Examination of Witnesses (Questions 155-159)
Mr Shaun Woodward, MP, Mr Chris Bone and Mr Christopher
Dawes, OBE
25 OCTOBER 2006
Q155Chairman: Good afternoon, Minister. Thank
you very much indeed for sparing time to be with us this afternoon.
I hope it is agreeable to you if we take about an hour. I am not
entirely sure of the division situation in either House, so I
hope we do not get interpreted and, if we do, not too much. I
can see that you have two people from your Department with you;
perhaps you would like to introduce them before we go any further.
Mr Woodward: Thank you very much indeed, my
Lord Chairman. Good afternoon to you and to the Members of the
Committee. It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon. I have
brought two of my colleagues who have done much of the work on
this Directive over the last year: Chris Dawes, who is the Deputy
Head of the Broadcasting Division at DCMS and Chris Bone, who
has been working on much of the technical detail of this extraordinary
Directive as it has been evolving over the last nine months, who
is the head of our International Branch in broadcasting at DCMS.
Q156 Chairman: Thank you. Could I
say in the light of the written evidence we have received and
your helpful letter, and we understand entirely the nuances of
that letter for this afternoon, we have had a pre-meeting discussion
amongst ourselves about how best to focus on a limited range of
issues. So rather than going through all the questions you will
be deeply relieved to know that today we will try to home in on
a few things. We would like to discuss with you the scope of the
Directive, as you may expect, the question of advertising, some
issues of public interest, the issue of quotas briefly, and some
of these are much briefer than others, and the final one is the
issue of regulation. Minister, before we go on you may wish to
make an opening statement. I think things have moved on and it
might be helpful if you could tell us what you feel you can tell
us at this stage on the record.
Mr Woodward: I think I can pretty much tell
you most things on the record, and to some extent I am very happy
to interweave into my answers in responses to your supplementaries
more general comments rather than giving you a party political
broadcast at the beginning of my message.
Chairman: That is fine. Lord Haskel.
Q157 Lord Haskel: Thank you, my Lord
Chairman. Of course, this whole inquiry is centred on what should
and should not be included, so the scope is terribly important.
The proposal tends to bring emerging media platforms, specifically
through the internet, under the existing regulatory framework
for broadcasting. Do you consider this is appropriate? Perhaps
you could list what advantages and disadvantages this regulatory
approach might have.
Mr Woodward: Let me just say, if I may at the
beginning, that when I came into this post in May of this year,
having been in Northern Ireland, and I am not sure if that was
not a rather good experience for this job, for me this was a return
to television. I spent 10 years working in television in the 1980s
until I became involved in politics in the 1990s. I have to say
that just as I found as a journalist going to Belfast as Security
Minister that there had been a revolution on the streets of Belfast
since I was last there in 1990 when I went back in 2005, so too
has there been a revolution in television since I was the editor
of That's Life going out to 18 million viewers a week.
I say that because I have no doubt in my mind that there is a
need for any regulation to be updated, particularly when a revolution
is at hand as a consequence of the digital revolution that is
taking place and the convergence and emergence of new platforms.
I begin by saying I want to mark the fact that we need an updating
of the previous Directive. We need more liberalisation. I am totally
in favour of regulation so long as it is self-regulation and it
should only be state regulation when self-regulation cannot work,
by and large because I think the experts are better at regulating
themselves than those of us who are not experts and we are more
likely to keep up to speed with their industry. I say all of that
because really it is the preamble to saying that I think in some
ways you could argue that this Directive is incredibly well-intentioned.
For example, who would not want to protect children? I helped
set up Childline, a charity, nearly 20 years ago. I would be the
last person to say we should not be protecting minors. The question
is "Does this regulation do it, is it effective, is it efficient
and does it achieve at the end of the day what it is trying to
do?" My concern, therefore, is not about the intention, it
is about the efficiency and the efficacy of the proposal. I know
that before you this afternoon you start with the proposal that
was originally laid out by the Commission last December. As you
know, both in meetings of ministers and, indeed, as it has worked
its passage through the European Parliament towards its first
meeting next month in December, it has changed a lot, and the
reason it has changed a lot is frankly an awful lot of it does
not work and it lacks clarity. When you consider that just for
the UK alone the creative industries taken together, including
broadcasting, publishing, advertising, film, music and so on,
account for now nearly 8 per cent of our economy, we had better
get this regulation right because the consequences of the damage
if we get it wrong are enormous. Answers that I have heard too
easily from the Commission along the lines of, "Well, if
we have not got it quite right we can sort out some of the detail
later on" or, "it can be tested in the courts"
I do not think serves 8 per cent of the UK economy at all well.
The truth is if we have not got it right we had better get it
right because it really is not good enough to our own industries
to say we will work it out later. That means, for example, one
of the things that terrifies me is the inadequacy of the Impact
Assessment that has been done. I do not know if you have had the
time to look at their Impact Assessment but when you look at it
the thing that strikes me, and this is entirely in relation to
the scope of the proposal, this report, I think the bit I want
to refer to is on page 44, records: "Only in three cases
are there conditions that a deterioration would be caused by this
being implemented". You have had Orange before you and they
have told you that it will place EU and UK businesses at a severe
competitive disadvantage. We have spoken to Yahoo! who undoubtedly
talk about it creating huge opportunity costs, to Telewest who
talk about being in no doubt that non-linear content providers
would locate outside of the EU, to Microsoft who talk about thousands
of small businesses and start-ups within the scope of the regulation
undoubtedly being hindered in terms of future economic growth
of the sector in Europe. That is four, that is one more already
than the Commission managed to find. It really does terrify me
to think that the Commission in their Impact Assessment managed
to produce a volume which has no figures in it whatsoever and
yet the four groups that I have just cited, one of which I know
has been before you, are all straightforwardly concerned about
the consequences of this. In moving into scope, in the definition
that they have come up with, what worries me is that it is too
ambitious, too burdensome, too costly and too onerous. I think
what we have managed to do in the amendments, which I am not sure
if you are aware of, that we have been arguing for, is to say:
"We can see that if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck,
it is probably a duck", in which case if we currently regulate
linear television programmes there is in principle a case for
saying it is not a question of what you are getting or how you
are getting it, but simply if it is a television programme, if
you get it on-demand or it is transmitted, regulate it for as
long as you think you should be regulating it at all, but for
those things which are not a television-like programme then do
not try and do this because the chances are, even with the best
intentions, you have to recognise that the limits of your authority
are only, after all, the European Union. There is a world out
there where the bad services you are trying to stop will go anyway.
The problem is the consequence of the burdensome, onerous and
costly regulations you will impose on the good services will mean
that they too will go elsewhere and also, of course, the new ones
will not start up. That was the point that was being made by Microsoft
in their argument. It will not work and the really awful truth
is that the thing we apparently did this for, to protect our children,
will still be happening and it will be up to individual Member
States to introduce their own controls to stop those children
having access to it. The irony is that at the end of the day the
intention of this probably will not be achieved but what will
happen is that the UK's and other EU economies in the creative
industries will be severely damaged and impaired and we will put
ourselves at a competitive disadvantage. I do think it is incumbent
on the EU Commission to come up with numbers and it should worry
us severely that they do not and that when you have interviewed
some of those service providers and they have told you it will
damage them, it amazes and astonishes me that the EU has managed
to proceed as far as they have and apparently not find that material
in any of their inquiries.
Q158 Lord Haskel: As you know, most
of the witnesses we have had before us have said that the non-linear
should be left to develop itself, it should be left unregulated,
and the linear should be regulated as it is today. Where would
you draw the line? How would you decide which is linear and which
is non-linear because, after all, we still have a moving target?
You have told us that there is a revolution in TV but it is still
going on.
Mr Woodward: Absolutely. Because it is difficult
does not mean to say we should not try and work it out. I accept
that it is difficult but I equally accept that if we impose huge
burdens on businesses and they are very clearly telling us that
they will go elsewhere, we had better pay attention and, therefore,
the difficulty ought to be worked out by us in the definition
of a television-like service rather than telling businesses they
ought to go elsewhere. I would say that the distinction here is
to be made first of all in relation to linear and non-linear services
and if we understand the difference between the two and the growing
market in on-demand services we then need to look at what it is
we are trying to do and what we are trying to achieve, and what
can be achieved. Again, I come back to reminding the Committee
that it is not our intention in any shape or form to remove any
protection from any children, just as, for example, I entirely
respect in Germany because of the history of Nazism and because
of the history of neo-Nazism post the Second World War that they
have particular concerns about incitement to hatred. It is particularly
important to Germany that it has the power through the eCommerce
Directive to derogate and invoke within German general law the
power to control and access what some people can see. There is
a particular problem of balance of free speech and content in
Germany which is not something that we experience here. I believe
it is important that Germany has that flexibility. I come back
to saying to you that I equally believe it is important that we
protect our children. I am not in any shape or form saying that
there should be a market out there which has no regulation whatsoever,
it is a question of how you do the regulation. The choice is not
between state regulation or no regulation, the choice is not between
state regulation and some kind of minor ineffective regulation,
the question is how do you do what you want to do and I believe,
for example, a regulatory body in the UK like Ofcom, and our general
law here which protects our children, the prevention of people
from being able to download obscene material which involves the
abuse through representations of children in pornography, protects
us very well from that far more effectively than what is being
proposed by the European Union. It is a question of balance. I
would also say that I do believe, Lord Haskel, very, very strongly
in the principle of saying that self-regulation can be extremely
effective. The example I give the Committee is the video games
industry. Three or four years ago you may remember there was a
video game which appeared which had a very significant content
of physical violence and inappropriate sexual content. The Government
said to the video games industry, "We can regulate you or
you can regulate yourselves" and the industry responded and
said, "Leave it to us to regulate ourselves". They changed
a number of their classification systems, they changed the way
that retailers worked in relation to video games and they cleaned
up their act. I believe that is an example of self-regulation
working. We are more likely to be effective by getting the industry
to regulate itself than we are by saying that what we are going
to do now is watch and view and regulate every single individual
who blogs audiovisual images, it is completely unrealistic, it
will not work, it will fail, and the awful and regrettable thing
is I believe it will also bring the EU into further disrepute
in the eyes of those who think that it oversteps its mark and
tries to do things it should not and in those cases that it is
not even effective when it tries to do that.
Q159 Lord Haskel: You spoke of balance,
the balance between the freedom of expression and the prohibition
of expression, and how it varies from country to country, and
you gave the example of Germany. From that I conclude that what
you really believe is that it is best for each country to regulate
itself in its own way and that the European Commission is best
just keeping out of this.
Mr Woodward: I do not believe that we should
regulate for the sake of regulating. I believe that if there is
a proven need and a problem that needs to be addressed we should
address it. But the next port of call, having demonstrated there
is a proven need for some kind of regulation, is not to assume
that the state should do it, the next port of call is to see whether
or not existing regulations could be effective or whether or not
self-regulation may be more effective, whether or not Member States
may be more effective and ultimately, and only finally, if there
is a need for the European Union to regulate at a European level.
I think part of the mistake of the somewhat over-ambitious Commissioner,
although as I say I have no quarrel with Mrs Reding on the intention,
the intentions are entirely honourable, that is not my quarrel,
is whether or not she actually achieves the end she set out to.
I do not have a problem with regulation per se, I only have a
problem when people invent it for the sake of it. When you look
at many of the protections we enjoy in the UK, whether it is for
minors or against incitement to hatred or, indeed, for the broadcasting
industry as a result of the Communications Act or Ofcom, I think
we are very well served. My concern here is that we are actually
producing a set of regulations for on-demand services which are
ineffective and inefficient and if they do not work I am not quite
sure why in some cases we set out to do so. Having said that,
the progress that has been made in the last nine months has been
huge. I say this with great respect to my colleagues here today.
The UK set out alone in December of last year to demonstrate to
the other 24 countries that the idea of extending the scope right
the way across all on-demand services was erroneous and mistaken.
I do congratulate DCMS colleagues and those in the DTI who persevered
with only until recently, as you probably know, Bratislava as
our soul mate, and we are very grateful to the Slovakians for
their support. I am glad to tell you that our support has somewhat
widened recently but it has been a tough time.
Chairman: We are delighted to hear that.
|
