It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler). I fear that I may repeat much of what he just said. I am pleased to be speaking in this debate, a week on from the King’s Speech debate in which I spent quite a bit of time calling on the Government to get on and introduce the Media Bill. For once, they listened to me—that’s nice.
The Media Bill we are debating is the first piece of media legislation for 20 years. The media landscape has changed beyond belief in the last two decades—it is vastly different from the world we lived in 20 years ago—so the Bill is vital to supporting broadcasters and audiences in the modern age. As the media landscape has changed, it is important that we support legislation without delay to give certainty to this important sector. We should recognise that the Bill will probably govern the media landscape for the next 20 years, so it must be forward-thinking, outward-looking and open, just as the previous legislation was.
I declare my interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary media group and the all-party parliamentary group on commercial radio. Let me start by saying that I welcome the Bill, which responds well to the needs of the sector. Because of time limitations, I will focus my remarks on three specific areas of the Bill. I will do something that I rarely do, and put television ahead of radio.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to simplifying the existing remit for public service broadcasters. PSBs are what make our television landscape renowned around the world, but they face unprecedented competition for viewers, programming content and talent in an era when global streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are producing original content and becoming increasingly dominant in the market. It is good that we have more content producers, but even better, they are choosing to make content here in the UK because of our regulatory framework.
TV prominence is about ensuring that UK viewers can easily find public service content that they value. We are living in an increasingly global marketplace, but there is still an appetite for programmes that reflect British values. In fact, around seven in 10 UK adults want UK life and culture to be represented on screen, and a similar number agree that PSBs make programmes designed for UK audiences. Why is it important that we introduce legislation to protect PSBs? Surely, viewers will want to watch the programmes that they make.
Until now, in return for providing public service content, the Government, through Ofcom, have allocated frequencies to broadcasters. In a relatively uncomplicated world, those channels have been easy to find on electronic programme guides: ITV, and STV in Scotland, on channel 3; Channel 4 and Channel 5 on their respective channels. Once someone has tuned in their TV to the nearest transmitter, they press the number on their remote control and the channel is there.
In a future world where the internet is used to deliver the linear TV and video on demand, the tech companies and platforms will decide where products and programmes appear. In fact, at the moment, if Samsung or LG decided not to include the BBC iPlayer app on their TV screens, there is nothing the BBC, UK viewers or the Government could do about it. If Amazon decided to double the charge for Channel 4’s on-demand service to appear on its Fire Stick, there is little Channel 4 could do about it. From speaking to Channel 4, I know that when Amazon moved the location of the Channel 4 app on the Fire Stick, there was a significant alteration in the viewing of Channel 4. It matters where the apps are located on the relevant platform.
If we want to make sure that British viewers can easily find BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, and STV in Scotland and S4C in Wales, we need to agree the framework that will ensure that platforms carry those services. I fully support that. I also urge the Government to look carefully at using the word “significant” rather than “appropriate”. That will determine where the channels are found on those platforms.