Broadcasting (Radio Multiplex Services) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-13
Topic: Culture
Matthew John David Hancock (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure and an honour to be called to the Dispatch Box to respond to this debate Like everybody else, I put on the record wholeheartedly my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for introducing the Bill. He gave a great exposition of the Bill and set out in good detail what he hopes we can achieve. I also put on the record my thanks to the officials in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport who have worked with my hon. Friend on the Bill and prepared me for it. We have in DCMS an incredibly dedicated radio team who care deeply about the success of radio in this country, and I thank them. I had proposed to try to answer directly many of the questions that had been asked in the debate, as well as set out, quite briefly, what is in the Bill, but because that was done so well by my hon. Friend at the start, I shall be relatively brief I am grateful to all Members who have contributed to this debate. Perhaps we should start with the position of the Labour party and the Labour Front-Bench team. It was, I think, the maiden performance, at length, from the Dispatch Box by the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). She was elected only in June and gave a great performance with lots of questions. So impressive was her performance today that I wonder whether she, like an increasing number of her friends, will be opting for a job outside Parliament soon I will go through the hon. Lady’s questions in detail. I was really impressed that she started off with the important matter of rural areas. It was addressed in the trials, and in Ofcom’s response to the trials. We will go through the technical details that will lead to the orders in a further consultation. Given the hon. Lady’s interest and the fact that we have support for this Bill from all parts of the House, I am sure that the question about rural areas will be properly addressed On the frequency plan, the hon. Lady seemed to imply that it was not possible to vote in support of the Bill until that plan was in place. I caution her against such an approach, as the process has already started. The frequency trials were very positive. Of course further consultation will address the technical details, but those technical details are a matter for the orders and statutory instruments that follow the Bill rather than the principles that we are debating today. The same is true about the comments made by Radiocentre and the Community Media Association. Those are matters for the regulations The hon. Lady rightly raised the matter of skills. The Ofcom report was clear that the trials delivered exactly the sorts of skills that we should be looking for in this space. She also talked about money, saying that this all comes down to funding. Well, I caution her against that view. Although Labour thinks that everything comes down to public funding, we think that human ingenuity is quite impressive, too As it happens, in this spending review period funding for community radio support was increased and guaranteed out to 2020, but it is amazing what people can achieve if they are given the permission to do so. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay set out many times in the course of his speech, this Bill is ultimately a permissive piece of legislation: it is about allowing people to do things that, currently, they cannot do. Therefore, it is about a further unleashing of human ingenuity The hon. Lady asked, perfectly reasonably, why this Bill and the clauses in it are not part of the Digital Economy Bill. The reason is that we wanted to see the conclusion of the trials before putting out the legislation. We published the Digital Economy Bill back in the summer, but the trials had not concluded at that point, so we did not want to put these details in that Bill. There have been odd noises from the Opposition Benches about why the Digital Economy Bill was not delayed. I do not think that we can delay in bringing forward the transition to digital, whether in this or the other Bill The hon. Lady also raised a question that had been mentioned by a number of others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), about the matter of public only or public and private. I know that some of her friends on the Front Bench think "public good, private bad" but we on the Government Benches reject such an approach, because we think that there can be a contribution from both public and private. That question will be addressed in the consultation. Again, this Bill is permissive on that basis. It does not require either public or private backing. However, there is an important balance to be struck in the consultation, which is that, ultimately, small-scale digital radio is about enabling communities and community support. We do not want it to be completely gobbled up by large commercial providers for whom there are other options. We want to ensure that there is space for the innovative and for the very small. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said, people need to be able to start a radio station from their garden shed. That is what this is all about. There is a reasonable case for limiting the commercial element, but there is also a case for small commercial operations, and we will address the balance of those cases in the forthcoming consultation. I hope that addresses the points made from the Opposition Front Bench Let me now address some of the questions asked by other Members. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) asked how the masts will work in practice. Of course, individual radio stations will not necessarily have to put up their own masts; the whole point is to have a network of masts. The masts can go on to existing masts that are used for other things, and they can go on to buildings. In fact, we have just relaxed some of the planning regulations on masts. Like my hon. Friend, I represent a rural constituency. I had the great privilege of opening our local digital mast, which has gone up next to a school in north Suffolk, which means we can now get BBC Radio Suffolk on digital radio. The technology is there and the planning system is in increasingly good shape to allow this. Therefore, although a radio company could put up its own mast, there are also ways to start up a radio station without having to go down that hardware route My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), who is a great supporter of radio, provided not only insight in the debate, but entertainment. In fact, one could say that as well as the music, he has provided the lyrics. He made a passionate case about the positive impact of radio in times of distress, such as the serious storms and flooding in his constituency just over a year ago. He paid tribute to his local radio station in what I thought was a very balanced way. There is no reason to think that DAB will be any less reliable and resilient during storms. By allowing for more localised digital content, we can get even more local information in times of distress. I hope that he is reassured on that point My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) made an important point about political balance in community radio. Of course, anyone in broadcasting has to follow the law of the land and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and ensure that their output conforms to what is required. He made a strong case for radio, mostly on the grounds of cricket. I remember well the time he astonished not only the entire Indian parliamentary cricket team, but the rest of the British parliamentary team by taking a wicket in Dharamshala. I also recall spending an awful lot of time recovering the ball from the boundary.