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Local Media

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am against Government waste, and it seems pointless to repeat that answer here when it has already been printed in Hansard. I will write him a letter explaining what my definition of super-fast broadband is, but it certainly does not involve the word "megabit." We have always been clear that the previous Government's plans for independently financed news consortia were the wrong way to go, and we opposed those plans from the beginning. We understood why the previous Government wanted to put the measures in place: it was their answer to the challenge of sustaining regional news. There is a legacy from the process that they started, in that it kindled innovative ideas among local media companies. Indeed, my understanding is that many of the consortia that formed as a result of that policy will continue to work together to look at ways of taking their ideas forward. We hope that by, for example, relaxing the cross-media ownership rules, they can follow a deregulatory path, rather than the subsidy path, to bring their ideas to fruition. We always felt strongly that the issue of subsidy focused consortia on the best way to get access to the subsidy, as opposed to the best way to engage with viewers. That is why we opposed subsidies, and why we took an early decision not to go ahead with the pilots. The savings made from not going ahead with them will go into providing super-fast broadband, a definition of which is available in Hansard.