My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Lord, Lord Black, for their comments and support for these amendments.
The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, talked about underlying rights and of course, there should not be any anxiety about whether these have been obtained sufficiently for retransmission. Channel 4 tells us that it has a multiyear contractual arrangement in place with Virgin Media for which all the rights are cleared, so there is no impediment. The noble Viscount also made the point that the money involved in retransmission fees is a large amount for public service broadcasters but relatively small for cable operators. That is another factor.
The noble Lord, Lord Black, stressed the point about time being of the essence. I am delighted that the Minister responded to that, because we are in a context where the creation of world-class content to
be competitive on the world stage could never be more important. He described further delay of two years as being a lifetime in this industry. That is absolutely true.
In the circumstances, and compared with many ministerial responses, I thought the Minister’s response extremely positive. I do not think I have ever had such a tantalising response about revealing all on Report. That is quite something.
I may be getting this wrong and the Minister can correct me, but I assume there will be some sort of revelation on Report about the timetable. I am perfectly happy to table a probing amendment to get the full benefit of her response on timing, but if she is going to table an amendment that would move things towards the kind of timing we are looking for in this amendment, as a result of the technical consultation finally being determined by the IPO, I will not quarrel with that. I am very happy to suspend judgment, but a nod is as good as a wink in Committee. If the Minister would like to say anything further about what precisely she meant by what she might do on Report, I am open to suggestion.