Broadcasting (Radio Multiplex Services) Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 3rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 4, after “may” insert “after public consultation”.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 2, page 2, line 17, at end insert—

“(4A) The Secretary of State is not to make an order under this section in relation to small scale radio multiplex services except where the description is of services to be provided primarily for the good of members of the public or of a particular community, rather than for commercial services.”

Amendment 3, line 17, at end insert—

“(4A) The Secretary of State must not make an order under this section in relation to small-scale radio multiplex services except where the order includes conditions to provide for capacity on small-scale radio multiplex to be reserved for broadcasting services of a description set out in an order under section 262.”

This amendment ensures that radio stations that meet the description of Community Radio under section 262 of the Communications Act 2003 are guaranteed carriage on small-scale radio multiplexes.

[Wendy Morton]

I will speak briefly to my two amendments, amendments 1 and 2, because I appreciate that time is marching on.

I have supported the Bill, promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), throughout —I attended Second Reading and was on the Public Bill Committee. However, during the Bill Committee and on reflection afterwards, I felt that a couple of details that are not in the Bill were worthy of a little more probing.

Amendment 1 relates to public consultation. The Bill is important, stretching across many different facets, and will potentially reach many different communities. On Second Reading, the Government indicated that they would conduct a form of consultation and review with all the relevant stakeholders on the technical details of the Bill. However, given the Bill’s technical nature, I seek some reassurances from the Minister on that consultation, hence the proposed insertion of “after public consultation”. There are some very small community radio stations, often run by community volunteers, and I want to be certain that they will be part of the consultation process. It would be wrong if they were excluded in favour of the larger stations.

Turning to amendment 2, concerns were expressed about the Bill in Committee, particularly those that had been raised by the Community Media Association. I am concerned that the provision in proposed new section 258A(4)(c) of the Communications Act 2003 that an order under clause 1 may

“require small-scale radio multiplex services to be provided on a non-commercial basis”

is not a sufficient guarantee that such services will be operated primarily for public and community benefit.

We heard much on Second Reading about the benefits of community radio and how it can get into the hard-to-reach communities that Members of all parties are all too familiar with. I seek reassurance about that. Where a small-scale radio multiplex service is run on a commercial basis, there is a high risk that charges to small-scale and community radio content providers could remain excessive, and that opportunities for those radio operators to reduce costs through the sale of spare capacity could be lost, which would be a shame.

A commercially operated, small-scale radio multiplex operator might be inclined to populate available capacity with content from providers prepared to pay the highest rate, rather than content of the greatest public value. For example, content providers with low fixed costs, such as those providing semi-automated—predominantly music—services, might be better placed to afford the high costs of transmission than content providers that invest in original local content, including speech and local journalism. Such community stations go to the heart of our communities.