Digital Britain

My Lords, on the first point, the noble Baroness is right: in the Ofcom review, in its consultations and in the consultations that we had, there was a significant level of concern about the amount and quality of content for children—primarily programming, but also radio, as the noble Baroness mentioned, and online content—being produced by organisations other than the BBC. We have thought long and hard about this, and we say three things in the report about children. First, on the point of contained contestability, we say that we see this primarily as a funding mechanism for news in the nations, in the regions and locally—a point made earlier by the noble Lord opposite—but we recognise that there are other calls on that, which could include children. Secondly, in our proposed revised remit for Channel 4 we specify an increased responsibility for the provision of children’s content, not just traditional programming. Thirdly, one of the many virtues of clarity about the switchover timetable for digital radio is that, as the noble Baroness will know, digital radio is capable of infinitely greater capacity at lower cost if you can resolve the multiplex licensing and transmission costs, and we lay out how to do that. This will lead to a flowering of radio services at more affordable cost, including the potential, much discussed for a long time, of a commercially funded children’s radio station. On the video games industry, we are very clear in the report that after due consultation and debate we will opt for the PEGI system as the predominant system, but we recognise that in some areas there is a role for the BBFC, which is a statutory UK-based body. We lay out clearly how we see those interrelationships working. Much to the irritation of some noble Lords, a more detailed consultation on that question is published at the same time.