My Lords, I offer Green support for Amendment 9, which I think has already been very powerfully argued for. I also note the degree of lobbying, from the Citizens’ PSM Forum, already referred to, but also a number of other groups and individuals who have contacted me about this, indicating that they regard this as terribly important.
I will focus on science, because I think that science broadcasting, in terms of socially valued public service genres, really deserves to be stressed. This picks up points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on the first group, in the context of our climate emergency and all the other exceeding of planetary boundaries threats that we face. I am speaking in the context where today’s Guardian reports that a survey of IPCC scientists notes that the majority view is that we are heading towards 2.5 degrees of global heating. I remain an optimist and I do not necessarily agree with that—it is a question of social innovation and change—but what is clearly crucial is that the public sector broadcasters provide the scientific information and context that the public need to understand the debates and the issues.
I declare my position here as a science graduate from 1987. Much of what I was taught in my science degree I now know to be utterly out of date. One thing that may not apply to the other aspects of this—certainly to the first point here—is that science changes with lightning speed. Most of what I was taught in soil science I can now regard only as absolute junk. Much of what I was taught in genetics has been utterly overturned. If we are to have a public who are informed about these really crucial issues, science programming can be difficult, controversial and very expensive but it is crucial that there is a remit in the Bill that we need this from our public sector broadcasters.
Personally, I try to keep up to date with a whole range of podcasts. I can recommend to noble Lords “Big Biology” or the New Books Network “Systems and Cybernetics” channel, but they are not necessarily terribly accessible and it is really important that we have public sector broadcasters providing the content that informs the public on scientific issues.