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Mr. Sutcliffe: This Third Reading debate epitomises where we need to be with the Bill and its effect on our constituents. We all know constituents with tremendous debt and credit problems. I shall put the matter in context. We have discussed how matters have evolved since the 1974 Act with increased confidence because we have had a stable economy and people have been able to use credit as a tool for good. I referred earlier to how important it is to consider the amount of disposable income that is spent on personal debt.
The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) said that debt is a problem and out of control. I do not accept that. The organisations involved in debt relief accept that a small number of people have debt-related problems, but that most people can handle credit as a useful tool. It is important to legislate 30 years on to ensure that the industry acts responsibly with appropriate marketing strategies and that consumers know the full facts of what affects them when they enter an agreement.
The hon. Member for Eddisbury knows that I always try to be open and to make information available. I am grateful for the comments of the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce). I have tried to keep Opposition spokespeople in touch with developments.
Mr. Laurence Robertson:
I did not have the chance to speak on Third Reading, but I thank the Minister for the open and courteous way in which he has treated the official Opposition throughout the Bill's proceedings.
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Mr. Sutcliffe: In that spirit, if the hon. Member for Eddisbury feels that the issues he raised were not dealt with in Committee, I will write to him about the detail. He referred to guidance and the Office for Fair Trading, and I want to respond to that major point. I wrote to him before the Committee about the OFT and he was kind enough to take the point about its enforcement activity. I think that that is where the confusion has arisen, because we never intended the OFT to decide on the test of unfairness—it will respond to the outcome of the courts' decisions—so there is no list. There can be no list, for the reasons that I have stated, in terms of the unfairness test, but that is not to accept the point that there is no association with unfairness. As I have said throughout the debate, the variety of bodies are clear about what fairness and unfairness mean and I am sure that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we can work within that framework.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab): Does the Minister agree that the Bill in large measure depends for its bite on the effectiveness of the Office of Fair Trading? He will know, because I expressed this in Committee, that I, along with other hon. Members, have some doubts about the historic effectiveness of the OFT. That is particularly the case in relation to an inquiry on late payment charges—penalty charges on credit card holders, many of whom are on very low incomes—which the OFT has been conducting for nearly a year but for which it still cannot give a concluding date. After this debate, would the Minister, to give Members some confidence, make a point of ensuring that the OFT comes to a fairly speedy although considered conclusion to that inquiry?
Mr. Sutcliffe: I undertake to do that, but my hon. Friend has made the point and he knows that the OFT is regulated. It has to produce an annual report and it has regular meetings with the Secretary of State and me, and clearly we can raise these issues at those meetings. It was Parliament that decided to give powers to the OFT, through the Enterprise Act 2002 and the Competition Act 1998, and I hope that hon. Members will respect that.
The Bill is a vital piece of legislation and I hope that the other place will recognise that. It is true that there can never be unconditional Opposition support for Bills, but I think it is agreed that this has not been treated as a party political Bill, perhaps with the exception of the contribution by the hon. Member for Eddisbury, for understandable reasons. It has been generally a matter of consensus.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien:
While we are having a tiny bit of knockabout, let us not lose sight of the fact that Her Majesty's official Opposition are not dividing the House on this issue and indeed are supporting the Bill's progress. I am grateful to the Minister for recognising that he might want to write in relation to some of the points that have been raised. Particularly as, for once, we are not in a time-limited Third Reading debate so we can explore these matters, it is important to state that the letter that he wrote to me, for which I was very grateful, following Second Reading, said that the OFT would provide a note to the House Library, before the Bill reached Committee stage, on the guidance that it would issue. The Library says that it never received that,
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which is why I was concerned. I am grateful for his explanation, and if it can be made available before the Lords stages I dare say that would help to clear the matter up.
Mr. Sutcliffe: In the same spirit, I will try to clarify the situation.
I do not want to detain the House, which has not even divided on this legislation. I am grateful for the amount of work that has been done by the Bill team and all those who have been involved. It is important that the House of Lords recognise the spirit of consensus in this place and bear that in mind when it addresses the issues that we have raised. I commend the Bill to the House.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): With permission, I shall put together motions 2 to 6.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
That the draft Company Directors Disqualification (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 20th January, be approved.
That the draft Insolvency (Northern Ireland) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 24th January, be approved.
That the draft Data Protection (Subject Access Modification) (Social Work) (Amendment) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 26th January, be approved.
That the Code of Audit Practice for local government bodies (2005), a copy of which was laid before this House on 27th January, be approved.
That the Code of Audit Practice for local NHS bodies (2005), which was laid before this House on 27th January, be approved.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
That the Town and Country Planning (Temporary Stop Notice) (England) Regulations 2005, (S.I., 2005, No. 206), dated 3rd February 2005, be referred to a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con): Looking at the Order Paper, I was wondering whether the Minister would be able to explain to me and to other hon. Members why this piece of delegated legislation was to be referred to a Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe): There was a request to do that, and the Government were happy to comply with hon. Members' requests.
Question put and agreed to.
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ITV News Programming
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
5.14 pm
Mr. Eric Joyce (Falkirk, West) (Lab): The Scottish Media Group—SMG—is a highly successful independent media group, which is headquartered in Glasgow, but represented across Scotland. For my constituents, the assets most associated with the company are Scottish Television and Grampian Television. However, SMG is also well known for owning the Virgin Radio, Pearl & Dean and Primesite brands.
SMG has been on its own news recently for a couple of reasons; first, because of an active attempt by other interests to purchase Virgin Radio against the wishes of the present board—something that, if successful, some commentators have suggested would precipitate the break-up of SMG as a whole. Such a development might have implications for the quality of independent production and broadcasting, including news broadcasting, in Scotland. I shall briefly mention that later. However, my main purpose today is to deal with the main reason why SMG has been in its own and other broadcasters' news—the group's proposals to opt out of the main UK ITN news bulletin at 22.30, and instead produce a Scottish bulletin to go out on terrestrial television at the same time as the UK version.
The Minister's locus in all this is, as the House will be aware, that public sector service broadcasting obligations are regulated by Ofcom, and it is for my right hon. Friend to set the framework of that regulation. Ofcom exists under the Communications Act 2003 to ensure that the market delivers the right outcomes. The role of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is to ensure that the 2003 Act continues to reflect the Government's intended policy.
Decisions taken by Ofcom, therefore, must be fully independent of the Government, but over time, it is for the DCMS to decide whether the pattern of Ofcom's decisions is in line not only with current regulation, but with what was intended in the current legislation. In addressing this issue, I am neither calling on the Minister to intervene in an area that is Ofcom's preserve, nor to legislate in any way. My intention is simply to ask for an assurance that the Minister and the Department will take account of the processes that are now under way when, in future, consideration is given to whether the legislation should be amended.
I want to set out the context of the SMG proposals and raise some of their implications for Scotland as a whole. At present, the ITN news bulletin at 22.30, which is fronted by Sir Trevor McDonald, is as much of an institution in Scotland as across the rest of the UK. The main bulletin is augmented by regional programmes, which are different for the two stations: Scottish Television, which covers central Scotland, and Grampian, which covers the highlands. Anyone lucky enough to live in Perth, where I grew up, has a dizzying array of two stations to flip between—a forerunner, I suppose, albeit fairly modest, of today's digital options.
As I understand it, ITN is the nominated news provider and is contracted to provide a main news bulletin service, which is networked across the
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independent stations in much the same way as BSkyB is currently contracted to provide the Channel 5 service. I have spoken to colleagues about their constituents' perspectives on the UK-wide bulletin, and on the whole, people seem to have a broadly positive impression across the UK.
The content of main ITN news bulletins is, of course, a mixture of international and national news stories. As hon. Members know, regional news programmes carrying regional stories augment the main ITN bulletin for each regional licence-holding station. The judgment on what kind of story, and how big a story, gets into the national bulletin, is, of course, an editorial one. However, in general, it is fair to say that, while regional bulletins will run follow-on stories if a nationally covered story happens locally, much of the regional content consists of stories of interest mainly—or only—to those who live in the local area.
I said earlier that people across the country have a similarly positive view of the main ITN bulletin, and that is true of the regional programme, too. Although that is true in Scotland, the implications of the mix of regional and national are different from those in the English regions, because of devolution. People in the English regions watch regional bulletins primarily because they are interested in what is going on at local level. However, they are less likely to see international and major news and current affairs through the prism of their localised regional identity.
Following devolution, with many important powers devolved to Edinburgh, things are different in Scotland. Indeed, in Scotland, Scotland is not generally considered to be a region, but a nation. That can be a little confusing because it is not, of course, sovereign. However, far from the small minority of the nationalist persuasion, many people view themselves as part of two nations: Scotland and, from a sovereign point of view, the UK. That means that there is greater likelihood today than heretofore that people will look out at the rest of the UK through a different lens than they did before 1999, when devolution was delivered by this Labour Government.
News and current affairs debates in Scotland, just like those about deeper matters of arts and culture, tend to take place along a continuum. At one end, people see everything through the prism of a Scottish identity, and at the other from a UK identity to the exclusion of the Scottish dimension. Some might consider those extreme manifestations of nationalism on one hand and unionism on the other, but the fact is that when considering such issues Scots tend to sit somewhere between the two, striking a good balance.
Devolution saw the Scottish Parliament take up many of the political issues that from a news bulletin point of view seem closer on a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month basis to the lives of Scots. News and current affairs in Scotland have had to evolve to fit the new political ecology. That has meant, for example, a transfer of news gathering and reporting resources from Westminster to Edinburgh, although it should be said that new resources have been deployed and there has been significant growth in the amount of political news reporting in Scotland, in all types of the media but particularly on television.
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On the whole, technical standards of news gathering and reporting, and all the associated skills of editing, producing and so on, are of a pretty high standard in Scotland. There is a thriving media community and there is a considerable focus in political stories on areas of policy that have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
In addition to legislative devolution and the new configuration of news professionals on the ground, the news agenda in Scotland has been greatly influenced by the creation of many jobs that interface with and inform it. Many of those new jobs are to be found in non-governmental organisations, non-departmental public bodies and of course the voluntary and private sectors. Those organisations have oftentimes up-scaled their Scottish media-orientated operations as a response to devolution. That has tended to create a culture in which people are more likely on a host of domestic issues to look in the first instance for a Scottish rather than a UK perspective.
At one level, that can be technically very straightforward. For example, debate and development of secondary school curriculums will be conducted on the basis that people are primarily interested in what is going on in Scotland. In the past short while, there has been a great deal of debate about the Tomlinson review, which covered England, but the reportage on the UK bulletins did not always reflect the fact that that had direct implications only for England. Of course, the review will have indirect implications for Scotland, because we hope to share best practice in all professional spheres.
Against that background, SMG has made a series of proposals. The proposals take into account the fact that some issues in Scotland are not always best covered through a UK lens. It is a moot point whether we can change the way that the bulletins are produced and edited at a UK level so that they are more sensitive. To be honest, that has been the case for some time. However, they cannot always be exactly right; the flavour and tastes will be different, and there is something to be said for proposals that might lead to a greater sensitivity in news values. SMG says that its proposals would produce the benefit that UK bulletin stories that are essentially English could be replaced altogether, or in some cases qualified. So, if there were a 22.30 opt-out bulletin, some stories would not run in Scotland. Other stories would run in Scotland and have their terminology altered.
The tailoring that SMG proposes in opting out of the 22.30 bulletin and producing its own version would apply also to the next level, and Scottish regional programmes would be produced. Scottish Media Group once owned Scottish Radio Holdings, and thus local radio stations across Scotland. Tailoring of a locally produced Scottish bulletin could broadly reflect the regions, including Edinburgh, Tayside and Grampian.
My understanding is that Ofcom takes a generally benign view of the proposals to have a greater degree of local variation and to opt out of the 22.30 news—although it would still be edited in London, it would be produced and delivered in Scotland. In principle, I regard the proposals as positive. SMG has a strong track record in news and current affairs production. Any misjudgments regarding the purpose or the operation of a new news configuration would probably result in a loss
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of revenue as fewer viewers switched on and advertising revenue fell. My main concern is to ensure that, as with the BBC Scotland proposals, quality is at the centre of the equation.
Let me briefly describe the BBC's proposals for the "Scottish six"—the 6 o'clock news. There was a great deal of debate in Scotland about whether Scotland should have its own 6 o'clock bulletin and opt out of the UK one. On one side, people argued that to opt out would be to yield to a nationalist perspective; on the other, people said that the standard UK bulletin could be seen as unyielding in the context of devolution. In the end, BBC Scotland decided not to opt out, but its decision was based on resources: it thought that an excessive amount of resources in Scotland would be required to deliver a bulletin of the same quality. Quality was the key variable, and I generally agree with the decision.
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