Examination of Witness (Questions 280-299)
LORD CARTER
OF BARNES
CBE
10 DECEMBER 2008
Q280 Mr Evans: You could have a view,
Stephen, about the generality of whether an assisted suicide should
be shown on British television?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I could,
but I will not.
Q281 Mr Evans: You are the Minister
for Broadcasting, Stephen!
Lord Carter of Barnes: Okay, I
am the Minister for Broadcasting. On this particular incident,
I have not yet seen the programme, so it is very difficult to
comment conceptually on a programme which has not yet been broadcast.
Mr Evans: But you could take a view on
the generality as to whether an execution should be shown on television.
You probably would.
Mr Hall: Oh, Chairman -
Mr Evans: No, no, this is the Minister
for Broadcasting and this is an issue which has come up -
Mr Hall: You have had the answer.
Mr Evans: I do not want it off you, Mike,
I am asking the Minister!
Mr Hall: Well, you have got to listen
to what he says. You are badgering!
Mr Evans: That is what we are here for,
is it not? This is accountability, Mike.
Chairman: You can ask another question.
Q282 Mr Evans: So tell me, you have
not taken a view, as the Minister for Broadcasting, as to whether
an assisted suicide should be shown on British television?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I have
not taken a view on that.
Q283 Mr Evans: Would you be surprised
if a number of people thought that that is rather surprising?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I would
not be at all surprised because I think it is a deeply personal
and very evocative issue. Therefore, I can understand why. Broadcasting
also, by its very nature, is an activity which reaches into everybody's
household in a very intimate and personal way. It is one of the
reasons why it is so highly regulated. But given that it is highly
regulated, there is quite a lot of rules around what you can and
cannot do. Therefore, if we find ourselves in a situation where
a programme is about to be broadcast—and I have not seen
it—I am almost 100% sure that the broadcaster in question
will have been very, very careful to make sure that they are going
through the necessary processes to observe the rules. So if we
find ourselves in a situation whereby we are about to see the
broadcast of something which many people will find, both philosophically
and in principle, challenging but happening in a sector and an
environment which is highly regulated, so it is not happening
by accident or in an uncontrolled way, that would lead me to the
conclusion that the particular programme is likely to be being
done in a particularly sensitive manner, as opposed to in a gratuitous
manner. But I do not know, because I have not seen it. Four years
as a regulator have taught me one thing: you never make a comment
on a programme until it has been broadcast.
Q284 Mr Evans: I know that this has
clearly been in the newspapers today and I am just wondering at
what point, do you think, particularly with your knowledge as
former Chief Executive of Ofcom, would it be appropriate for Ofcom,
for instance, where this is hugely controversial and highly emotive,
and would you expect Ofcom to ask to see a preview of that programme,
or do you think that would be irregular?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I think
that would be highly inappropriate. I think one of the lessons
we have learnt in relatively recent history about broadcasting
regulation is that you should follow due process, and there are
very clear processes around how complaints are handled. We have
ceased having the Regulator as the publisher/broadcaster a long
time ago and we have certainly ceased having the Government as
the publisher/broadcaster an even longer time ago, and those are
both very good things. If the programme gets broadcast and it
breaches the rules—an investigation is done and it is judged
to have breached the rules—then Ofcom has significant powers
as the regulator to both penalise the offending broadcaster, the
involved production company and make sure the rules are tightened.
I have every confidence that the system will produce the right
result if that is the case.
Q285 Chairman: I have not seen the
programme either, but I have talked to the broadcaster and I have
every confidence that it is fully within the rules and I think
actually possibly in the public interest, but that is a personal
view. Can I ask you about your position? You have very close links
to the Prime Minister, given your previous role. Do you have a
sort of direct line to him, or do you answer through the Secretary
of State for Culture, Media and Sport, or do you answer through
the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory
Reform?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I answer
through both of those Secretaries of State and my reporting line
is equally divided between the two of them.
Q286 Chairman: Therefore, your appointment
as a sort of Minister straddling the two Departments, is that
not rather undermined if you then have to go back to each of the
individual Secretaries of State?
Lord Carter of Barnes: No, I do
not think so. Certainly the evidence—and it is relatively
recent evidence—is that both the relevant Secretaries of
State were supportive of the fact of the appointment and the individual
in the role, so I have not had anything other than support from
the two Secretaries of State. Going back to the question earlier,
I think there is an increasing number of overlapping areas, so
having a Minister who has converged responsibilities does actually
make an enormous amount of sense. It will be interesting to see,
when we get to the point of recommendations and conclusions, whether
that common consensus continues, but as it stands at the moment
I think the dual departmental structure seems to work.
Q287 Chairman: There are going to
be issues where the two Departments take different views. You
have said you have not encountered any. Actually, I think there
are one or two areas where perhaps it is emerging. We may come
on to, for instance, the whole question of the protection of intellectual
property against illegal file sharing, where there appears to
be a certain difference of view. Do you have a right of appeal
over the heads to the Prime Minister?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I am a
Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Chairman!
Q288 Chairman: You are a Parliamentary
Under-Secretary but also the former Chief of Staff to the Prime
Minister in Number 10 Downing Street and there are not many of
those around!
Lord Carter of Barnes: No, but
people come and go through Number 10 Downing Street, as you yourself
know, Chairman!
Q289 Chairman: I do not have quite
the direct link you have!
Lord Carter of Barnes: So I would
not put too much weight on that. Let us be clear. I think the
Prime Minister was the driving force behind the idea of having
a Communications, Technology and Broadcasting Minister. The Prime
Minister commissioned the Report. I think the Prime Minister is
passionately of the view that this is an increasingly important
sector and shares the view that there is an opportunity for us,
partly given where the economy is at the moment, to give it considerably
more focus than it has had for a while. So it certainly comes
with Prime Ministerial support, but I sit within two Departments
and those Departments, as you and other colleagues around the
table know, have very clear views about what the priorities for
those Departments are, and rightly so.
Q290 Chairman: You have set out your
priorities in the Digital Britain Report, which is clearly the
flagship. We have been here before. We had the Creative Economy
Programme, launched in 1995. We then had the Creative Industries
Task Force two years later. We then had the convergence think
tank, which came a few years after that. Is not the Digital Britain
Report just another in a long line of grand sounding initiatives
which actually do not really ever amount to very much?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I sincerely
hope not. Perhaps cometh the time, cometh the Report, but I think
it is a very legitimate question: are we suffering from a kind
of review ennui? A charitable way of looking at where we
are is that what has been happening over the last five or six
years is that we have been going through extraordinary technology
change and service development. That is true. We all sit around
these tables now and have these discussions and there is a set
of assumptions that we now take for granted which six or seven
years ago we did not, and that is a relatively short period of
time. So my sense is that most or all of those reviews are part
of what has led to the tipping point of getting government focus
on it and where we are, but I am sure this Committee will be the
first—and rightly so—if this Report fizzles and dies—to
be able to level that very legitimate criticism. But I hope not.
Not least I hope not, because if we do not do it there will be
plenty of other countries around the world that will do it.
Q291 Mr Evans: Looking at broadband,
Stephen, what is your view as to the roll-out and the speeds available
throughout the country?
Lord Carter of Barnes: My view
is that we have been through a period in the last couple of years
where we have broadly been quite happy with where we have got
to. I think we were rightly, and you yourself were rightly critical
of where we were way back at the beginning of the decade. That
created a mixture of operational focus, access to capital, regulatory
change, and that created quite a competitive market. I think there
is a sense that we are now at another turning point. We have not
yet got universal coverage, and in my view we should have it.
The speed rates are variable and in some cases becoming progressively
uncompetitive, and that is an issue, and the level of competition
varies significantly depending upon where people are. Then there
is the slightly more macro question about kind of next generation
technologies. So my sense is that we are at another one of those
points where we need to have another re-think and another re-look
at how we are doing what we are doing and whether or not it is
time for a fresh approach. That is my sense of where we are.
Q292 Mr Evans: On the first one,
coverage, not having universal coverage, I have certainly got
pockets in my patch. Secondly, on the speeds at which it is being
delivered, are we competitive with the rest of the world, particularly
the countries we wish to compete with on IT stuff? Do you think
there is any role for Government in trying to assist there?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I think
there is definitely a role for Government. Whether or not that
means is there a role for Government to write a cheque is a different
matter, but I think there is definitely a role for Government.
We do not have a universal service obligation in this country,
in fact we do not have a universal service obligation in Europe
for broadband, so I think there is a real role for Government
to take a view and an interest in this.
Q293 Mr Evans: Yes, particularly
in rural areas where we are trying to get people to live and work
at home, and the one block to that in many cases is not having
access to the fastest range of broadband available?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I agree.
Q294 Mr Evans: Do you think the recession
is going to have any impact on this whatsoever?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I think
the recession is going to have an impact in many ways in this
market, not least in the access to capital for large-scale fibre
deployment. It is also going to make, I suspect, increased price
competitiveness hard to maintain, so I think it is definitely
going to have an impact. Having said that, I think it is also
an opportunity in a funny sort of way because it is going to put
increasing pressure on people and businesses to find ever more
efficient ways of doing things and broadband is a fantastic enabler
for that. So I think it will have an impact in both ways.
Q295 Mr Evans: Looking at the infrastructure
which is going to be necessary to deliver universal coverage and
the speeds, you mentioned money. Do you think there is any role
the Government should play in actually assisting in the delivery
of that in certain key areas?
Lord Carter of Barnes: Public
authorities have already done that, as I am sure you know. The
Scottish Government has done it. There have been certain local
authorities who have done it. So it is not the case that there
has been no public money which has participated in the process
to date.
Q296 Mr Evans: I remember a former
Prime Minister actually talking about Africa, trying to ensure
that money was invested in Africa to give them broadband coverage
as well, so there is a precedent, but I am just wondering what
you think the hold up is to doing exactly the same thing in England?
Lord Carter of Barnes: I think
it is only relatively recently that we have put our shoulder against
the door marked "Universal service of broadband" and
it is not immediately evident to me that we necessarily require
public money to do it. If we do require public money to do it,
is that off the table? I do not see that it necessarily should
be, but I do not think we need to start from the premise that
the only solution is public money. I do not think so.
Q297 Chairman: Can I turn to another
of the challenges sitting on your desk, the radio industry, particularly
the future of digital radio and very closely related to it the
problems which commercial radio is now going through? To what
extent do you think there may need to be intervention to help
commercial radio survive?
Lord Carter of Barnes: To help
commercial radio survive, or commercial radio survive in digital?
Q298 Chairman: Both.
Lord Carter of Barnes: Well, radio
and commercial radio is a highly regulated sector. It is probably
on any objective measure one of the most regulated sectors of
all of the communication sectors. I suspect that is going to have
to change because the economics of it are both in absolute terms
small and, secondarily, facing real challenges because the amount
of advertising revenue to broadcast media generally is going down
and to radio is going down at an accelerated rate because it is
a lower priced medium in the first place. So I suspect we are
going to have to take a fresh look at the regulation of the sector.
As it relates to digital radio, that is a multi-layered question
really because I suspect there is a number of colleagues sitting
around this table who have mobile phones on which they can listen
to radio. I suspect there is a number of colleagues sitting around
the table who have digital satellite at home or Freeview where
they listen to radio. I am sure some colleagues around the table
listen to the radio on their laptops. So there are multiple forms
of digital radio. The digital radio which most people refer to
is digital audio broadcasting. Could you have digital radio without
digital audio broadcasting? Yes, you could, but do we want to
have a dedicated digital broadcast network for radio? Well, I
think we do and up until now the policy decisions have said that
we do and we are again at a point whereby if we do I think we
need to push it along a bit, or else I think technology will drive
faster.
Q299 Chairman: Push it along?
Lord Carter of Barnes: Improve
its coverage.
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