Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the potential risk that the privatisation of Channel 4 would lead to the loss of distinctive UK content and a shift towards generic content tailored to an international audience.

The government is currently consulting on issues around the channel’s publisher-broadcaster restriction, its contribution to levelling up, and its remit.

We will use the responses to our consultation, and evidence received through it, to inform our decision-making. As such, it would not be appropriate for us to carry out an impact assessment until we have considered the responses and answered the questions set out in the consultation - until then, we do not know what specific impacts we are assessing.