Communications: Digital Britain

My Lords, suggestions have been made by interested parties. Recently, the industry regulator put forward three options, or possibly four, depending on how one reads the document. A number of private sector parties have declared an interest in being part of a public/private partnership in creating a second entity. There have been—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, alludes to, although he puts it slightly strongly when he suggests who likes what—various options put forward by the two entities which might be called publicly owned. I hope we are saying clearly as the Government that, between now and the summer, we intend to design and devise a structure that we believe works; namely, one that reflects value for money for the taxpayer for publicly owned assets, which is sustainable, which has an ownership structure that we believe will allow it to thrive, and which has sources of income that will be sustainable in a fully digital age. We have said that we are open to declarations of interests from all parties and we begin that formal design process as of next week.