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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, the great danger is that I may repeat the arguments I have just deployed with no hope of any greater satisfaction as far as the noble Lord is concerned. I am not prepared to accept an amendment which restricts the appointment to the provision of television content, for exactly the same reason I gave with the previous amendment: the model which the noble Lord finds acceptable seems to be the existing structure of television news. I am indicating that in a greatly changed media environment, and one which is going to change with great rapidity in the foreseeable future, we have to move beyond the analogue world. We have to ensure that where services are needed—we are talking, remember, about news services—they are delivered according to standards which underpin the Bill and the provision of television news, in terms of impartiality. I say to the noble Lord that these services are of course likely to be concentrated in areas where they deliver public value—and therefore are wanted—or where there is market failure. I know the noble Lord treats this with equanimity, but the Government do not. In his perspective on this Bill, the noble Lord seems to be oblivious to the fact that the market is not a guarantor of local and regional news provision. This provision, as we are watching, is in steady decline; we know the reasons for this. My noble friends Lord Puttnam and Lord Bragg, who have now departed the Chamber, spoke on news issues regarding earlier amendments. They eloquently articulated the fact that the values regarding news provision ought to be universally obtained; both expressed the extent to which we have a collapse of the market in crucial areas of this news provision. As a sufficient analyst of the contemporary scene, the noble Lord will know very well that there are market failures. If he says he can treat them with equanimity, I say the Government do not think we should. The public expectation of local and regional news of a high standard is legitimate. There is market failure in these provisions: that is why we have this concept of independent news consortia in the Bill, predicated on the assumption that they are there because we have identified a need. I defy the noble Lord to indicate from the Dispatch Box that he cannot see any weakness in the market.