All these matters need to be tackled, and my amendment seeks to say just that to the Government. The problem is that they are not being tackled and are causing an unfair disadvantage to public service broadcasters. That is my point. Pay TV companies are charging monthly subscriptions for access to pay TV, when most of the viewing is on public service broadcasting channels, which are an essential part of the offer being made. For example, ITV invests around £1 billion a year on programming, the majority of which is original UK content, driving UK economic growth and provided free to viewers at no cost to the taxpayer. Continuing to do that depends on its being able to make a commercial return on its investment, which at the moment it does not.
Section 73 currently allows platforms and online operators to extract increasing amounts of value from free-to-air content, with no return to investors, rightsholders and talent, or the UK creative economy. Those platforms are perfectly happy to pay for other channels on ITV, such as ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4, through normal commercial negotiations, so it is hard to understand why they would not also be prepared to do that for the main channel. Section 73 of the 1988 Act is completely outdated and does a great disservice to public service broadcasters. It has created unfair terms and conditions for public service broadcasters, and even if the Government do not accept my amendment, I hope that they will consider the issue and come back soon with proposals to deal with this serious anomaly concerning cable TV and online content.
2.45 pm