Digital Britain

My Lords, on the last point, that is the nub of the question. If you take the same view as the Government, and I sense from the noble Lord's contribution that he does, monopoly provision of regional news and, importantly, alternative news in the nations—if you spend time in Wales and Northern Ireland, that is a critical question—would be a deeply unfortunate consequence. There is an obligation on society and therefore on the Government. We believe that the BBC Trust, as the governing body, should help facilitate a funding mechanism for that. That is why we propose what we propose; because we share the noble Lord’s view that there is a clear and present danger of the emergence of a monopoly. Monopolies are generally bad. Monopolies in the provision of news and democratic debate are profoundly bad social consequences. Will newspaper bodies be able to be part of those consortiums if they come to pass? Yes, they certainly would. Are we saying that a full merger between the BBC and Channel 4 is dead, to use the noble Lord’s phrase? To be clear, I think we are saying three things. We believe that there is a clear case for the trust to look in more detail at a greater level of commercial separation of BBC Worldwide’s activities from the main institutional structure of the corporation's activities in the United Kingdom. We also believe that there is an opportunity for an operating joint venture in the UK between BBC Worldwide and Channel 4, but we are equally making it clear that that is a matter for the parties. They must do that on commercially transparent terms. But if they can reach an agreement, the Government stand ready to approve that and facilitate any loan financing on commercial terms that may be needed to make that joint venture operate. I hope that that provides the noble Lord with clarity.