Public Service Broadcasting (Communications Committee Report)

My Lords, in his opening remarks, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester said what a privilege it was to serve on the Communications Committee under my noble friend Lord Fowler. I do not want to gainsay that, but it is a pleasure and a delight to do so. My noble friend had considerable trouble getting this debate, and in so doing I dare say he abandoned his customary congeniality, but it is important that he has done so because it appears that there is an immediate problem with public sector broadcasting. That being the case, it is only right that Parliament should discuss it. Moreover, given that there is a problem with public service broadcasting, the Government must get involved. If they do not, there is likely to be blood on the carpet and wreckage from the sector as we have come to know it. Again, it is important to note that if that were to happen, Parliament should discuss it. I believe, first, that public service broadcasting as we have it continues to be important. Secondly, I believe that PSB should not be a BBC monopoly, and in this as in other areas of life, pluralism must be what we aspire to. Finally, PSB must be at arm’s length from the Government. I declare an interest as chairman of the CN Group, a local newspaper group in Cumbria. It has been suggested by some that the Government should subsidise local newspapers. I should like to put it on record that, for my part, I am entirely opposed to that. Equally, I think it is right that the taxpayer should not bankroll publications that are in competition with local newspapers. As has already been touched on today, in our report we have considered whether contestable funding has a place in the context of the current crisis. Even bearing in mind my caveat about chairing a local newspaper group, I think it may well do. It is an important possibility that needs to be looked into with care. But, because of the nature of the immediate problems facing the public service broadcasting sector, I suspect that there is a fairly narrow range of options in front of us; these are, in general terms, outlined in the report. I am extremely anxious—I use that word in a general sense—that the matters described in the report will be a precursor to a series of much more intractable problems. It is not simply because I have spent too much time listening to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, that I believe convergence between the internet, radio, TV, film and newspapers is taking place; it is more or less on us now. Because of this we need not only to identify what a public service broadcaster might be, but what a broadcaster, pure and simple, might be. At the same time we need to identify the kind of intellectual property regime which will form the legal framework within which all this will be carried on in the future. It is clear from the evidence that the Communications Committee has been receiving recently that, for example, the distinction between film and television as it has traditionally been is beginning to break down. Equally, the same is happening between material in the printed newspaper and material on the internet. These are merely two examples of a much wider phenomenon. The character and the means of both distribution and reception of digital material is myriad. Audiences are increasingly flexible in the way in which they consume it, and they approach it differently according to the means of distribution employed. For example, watching a film on a mobile phone or on a laptop is a very different experience from going to see the film in the cinema and are not alternatives to most people who do that. In a world where there is no monopoly of distribution, everyone becomes a supplier of digital material. This has obvious and massive implications for public service broadcasters and what they do. Equally, as a consequence, it has implications for the way in which they are going to be funded. This obviously includes the licence fee. It may have been set for a period up to 2012 but I am not sure that that will be of any relevance by the time we reach 2012. Given the speed with which change has crept up on us, all this needs to be thought about extremely deeply and thoroughly, and soon. We are facing immediately a crisis brought about by the congruence of the collapse of advertising revenue and technological change. But I do not think it is the end of the story because we are not going to go back to the status quo ante when the current financial crisis is over. I suspect that the broadcasting/digital world may be very different from the one we have been used to. It may well be the case that we ain’t seen nothing yet.