I am not sure whether my hon. Friend meant ““duplicity”” or ““duplication””. ““Duplicity”” may have been a Freudian slip there. [Laughter.] Let me also say that I am confident that the BBC is watching this debate. When I participated in the debate on Friday about the BBC, I received regular text messages from a member of its corporate affairs department. To give the BBC due credit, it takes debates in this House very seriously.
Radio remains a very important medium in this country. Every week, more than 90% of the population consume more than a billion hours of radio in total. The radio landscape in the UK is more diverse than ever, with listeners having access to more than 20 national radio stations, 400 local radio stations and 200 community radio stations. The creation of a community radio landscape is something that the last Government can genuinely take credit for. In addition, internet radio makes it possible to listen to a diverse range of radio stations from across the globe.
We have debated the importance of localness in radio a number of times in this House and it was certainly a feature of the recent debate on changes in media ownership rules. Ensuring localness in radio is a key part of the regulatory regime for commercial radio and Ofcom is required to ensure that commercial radio produces an appropriate amount of local material. For many commercial stations, their local nature is their key differentiator. The location of their studios in the local high street, and the fact that their presenters travel the same roads to work as their listeners, allow those stations to speak more directly to their listeners than some other stations. That is true of both commercial and BBC services.
However, those local media businesses are competing in an increasingly global media market, and commercial radio in the UK has seen its total revenues fall in the past 10 years. So the needs of commercial businesses and the public policies of localness do not always sit easily together. Having said that, I am a supporter, for example, of some of the technology that some commercial radio companies are introducing to help them to reduce the fixed costs of local studios and avoid the duplication of resources. But I know that that is not always popular, as the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) made very clear in a debate that we had on the localness rules.
I also want to mention briefly the success of community radio, which was introduced by the last Government in 2004. Community radio has quickly grown into an important and thriving third tier of radio. Community services are the embodiment of local radio, with stations staffed and programmes presented by local volunteers. I am pleased that, last week, Ofcom announced a further round of licensing for community radio, so that even more communities can benefit from such stations. If hon. Members do not have a community radio station in or near their constituency, I urge them to look into community radio.
I promised to turn to the specific issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal raised, which is the speculation around the networking of the BBC's local and regional services. As I said, the suggestion that the BBC will scale down its nations and regions services and its network programming with BBC Radio Five Live is, at the moment, just speculation. The BBC is considering a number of proposals and absolutely no decision has been made at this time.
The hon. Member for Dudley North rightly pointed out that the reduction in resources for the BBC could present the corporation with some problems. However, it is worth looking at this issue of resources in the round. It was only a couple of years ago that the BBC was considering going into local video, in addition to local radio. That proposal was fiercely opposed by many in this House because they wanted to preserve space for the commercial radio sector. The BBC had the resources then to make a significant expansion and therefore it does not need to consider making a significant contraction now. I will not pick up on the specific points that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet made, but he said that there are numerous ways in which the BBC could save money. Finally, I suspect that changes to local radio programming are driven more by editorial decisions than by the need to save money.
The hon. Member for Dudley North asked me a number of questions and I suggest that I should write to him in some detail about them. For example, to ask me as a Minister to opine on how BBC savings should be divided between national, regional and local services is to invite me to go beyond my brief in trying to decide how the BBC should use its money. But I am certainly happy to approach the director-general of the BBC to ask him what criteria he intends to apply and to ask for guarantees about programme quality and diversity. There is no doubt that some jobs may be lost in the BBC, but again that will be a matter for the BBC itself to consider.
The BBC now has a seven-year licence fee settlement. It has certainty of funding for the next seven years, which is something that no other media company in this country enjoys. It is quite right that the BBC should be examining the scope for efficiency savings while looking to deliver the best quality service possible with the funds available to it.
The BBC has launched its internal consultation, ““Delivering Quality First””, and the proposed changes to BBC local radio is just one topic of discussion. As I said, however, there is a bright future for local news and local content, not only with commercial radio, community radio and the move towards digital radio, but with a subject that I am surprised not a single hon. Member has mentioned in the debate—the advent of local television. Local television will bring a huge rebirth of local content across communities in this country, and we should see the first fruits of that initiative early next year.
BBC Local Radio
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Vaizey of Didcot
(Conservative)
in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 5 April 2011.
It occurred during Adjournment debate on BBC Local Radio.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
526 c219-21WH 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
Westminster Hall
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 22:50:00 +0000
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