Examination of Witness (Questions 420-439)
Mrs Mary Honeyball
7 NOVEMBER 2006
Q420 Lord Roper: What I am suggesting
is that this is a change from the Commission's original proposal
that the Finnish Presidency is now putting forward, and I am really
asking you whether you agree that this means that in the UK self-regulation
under the oversight of Ofcom, which therefore provides an element
of co-regulation, can continue.
Mrs Honeyball: I think so, yes.
Q421 Lord Roper: Thank you.
Mrs Honeyball: That is just my view, but I think
so, yes.
Q422 Chairman: Was there any difference
of view in the committee on the issue of self-regulation as against
having all the regulations embodied in domestic law?
Mrs Honeyball: We have discussed it to some
extent and I have discussed it with outside concerns, with the
BBC and Ofcom, rather more than within the committee. It has been
an issue and the BBC has always been very much in favour of co-regulation
and that has been very much the Ofcom line as well.
Q423 Chairman: The question of self-regulation
is not seen in some Member States as weakening controls and hence
weakening the arguments for country of origin principles.
Mrs Honeyball: It is a little bit. I think we
have probably got through that and there is now the agreement
on where we are with it. That is generally in line with what is
the draft actually.
Chairman: We hope so and we hope that
the Commission will feel able to get behind that Presidency text.
Q424 Lord Roper: Perhaps I could
just ask you a supplementary question because it has slightly
confused me. Supposing that this Presidency proposal is taken
to the Council of Ministers, which I think is on 16 November,
what would your committee then work on? Would it then move away
from the Commission's original proposal and work in future draft
amendments to this new document?
Mrs Honeyball: Yes.
Q425 Lord Geddes: I am extremely
grateful to Lord Roper because that was exactly the question I
was about to ask, My Lord Chairman, before I get onto the specifics
of the impact assessment, because it is very germane to it. The
first question deals with the December 2005 draft and the second
question deals with the October 2006 draft. On the 2005 draft,
do you consider that the Commission adequately considered the
impact of it on the sector?
Mrs Honeyball: I think they did, and I know
they did do a lot of work on it and had public consultations.
I have to admit that in more general terms I just wonder whether
any way the Commission does this works very well because they
are always looking at producing legislation for the whole of the
EU in very different environments, so it is not like doing it
in a single Member State. Given those constraints they did actually
do a reasonable job on this.
Q426 Lord Geddes: I think I am right
in saying—but I will be corrected by our clerk if no one
else—we have taken quite a lot of evidence very quickly
and I do not recall one single witness when we asked them saying
they had contributed to the impact assessment. I may be wrong
to be as sweeping as that, but certainly the vast majority of
our witnesses said no, we were not contacted.
Mrs Honeyball: We certainly did in the Parliament,
it is quite standard practice before anything comes forward for
there to be public hearings on the issues, and that certainly
happened in this case. I was consulted, even if nobody else was.
Lord Geddes: It was on the whole some
of the people who are producing the new media services who were
the people who felt that they had not been consulted. I am sure
that the Ofcoms and the BBCs were consulted, but do you have any
feeling as to whether some of the newer providers—mobile
phones for example, which may in the future be used for audio-visual
services—were consulted?
Q427 Chairman: Before you respond
to that, could I add to that that some of the oral evidence to
us, particularly from new media services, was that they felt that
they may have had a chance to say something, but given the fact
that the draft directive extended regulation to them they had
not been given the same weight in the considered issues than the
long-established, previously monopolistic, large television broadcasters
were, and that in a sense the directive was drifting into new
territory without counterweight being given to that. That might
add to the flavour of the kind of response being given to us,
so I wonder if you have had any feeling of that in the committee
at all.
Mrs Honeyball: Not particularly in the committee.
I tend to agree with what you are saying and it is a weakness
of the way the Commission works that they do not always think
about bringing in the elements that they need to, and that is
probably very true in this case, partly because it is something
they have not done before. A lot of these new media services are
very new and I would agree it probably has been an omission. If
they have been saying to you that they felt they should have been
consulted and they were not, I am not going to argue with that,
it is obviously the way they feel.
Chairman: I thought it
was simply worth you knowing that that is what they said. Lord
Geddes, do you want to carry on?
Q428 Lord Geddes: If I could now
carry on to the more recent draft, the Presidency draft of 20
October this year, do you believe and indeed in your opinion is
it possible that an impact assessment should be conducted on that
20 October 2006 draft?
Mrs Honeyball: That is not traditionally what
happens. When legislation gets to this point it is going through
the process, so it would be unusual.
Q429 Lord Geddes: Do you think it
should, do you think there should be such a thing?
Mrs Honeyball: What might be useful, if there
are these people from the new media who feel that they have not
been listened to enough or talked to enough, it would not do anyone
any harm to bring them in, but I am not sure quite how that would
affect the parliamentary process. It is like, in the UK system,
when something comes to your House someone is suddenly saying
let us go and find some more evidence; it is difficult. I am not
saying it is not desirable, I am just saying it is difficult.
Q430 Lord Geddes: With either of
the impact assessments on the original draft or maybe one on the
new draft, are you happy that the likely costs and benefits are
sufficiently reliable to support the proposed changes in the directive?
Is the impact assessment a good enough, rock-like base if you
like, or is it built on sand?
Mrs Honeyball: I know that the Commission has
done work on this and I think that generally by the larger broadcasters
it has been welcomed. We were talking earlier about the scope
of it and those sorts of issues and there are things there which
perhaps were not thought through, but in terms of where it is
now I do not think it is built on sand. It may be could have been
better than this, but it is kind of workable now.
Q431 Chairman: If we as a sub-committee
wish to come to a view and understand how many businesses are
so-called non-linear TV-like services—a phrase that causes
us considerable concern—and if we want to know how many
such businesses would be brought under regulation, do you think
your committee would be able to tell us, or the Commission?
Mrs Honeyball: I certainly could not tell you
off the top of my head now.
Q432 Chairman: I was not really trying
to question you; I would say that we have struggled with this
and if one passes laws and certainly goes into a completely new
area of business one ought to know how many businesses are going
to be regulated. We have, frankly, no idea, and when we asked
the Commission yesterday if there was to be an impact assessment
done so we can establish it, he said—as you have said—no,
the Commission does not carry one out now, it is now with the
Presidency, the Presidency does not carry out impact assessments,
the European Parliament does not have to, so this legislation
could go through into a new area, something called "TV-like
services" and nobody can tell us how many businesses would
be affected. Would that be a matter of any concern to your committee—it
bothers us as a committee in terms of scrutiny—as to how
many businesses are involved: is it ten, is it a thousand? We
are not challenging it through you and your committee but asking
does anybody bother about that kind of question.
Mrs Honeyball: I would say it has not come up
in the committee; this has not been something which the committee
has exercised itself on. I understand your concerns and I actually
agree with them.
Chairman: It makes it very difficult
if we are asked how many businesses are actually going to be involved
in this across Europe, and we say to our regulator in the UK "We
have no idea", that is a pretty poor basis for passing law,
is it not? I do not say it is any better in the UK or worse, but
simply our job is to scrutinise European proposals and certainly
we would be most grateful if it is something you might care to
give weight to in your discussions and answer that question. Lord
Roper.
Q433 Lord Roper: At an earlier stage
when we were thinking about possible expansion of the scope we
were talking about covering internet service providers; do you
have any idea how many internet service providers there are in
27 Member States?
Mrs Honeyball: There actually are not very many
but they are expanding. There are not at the moment a lot.
Q434 Chairman: On a different angle
to the same problem, it is not entirely clear—but you may
be clear—quite what bodies or organisations in each case
would be regulated. Is it the publisher or who is it on the internet-based
services who would be regulated?
Mrs Honeyball: The whole thing about the internet
scope of this is actually a huge problem. It also comes under
the scope of the e-Commerce Directive as well, they are the two
things which would involve the internet, and it is the e-Commerce
Directive which talks more about internet service providers. That
is probably the only way you can do it and we have said that individual
blogs and that kind of thing are going to be out of this altogether,
but the internet is expanding all the time and it is a very difficult
one.
Q435 Chairman: It is possible to
argue of course that you do not need to regulate the internet
other than, of course, for issues of decency and so on, but in
the broader sense we do not need to regulate internet services
to create a single market because there is a single market in
the internet. This is why, if I may, I come right back to my first
question: what was the purpose of the revision? If the purpose
is to create and ensure a single market continues it is very difficult
to argue that you need this directive to be revised in order to
create a single market in internet, which is one of the reasons
we are somewhat puzzled. We understand how it got to where it
is but puzzled by the direction. Is there anything you think we
have missed in your discussions that concerns your committee that
you think would help us in our own consideration of the proposal?
Mrs Honeyball: I am not sure there is actually,
you have been very thorough. I do not have anything else outstanding
that I wanted to raise with you really; we have covered all the
points and more indeed than have been discussed with the committee.
Q436 Lord Haskel: Could I just ask
one last question? Yesterday we heard from the Commission this
phrase "TV-like services" and the whole purpose of it,
as it was explained to us, is that it should be technology-neutral
and forward-looking—future-proofed, if you like. Do you
think that is the way forward and do you think that is the right
way to define the context and define the scope?
Mrs Honeyball: It probably is, given where we
are at at the moment. That would mean something like Google actually
broadcasting which it is probably going to do.
Q437 Lord Haskel: It could do partly
broadcasting.
Mrs Honeyball: Yes, which would mean that it
would come under the regulatory regime. It is difficult to know
how else to do it. It is not a perfect definition, but I have
not come up with anything that works any better; which I know
is not very satisfactory, but I think that has been the problem
with a lot of this, there is this feeling that something needs
to be done but we have not quite worked out always the right way
of doing it. That is the nature of it, this is a very difficult
area.
Q438 Lord Walpole: I wonder if you
consider that the definition of broadcasting will have to change
because at the moment it is messages of one form or another that
go out over wireless waves, but a lot of it now goes out along
the telephone wires, whether it is fibre optics or copper or aluminium
or what have you. Do you think it needs to change?
Mrs Honeyball: It probably does actually, yes
indeed, and that is the technology neutral bit which is a really
strange European phrase, but that is what it means, that it is
actually a service that is provided rather than how it is provided.
Q439 Chairman: Of course, if one
went too technology-neutral one might find that most things simply
cannot be regulated, and law-makers do like to pass laws in our
experience—I am sure you have the same experience. I suspect
true future-proofing and platform-free and technology-free might
actually lead one to the conclusion that much less regulation
is possible rather than more; I will just leave you with that
thought.
Mrs Honeyball: Yes.
Chairman: Mrs Honeyball, thank you so
much.
Lord Haskel: Hear, Hear.
| 
