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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as an associate of an independent production company. The purpose of this rather technical amendment is to address an imbalance that exists in the treatment of certain merger undertakings. The issue arises because when responsibility for mergers, which was given to the Secretary of State under the old Fair Trading Act 1973, was transferred to the Competition Commission, this did not cover all cases and the Secretary of State retained the power to review some mergers. This amendment in fact concerns the continuing existence of the contract rights renewal, the price control mechanism that applies to ITV advertising sales. When Carlton and Granada merged in 2002 and became ITV plc, it was one of only three commercial television channels available in most homes. There were concerns then that its share of the advertising market was too powerful, so CRR was introduced to protect advertisers. CRR allows companies that advertise with ITV to retain to this day commercial deals that they made in 2002. It was designed for an analogue age and is palpably ridiculous in our digital one. Digital TV, and with it the supply of airtime for adverts, has grown with incredible speed. While competition in the commercial TV market has exploded, the media-buying market has consolidated, with 80 per cent of media advertising today controlled by four agencies. Do these super-agencies and the multinational companies that they represent really need protecting from one television channel, ITV? CRR is damaging the UK’s creative industries. It deprives ITV of money at a time when investment in original UK television content has fallen by £340 million over five years. It has become unnecessary and should be brought to an end. As it stands, the CRR regulations are the responsibility of the Competition Commission. The best route to amending CRR is to bring its review under the responsibility of the Secretary of State. This amendment is designed to pave the way for that. It would give the Secretary of State the discretion, following secondary legislation, to bring CRR back within the scope of a regime that continues to apply to several other merger undertakings. I beg to move.