Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for clarifying that and, if these questions were asked when he was a Minister a year ago, I will refrain from asking why we are still waiting for answers. Be that as it may, I had moved on to talk about the need, as the right hon. Gentleman said, to future-proof the technology, a point echoed by the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. This point is extremely important, because, as the Government have made clear in the estimates that will no doubt be winging their way to the Library so that we can examine them in detail, they are opting for the low-cost option. However, as people in the industry and many charities have pointed out time and again, the lowest cost option is de facto digital terrestrial television. It is the least interactive option available and risks locking many of the vulnerable groups that are the subject of the Bill into technology that will rapidly become obsolete. It is extremely important that the Minister tells us when he is winding up what measures the Government will take to ensure that the Bill does not lock in low technology and that it does as much as it can to ensure that vulnerable people have access to a choice of technology. That is the key. Perhaps that is what the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth was talking about in his Rumsfeldian moment, when he said, ““We know what we don’t know,”” although I read today that the new US Defence Secretary has been appointed, so the right hon. Gentleman cannot apply for that job. There was rightly a great deal of focus on the timetable. We heard some excellent speeches from hon. Members who are at the chalk face of digital switchover—none more so than the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed). He reintroduced us to his constituency, pointing out that it had the deepest lake and the highest mountain in Britain, reminding me of the Ike and Tina Turner song ““River Deep, Mountain High””, which was no doubt written about Whitehaven, where the hon. Gentleman went to school. [Hon. Members: ““Sing it!””] I remind the Secretary of State, who is taking her responsibility as the Minister of fun slightly too far, that this is a Dispatch Box and we are not in a karaoke club. The hon. Gentleman rightly used the opportunity to ask for a visit from the Minister, which is an opportunity that most of us would take if we could find a good enough excuse. He also asked for financial help for his constituency—another opportunity that most of us would take. There has to be serious concern about whether the Government can meet their self-imposed timetable. The hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West, who gave an extremely relaxed speech—[Interruption.] He was not relaxed about my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon, but he was relaxed about the timetable. He was also relaxed about something else, which I am going to come to at the end of my speech. We are due to see digital switchover in Whitehaven in October—just 10 months away—and, I have to tell the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West, in Scotland by 2010, not 2012. Scotland is going to be the guinea pig for this great experiment, as perhaps it has been for other great experiments, which may not have worked as effectively as Ministers expect digital switchover to work. How can the Minister seriously claim that we will be in digital switchover mode by the end of 2007 when we are taking part in the Second Reading debate for a Bill that is unlikely to receive Royal Assent until the summer, we have a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the cost of digital switchover of £600 million, and we still do not have a television licence fee agreed with the BBC and will not have one agreed until February? I was intrigued to hear from the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway, who talked about the people on the ground—Digital UK and charities—helping with the process of digital switchover. The role of charities was also brought up by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) in his speech, which was in no way petulant or critical of the Government. They all rightly made the point that charities will play an incredibly important role, not least because they are likely to include the people who know the area and its residents best, and who know where help is most needed. Very little has been revealed to us about the role of charities. We know that there is a consumer group that involves the charities, which the Government are talking to, but we do not know the role of the digital volunteers, who they are, whether they will be checked by the Criminal Records Bureau, or whether they will have access to the data to which the Government will give the BBC access. Given that, as the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway said, charity workers are on the ground, we would love to know more about the role of the charities. We heard many Members talk about one particularly complex and what might seem rather small issue: that of installing digital television in multiple dwellings. The hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mrs. James)—the lady in red—gave a comprehensive speech, indicating that she has been involved in the issue of digital television and help for the vulnerable since she entered Parliament last year. It was not just the hon. Lady who pointed out these difficulties, but the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway and my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford. The issue features quite heavily in the excellent report by the Select Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford. He made the interesting point that Camden council has a scheme up and running that will cost several million pounds and involve a levy on tenants. When we see the Government’s estimate in detail—no doubt it, along with its careful workings, are winging their way towards the Library—it will be interesting to find out how the Government have accounted for the problem. I discovered in the excellent Select Committee report the little-known fact that one in five of us live in a multiple dwelling or share an aerial with a next-door neighbour. The situation could be incredibly complicated. What have the Government decided to do about this? What discussions has the Minister had with his ministerial colleagues in other Departments about changing the building regulations so that new buildings may have the scope to include the infrastructure for digital? Many hon. Members’ speeches touched only briefly on the matter at the heart of the Bill: data sharing. I did the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth a disservice because his Rumsfeld moment came when he was talking not about technology, but about data sharing. When he said that there was much that we did not know, he gave the impression that he would prefer to see a rolling Bill to which additional bits of data that might be useful could be attached. Although no hon. Member mentioned this point, I am intrigued by the fact that the Bill makes it clear that the BBC may enter into a joint venture. Will the Minister enlighten us about who the BBC is talking about entering such a joint venture? What accountability will there be to the House over the body that goes into a joint venture with the BBC and thus, by definition, has access to the data? No hon. Member picked up on the excellent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon—it was also made by our shadow Defence spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper)—about the extreme risk to people in Northern Ireland who have served in the armed forces, given that unlike the Television Licences (Disclosure of Information) Act 2000, the Bill will allow access to information about war pensions. Naturally, that is a matter of significant concern. One measure that is almost bound to find its way into our debates in Committee is a sunset clause. It will delight the Minister to hear that I always talk about sunset clauses when I get nearer to my peroration—my sunset and finale. Such a measure was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway and, in an equally relaxed fashion, by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West. It is odd that the Secretary of State can effectively admit that the Bill should probably have a sunset clause by saying, ““Because, you know, it’s going to kind of collapse at the end when we’ve got digital switchover.”” We need only a one-line provision saying that the Bill will cease to have effect when the Secretary of State decrees that digital switchover has been achieved, or perhaps to put it more accurately, that analogue switch-off has taken place. And so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I reach the final curtain. We have had a wide-ranging debate on not only a mere six-clause Bill, but an issue that is likely to affect far more of our constituents than almost anything that we will debate in the House this year, next year or the year after, apart from the tax rises that are coming with the big clunking fist’s Budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham who kindly apologised to me for the fact that he had to leave to go to a dinner, was thus quite right to say that the Government have a whole range of questions to follow. They have to answer questions about their back-of-the-envelope costings for digital switchover, the complex procedure of putting together an army of people to carry out switchover and an army of volunteers from charities to help with switchover, the sensitivity of data sharing and whether there will be a rolling programme to destroy data as it is shared, the complexities of multiple dwellings, and many more issues. That is why we intend to detain the Government in Committee for at least two days next month.