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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

Amendments 232C and 233 and Clause 22 stand part work together to help us all to escape from yet another inexorable layer of bureaucracy. Channel 4 is already obliged to produce an annual report that sets out in detail its financial position and how it has met its public service obligations. The annual report also includes a public impact report which sets out in further detail how Channel 4 delivered on its core public service purposes over the previous year. Channel 4's chairman and chief executive have also recently started appearing before the relevant Select Committee, giving Parliament the opportunity to ask for further information as well as scrutinising the documents. Finally, the Communications Act 2003 sets out a detailed process that allows Ofcom to vary the Channel 4 licence should it feel that Channel 4 is not meeting its public service requirements. So Ofcom, Parliament and the Government already have considerable regulatory oversight of Channel 4. Why are the Government proposing to introduce the bureaucratic and unwieldy mechanism set out in Clause 22 rather than just incorporating any new requirements into the existing scrutiny system? Section 266 of the Communications Act 2003 is redundant. It requires every licensed public service broadcaster to produce statements of programme policy which take a great deal of time to prepare and therefore cost each channel a great many man hours. These reports, I respectfully suggest, have a limited readership: those who produce the statements, a couple of officials in Ofcom, members of the relevant committees, and I struggle to think of anyone else. The reports contain information that is duplicated in each channel's annual report and they add precisely nothing to the viewing public's experience of each channel. They are a very good example of regulation for regulation's sake. I beg to move.