Culture Politick

Lord Puttnam has kindly agreed to allow us to post his excellent but not delivered speech on the Digital Economy Bill:

My Lords,  as I did last week, I should declare an interest as Deputy Chairman of Channel 4, and also as President of the Film Distributors Association.

I warmly welcome the proposals in the Bill to update Channel 4’s remit.

As the Secretary of State has just made clear, the revised remit not only provides a clear direction of travel for the Channel itself, but also underlines the Government’s belief that the provision of public service content remains essential to the development of civil society – arguably, even more so in a digital world, where misinformed ‘chatter’ sometimes threatens to drown out informed debate.

By way of a current example, around the greatest challenge that we individually and collectively face – that of climate change.

Irrespective of the positions we might take, is there anyone here today who would seriously challenge the thought that our ability enjoy an accessible and informed space for debate on this, or anything else of importance, is a bad idea?

Would even those, on the outer fringes, who cling to the notion that humanity is not at least partially responsible for adverse changes to the climate – or even deny that it’s happening at all – wish to see the space for balanced debate eviscerated?

Try explaining that to your children, or in my case my, grandchildren.

It is, after all, they who will be settling the bill long after the rest of us have left the restaurant!

For these reasons, my Lords, I particularly welcome the proposals that Channel 4, as a public service broadcaster, has clear and unambiguous duties around the provision of news and current affairs; and indeed content for older children and young adults.

In the debate  last week, I stressed the continuing, and arguably growing importance of mass access to properly resourced, impartial news.

Most particularly to the television and broadcast media.

This is an argument that’s been wonderfully well advanced by the Secretary of State this afternoon.

Again, as I said last week, I regard the BBC as providing the ‘gold standard’ for the provision of accurate and impartial information.

But if such provision is left solely to the BBC, or indeed to what we rather loosely refer to as our ‘public service broadcasters’, then there is clearly a danger that, as citizens, we become ever more dependent on a particular set of filters which, notwithstanding the very best of intentions, cannot be healthy for informed debate in a vigorous plural democracy.

There are some on the opposite benches, more particularly in Another Place who, along with the their new found friends in the communication business, have recently been warning anyone who cares to listen  that ‘overweening’ public service broadcasters, and the BBC in particular, represent some form of palpable ‘threat to our democracy’!

In one respect, and one respect only, I agree.

The provision of accurate and verifiably impartial news cannot and should not be left to one or even two public service broadcasters alone.

Most especially at a regional and local level.

For this reason I also welcome the proposals in the Bill to find new ways to support the provision of regional and local news.

With local newspapers closing almost at the speed of a printing press, and some, quite understandably, exploring the viability of new, digital, paid-for business models, there’s a need to ensure that widespread access to the best possible news service also remains viable at a regional level.

Lest anyone be tempted to say that the Internet offers the complete answer, it’s important to remember that a recent Ofcom survey showed that 27% of households in this country are not yet online – and that figure is much higher among those over 65, and most particularly among those in low income households.

In respect of stimulating informed debate, I also welcome the proposals to open up access to all forms of intellectual property, not least orphan works. I understand from the British Library that at least 40% of that Library’s collections are potentially orphan works.

At present, the Library, like other archives of every kind, public and private, cannot make those works legally available,  not least because they may be subject to criminal liability if they knowingly deal in work that is in copyright.

This is patently absurd – potentially, at least, those running publicly financed archives such as the BL, the BFI National Archive and others, are subject to criminal sanction, whereas those who persistently and illegally share online files of books, music and films are not!

I’ve no wish to see our already over-crowded prisons topped-up with ‘digital offenders’ of either kind!

So for this among other reasons I broadly welcome both the proposals on freeing up access to intellectual property and for stemming online infringement of copyright. Subjects to which this House will doubtless return.

In conclusion I’ll return to what is, for me, the single most important opportunity offered by this Bill.

The opportunity to re-affirm our commitment to a well informed 21st century democracy.

As a nation we have been significantly impoverished by the decision by our national newspaper groups (the Financial Times being an honourable exception) to conflate news and opinion in such a way as to make it all but impossible for the reader to clearly distinguish the one from the other.

The Daily Telegraph was the last to succumb to what I can only assume they regarded as a commercial imperative.

This results in ‘news pages’ adopting a form of ‘megaphone’ communication in which the recipient is restricted to a barrage of pre-digested views without the ability to interrogate or question their source.

It’s important to remember in considering this Bill that our debate in respect of the future of digital news is being held against the background of a newspaper industry that’s become increasingly complacent in regard to their traditional function – that of enabling an informed democracy to flourish as a result of the quality, depth and accuracy of the information available to it.

The very notion that we should allow, let alone encourage our broadcast media to go down the same road fills me with horror.

I look forward to testing the views of all sides of the House on this issue, in the hope of reaffirming the commitment of this House to non-prejudicial and impartial broadcast news.