My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that platform owners and content providers actually depend on each other. The content provider needs the platform owner to disseminate the product. Equally, the platform owner needs content to make his platform in any way relevant. It is worth recalling that many years ago the old British Broadcasting Company, as it was first known, was formed by radio manufacturers who realised that nobody was ever going to use this new device called a radio unless there was some content to listen to. So they set up the British Broadcasting Company, which Lord Reith transformed into the BBC as we know it today. There is a mutual dependency.
I suppose the object of any legislation on this subject will be to try to mimic as far as possible what a free market would deliver. If I am the content provider and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is the platform owner, clearly I need to pay him something for carrying my product; equally, he needs to pay me something for having that product, and we will strike a deal. That deal is going to be modified. First of all, the role of Parliament here is to set the rules by which both sides are going to operate. If we say, for example, that I as a content provider must offer it to him, it weakens my bargaining position. Equally, if we say to him that he must carry it, it weakens his bargaining position.
The public service broadcasters may have to face up to the fact that the price they will get for the product will be somewhat lower than what a free market might deliver simply because the platform owner will be obliged to take it—unless, of course, the Government are contemplating making it no longer obligatory for platform owners to carry public service content. If that rule were taken away, public service content would stand or fall on its own merits and attract a much higher price—or no price at all if somebody decided to run a channel without the BBC, which I think would be rather risky if we look at the viewing figures.
We have a role first of all in deciding what the overall environment is going to be. There is going to be a degree of regulation because even the most free market-orientated of us recognise that there is a public interest here in making sure that public service content is universally available, which in some areas will mean using platforms that otherwise are of very little relevance. Equally, if the platform owner is going to be required to take that content, it will reduce the price it pays for it but there still will be a price. At the moment the transfer of resources from public service broadcasting to platform owners is wholly inappropriate and I hope the Government will address it urgently.