow. They will be in the interests of the listener, but only if localness is not the victim. While the existing companies argue persuasively that it is in their interests to be local, that could change in a dramatically changed market. The duty in the clause is the safeguard of localness and the quid pro quo for greater liberalisation in the radio market. The clause places a duty on Ofcom. It is designed, first and foremost, to ensure that Ofcom takes seriously its duties towards localness. It requires Ofcom to draw up a code giving guidance to ensure the local content and character of local radio broadcasting. Ofcom will have to consult on that with both the industry and the listeners. The guidance will, in essence, codify and define the requirements already in existing licences: for example, licences may refer to material that is ''locally produced and presented'', and the code could define in greater detail what that means. The code may also influence Column Number: 744 the way in which Ofcom considers matters such as requests for derogations from licence obligations, or its approach to issues such as an acceptable level of networking.The intention underlying new clause 41 appears to be to prevent Ofcom, when drawing up a code on localness, from considering what might be regarded as ''inputs'' and make it concentrate instead on the extent to which a service takes into account ''the expectations of listeners''—a point made by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale). Even if we wanted to, we could not accept the new clause at this stage because it duplicates much of the effect of clause 302 without repealing it, thus causing great uncertainty about what Ofcom's duties will be. Clause 302 allows the code to take into account matters such as local advertising, local employment, opportunities for training and development, and the use of premises in the area. It has been argued that the code goes too wide and that Ofcom has no business involving itself in matters such as premises and the amount of local advertising—a subject that we have just debated briefly—but I strongly believe that such arguments miss the point. The boundaries of the area that Ofcom will be able to examine have deliberately been drawn wide so as to catch all the matters that might be considered to influence the localness of a service. Ofcom does not have to include such matters in the code—that is for Ofcom to decide, but the decision lies largely in the hands of the industry. If it continues to provide good local services, the code is unlikely to touch on those matters; were the industry to drift away from localness, the code might need to be revised. That is the point. The code must be able to include all matters that might be relevant. I should add that I do not accept the basic premise of the amendment, that inputs do not matter. It has long been recognised in broadcast regulation that inputs have a clear and definite effect on outputs. A moment ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda mentioned the importance of location; I agree that that is important. I would not want the example quoted by the hon. Member for Lichfield in a previous sitting, of an American company that tried to centralise production in Australia—the attempt failed miserably—to come to pass here
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 28 January 2003 |
