Broadcasting: Digital Radio

Lord Tanlaw Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

I pay tribute to the noble Lord and his committee. I read the summary of the report and there is a response to it from the Government dated June. Within the next couple of weeks, the Minister in the Commons will make an announcement on the road map forward on digital switchover.

[Lord Tanlaw]

My Lords, I have given notice of this supplementary. Can the Minister say what plans the BBC has in an all-digital world to provide an accurate time signal at least equivalent to its analogue signal in 1924, which was accurate to one-fifth of a second on a pendulum clock? If the BBC cannot improve its current digital time signal, which has a variation of four seconds, will the Government insist that in future a MSF radio clock is fitted to all digital receivers, thereby providing a timescale with an accuracy of one-tenth of a second UTC for digital listeners?