COMMISSION ON THE POWERS AND ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALESMINUTES OF PROCEEDINGSof theEVIDENCE OF:Mr Geraint Talfan Daviesheld atThe Civic Centre, Merthyr County Borough CouncilonFRIDAY 26th JUNE 2003 |
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In Attendance |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Proceedings |
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Lord Richard |
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Thank you very much for coming. Can I ask you to do two things. One is formally to introduce yourself for the sake of the transcript; secondly, if you'd open up the subject, as you see it, for 5 or 10 minutes, then we'll pursue the sort of issues that we think might be helpful. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Many thanks. I believe you've had a copy of the report of the working group prepared for the Assembly on broadcasting. I apologise that there isn't a wider paper than that, but, in response, as soon as the date was fixed, I vanished on holiday. |
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Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth |
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Could you speak up? The acoustics are bad. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Yes, certainly. I think in some ways the whole question of the media and broadcasting is an interesting case study of linkages or non-linkages between Wales and the UK, and perhaps it would be useful to just give a little background to the report that you've actually received. Broadcasting, we all understand of course, is not a devolved function and I would guess that it will remain that way. There is the Communications Bill before Parliament, but that doesn't change the situation and my guess is that that Communications Bill is going to be in force for some considerable time. This may seem anomalous that broadcasting isn't devolved – after all, most revolutionaries capture the radio station first – but our report does state some very powerful reasons for the status quo right at the opening of the report itself and I think those factors are not going to go away. There are some technological factors there which are very powerful. There is the issue of the single licence fee across the UK, and, of course, there is considerable shifting around of money between different parts of the UK, I think, within that licence fee. |
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Perhaps it is worth saying that although broadcasting is not a devolved function, I think it might be wrong to think that regulation simply resides in one place. Regulation in this sphere, is spread between international agencies, European directives, UK legislation and, as we will see with Ofcom, with considerable decentralised structures that are now being put in place and replicate, in some instances, and develop in other instances, the existing dispensation. It's worth saying, I think, that certainly the media, if we can take the media side of things separate from the Telecom side for a minute – I know a little more about broadcasting in the media than I do about Telecoms – but, the media in the UK, as we all know, are highly centralised. The BBC, I think, has two core skills: one is making programmes, the second is lobbying. It has a very powerful central policy-making capacity and I think it was fairly evident in the nineties, under John Birt – whatever other criticisms are made of John, I think he was particularly strong at mid to long-term strategic work. |
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ITV, in contrast, I think, is much weaker in this regard, the strategic regard. Even given the considerable consolidation of ownership over the last decade or so, ITV has been unable to deliver the same sort of central policy drive as a single organisation like the BBC. I suppose, although it's going back a little, I think the unwieldiness of a federation pre-1990 was actually what led it to being effectively taken to the cleaners in the franchise auction in 1990. Paradoxically, much has been made in the past of ITV's federal structure, but I think in some ways, certainly in terms of its network programming, it always was much more centralised than that facade of federalism might have suggested. |
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Channel 4 is highly centralised in terms of both form and function. It has no opt-out programming as the BBC and ITV has; it has no decentralised advisory Committees or anything of that kind. Then, S4C stands out, I suppose, as an additional independent broadcasting authority, the only non-UK-wide broadcasting authority that we actually have in this country. On radio, on the commercial side, we've also seen very considerable consolidation in recent years. Radio works through the commercial radio companies, regulated by the Radio Authority, of which I'm a member, but the commercial radio companies work through the Commercial Radio Companies' Association. Again, the difficulty sometimes of producing a clear policy line in an organisation that encompasses very large commercial groups and some very small stations can lead to some dysfunction, although clearly the CRCA lobbied successfully for more liberalisation in the Communications Bill. |
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There is no radio station in Wales that is not linked to some other station outside in small or large groups, or to a newspaper group. I'm not berating it; I'm simply stating that as a fact – not because I think it's inherently bad. Those are the facts on the ground. I suppose if we turn to the issue ofwhere does this leave the broadcasting community in Wales in terms of any kind of capacity for influencing policy, again you can track it through different parts of broadcasting. In terms of policy input, I think S4C clearly has a major advantage. It's independent. It can lobby Parliament or DCMS freely and in a quite unconstrained way. Its DCMS funding give it a standing relationship with the Department; after all, it's the Department charged with overall media policy. I'm sure, Ted, you can attest to S4C's almost permanent presence in Parliament during the passage of various broadcasting bills. I'm not saying the BBC is absent, but the BBC is represented centrally. |
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In terms of the BBC, the situation for broadcasters in Wales is rather different. BBC Wales’s senior staff can make representations to Government really only via the centre, and while this may be perfectly understandable in terms of organisational discipline, it does have a number of screening effects. First, the centre can block any representations that are not to its liking; second, it controls timing; and, third, of course, it will always have bigger fish to fry, so that even where the centre might be very sympathetic to an issue that, let's say, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland might wish to raise, it might not want to expend any part of its bank of credit with Government if it's out to win on bigger issues, and I can imagine that those kind of balances might obtain in other UK organisations that have a specific and significant presence in Wales. |
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In ITV the consolidation of ownership, I think, has removed almost all capacity for independent action on the policy front from HTV Wales, - it's a Wales and West franchise within a much wider ownership of course - and there is no requirement even at the moment for there to be a managing director of HTV Wales; indeed, there is one managing director for HTV at the moment and he is based in Bristol. I think that this lack of policy capacity was evident in discussions last year which the ICT held in developing a charter for the regions which led to a reduction in the number of hours of regional programming across the ITV system, and I'm happy to say more about that later if you wish. Then again, in commercial radio the policy input capacity or even the inclination to make any input is simply not there – not simply because of ownership consolidation, but largely because of the tiny scale of operation of many of the stations. |
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So, in large part – with the exception of S4C and, possibly, Radio Ceredigion – in a strict sense Welsh broadcasting is composed of branch plants, albeit the BBC branch carries some significant clout. So, the capacity of the industry in Wales to affect policy is, shall we say, highly asymmetric and heavily weighted to public service broadcasters. It's very significant, if you try and hold a conference on broadcasting in Wales, that one rarely sees any representation from commercial radio. I think, in terms of that industry, if you look at the capacity of Government, - certainly before the creation of the Assembly – I'm not sure that the Welsh Office had much purchase at all on broadcasting issues other than in the creation and development of S4C, which was seen, I think, more as a matter of language policy, a devolved matter, than as a broadcasting policy, which was a non-devolved matter. I do think that the Assembly's track record has been somewhat better. Certainly the impression I get from talking to people in London is that the Assembly has been much more active in trying to engage with broadcasting issues than has the Scottish Parliament or the administration in Northern Ireland, and that may be because broadcasting is perceived as more of a political issue in Wales partly because of the language dimension and there is also the dramatic history of development over the decades. |
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The Assembly, despite this non-devolution of broadcasting, sought to generate and submit its views on Government White Papers, and, I suppose, although it's not devolved, as we said in the report, politicians are always interested –broadcasting touches the lives of their constituents; it's a means of communication with the electorate; new technologies are seen as key to competitiveness; media industries are seen now as important components of the economy; and I suppose, too, because competition issues may play out in a different way in Wales than they might play out in some of the big metropolises in England. That said, although there has been, I think, quite a bit of engagement, I suppose it would be true to say that the pressure of other business –Ministerial and official stretch – has sometimes meant the interventions are not always timely, they don't always hit just the right moment, and very often, I suppose, in the progress of policy making, particularly the preparation of legislation, timeliness is quite important. |
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If you take the case of the report we prepared for the Assembly, I think it was well-timed in terms of Ofcom's own preparations – the shadow Ofcom Board had been set up; it was starting to create its own structures – and I believe that the report has been helpful to Ofcom in that regard. On the other hand, you might have said that it might have been more useful perhaps if it had been done somewhat earlier, say, in time for the pre-legislative scrutiny process. Certainly the contents of the report have been referred to in some of the discussions in the House of Lords and I understand there is an amendment before the House of Lords this afternoon or this evening in the name of Baroness Findlay seeking to put the concepts of committees or councils in the three nations onto the face of the bill, and it's not quite clear how the Government is going to respond to that. |
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Certainly we believed the notion of putting such a committee on the face of the bill rather than allowing it to be at the discretion of Ofcom was necessary because we didn't think the arrangements of the regulator in Wales should be any less robust than those for some of the people that they are regulating. S4C, of course, has its own statutory base; Broadcasting Councils, in the case of the BBC, are written into the Royal Charter. So, we felt that there was no reason why an Ofcom Council, if you like, for Wales, should not actually be written onto the face of the bill. Clearly for any such body that's set up it will be fairly crucial, as we've said in the report, for it to have a proper relationship with the Assembly. I do think the arrangements will do quite a lot to raise the level of debate about media and communications in Wales to a new level and ought to provide in the public domain much more detailed and objective analysis of circumstances here, promote an engagement by Wales in the wider debate, and, I think, for me certainly, the issue of the broadening and elevation of the debate about media communications matters. This requirement, if you like, to engage with a higher level of policy, I think that's an issue that really lies, for me, at the heart of devolution and the task of your own Commission, and I think that's one of the reasons why I personally believe that the current position of the Assembly in general is not the right way to start the process, if process it is. So, I think I'll just say that by way of introduction, if I may, and leave it to you to ask questions. |
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Lord Richard |
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Thank you very much indeed. Can I ask you a general question? What changes in the position of the Assembly would you like to see in order to produce the broadcasting benefits that you've been talking about? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Short of the devolution of powers, clearly there has got to be, I think, a structured relationship with Ofcom – and Ofcom is going to exist. The two options that we actually looked at when we considered the matter was whether you simply have an office of Ofcom in Cardiff and those officers relate to the Assembly, or whether you need a wider body alongside it. Certainly our feeling was that you will have a better basis for the sharing of information and the promotion, I think, of debate on these issues if you have an advisory body in Wales that, if you like, is also within the Ofcom tent. I think it would be quite difficult for Ofcom as a regulator to simply be sharing its information – it would not share information in the same way with, say, the Culture Committee of the Assembly as it would, say, with its own advisory body in Wales. |
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So, I think there is a way here of actually broadening the debate. I think, too, that although, if you like, the intermediate range of bodies are not popular in devolved circumstances, I think it will have a benefit because I think it will be able to engage a degree of expertise within its group that you cannot guarantee simply through the operation of a body of elected members; elected members do something rather different. There are two things that we said should be on the face of bill: one was the creation of a council; two, that it should be much clearer that there was consultation between Ofcom and the Assembly in appointments to Content Board and Consumer Panel as well as to any advisory body. That was not actually clear on the face of the bill. We tried to outline in the report, as you see, some areas where there might be thought to be a mismatch between what was said in some of the original policy statements by the Government and what was in the bill itself. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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I read with interest the Ofcom Wales Communication Council concept and it's clear that there was quite a bit of debate, as you say, a majority; it wasn't as unanimous as the rest of the report, was it? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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There was one dissenting voice. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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Out of four. |
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Lord Richard |
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Majority. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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We were five. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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But would the doubts about such a council be, and I raise them, that again you're creating yet another buffer between the organisation that will have the power and the National Assembly that at least would have to have some degree of oversight or some kind of accountability? Aren't we just full of buffers between democracy and operators in many other fields? You are not going to get it in the Communications Bill, but would it have been better to go for making Ofcom have a statutory duty to consult the National Assembly? A straight-forward relationship. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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It will have a duty, but there will be a job of work to be done at the Wales end that I'm not sure it would be appropriate for an Assembly to be doing. If you look at where we list the functions of a Communications Council – the handling of complaints on content and consumer issues – there is a whole range of things there that the Assembly just isn't going to have time for to begin with, so there is a question of resource, which is quite crucial. Secondly, I think, certainly in my experience of the Radio Authority's reviewing of complaints about content, I don't think it would be appropriate for elected politicians to be involved in that process because I think there is an ‘arm’s length’ issue there. |
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I think it's more that one of the needs for a Council is (a) around those issues, but (b) I think there is a strong case for not allowing the officers in, say, a Cardiff office simply to handle everything of this kind at an officer level. I think that the sort of structure that is there will be a way of promoting debate and will be a way of guaranteeing that ‘arm’s length’ principle, which is more important in the broadcasting and media area than in any other field. I know there is a great discussion going on about ‘arm’s length’ arrangements with regard to all kinds of bodies, and it is an issue because it certainly struck me in recent months that even with the Arts Council you start to consider the ‘arm’s length’ issue; the nature of that issue differs from body to body. One of the problems is there isn't a set of principles that governs the relationship between the elected body and the appointed body. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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Would you say that the argument you'd apply now is the case, the reason why we've had virtually no representation, an £84 million grant lodged in a central Whitehall department entirely devoted to the cultural development of the Welsh language. Weshould have more, not devolved in any sense – is that the same case that you'd apply? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I think it is anomalous, but I think that the British system of government seems to be capable of living with an awful lot of anomalies. I think one of the difficulties is that, for me, there is a need for some kind of symmetry. The notion of devolving one broadcaster and having the Assembly – having S4C being the Assembly's broadcaster – and all the others accountable somewhere else doesn't seem to me to be as sensible an arrangement as the current one even with its anomaly. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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Because you said in your statement it was the one non-UK national broadcaster totally devoted to one particular aspect which is entirely discrete (okay, other than SDN stuff), but totally discrete to Wales, but lodged in a sort of bit of a Whitehall department. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I think there are clearly some big issues that are going to come up in the next 10 or 15 years in relation to the shape of broadcasting in Wales and I think it's going to be quite tricky if one broadcaster is in one camp and all the other broadcasters are somewhere else. |
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Lord Richard |
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I don't quite follow this. Surely the anomaly is there at the moment? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Yes. |
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Lord Richard |
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You're transferring the anomaly down and making it a bit more Welsh than it is at present. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I find it difficult to put on my past hat with the BBC. I think that if you were to devolve S4C entirely there would be a relationship between one broadcaster and the Assembly that would be qualitatively different from the relationship with other broadcasters. The other thing with this issue, a worry that's been for me, is that there has been a tendency – certainly a tendency for people outside Wales – to think that the only issue in Welsh broadcasting is the language. I think there are a lot of issues in Welsh broadcasting and I'm not sure that I would want the Assembly's concentration on broadcasting to be predominantly simply one on the language. |
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Vivienne Sugar |
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Could you tell us more about what those other issues are? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I think that certainly one of the big issues has been the deployment of resources between the languages; that is one issue. I think the other issue has been certainly those included in some of the tier 2, tier 3 requirements in the Communications Bill. The quantity of regional broadcasting, the scale of input from Welsh broadcasters to new networks, transmission issues. There is one issue at the moment that I took a view on when I was at the BBC and I haven't changed my mind on it even though I'm a member of the Radio Authority. In the extension of digital radio broadcasting, for example, the BBC does not have its own digital radio multiplex in Wales, or in Scotland, or Northern Ireland for that matter. It has to share a multiplex with the Radio Authority. In fact, it's the Radio Authority's multiplex on which the BBC is given guaranteed space. |
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The problem is that the roll-out of Radio Authority multiplexes is governed entirely by the ability to find a commercial taker, somebody who is going to pay and put that in place. So, the roll-out of digital radio in Wales is governed by commercial considerations and we know that in commercial terms the extension of digital radio is not going to go much past the coastal strip. Under this situation, under this dispensation, that means even the public service radio stations – BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru – can't be rolled out because they can only be carried on the back of this commercial multiplex. You have an anomaly whereby the BBC, for example, has rolled out its UK services – Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and new digital services – and those are obtainable in Wales before you get the extension of Radio Wales and Radio Cymru on digital service. It's those sort of issues. There is a raft of issues like that around. We tried to provide within the report, if you like, a check list of the sort of things that Wales, Ofcom, the Assembly is going to have to look at over the next decade. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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Any purchase on any of these issues unless it's got some kind of funding, unless you try to write it on to the face of the bill, that doesn't seem a likely prospect. I'm not sure----- |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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No, I don't think--. |
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Ted Rowlands |
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So, you go for memorandums of understanding, but the real purchase is usually funding on money. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I think there are two other considerations, I suppose, if you devolve S4C: whether that money then comes within the Barnett formula or not – at the moment I think it's outside and I think one of the things one always has to be careful of in the devolution argument – I'm very much in favour of autonomy, but not autonomous and poor, so I think we need to look at the precise way that money is handled and dealt with so as not to be disadvantaged by that shift. |
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Lord Richard |
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As I understand the position, you're not in favour of broadcasting being devolved to the Assembly, but you are in favour of leaving broadly the structures as they are, but there are a lot of issues which could and should be ironed out and the Assembly has a role to play in it. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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No, I think what I would say is that the arrangements proposed under the Communications Bill and Ofcom are actually a very significant step forward on the current arrangements because if you go through the various regulators, at the moment you have your S4C Authority; you have a BBC Broadcasting Council that has advisory status there in the Charter; the ITC is essentially an officer organisation although it has some viewer panels, but they're not essentially dealing with policy; you have OFTEL that has four people advising; and the Radiocommunications Agency has nothing at all, beyond its staff. |
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I have to say, in relation to technical areas, that I think it is worth mentioning that one of the reasons why we've run into troublesome times in Wales is that we've had a history of the best part of a century of the extension of broadcasting being governed in the first instance by engineering considerations that purport to be blind to the social and cultural geography of the country. Then you spend half a century trying to massage this technical system with great difficulty back into some correspondence with who we are and where we are. Back in the middle of the century, you had the Wales and West issue; you've still got considerable difficulties with cross-border transmissions, certainly in North-east Wales. All those sort of things. You now even recently have had the proposal, I think, to auction telecommunications licenses where North Wales is attached to a large swathe of northern England, against the advice of the Wales Advisory Committee on Telecommunications. |
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Lord Richard |
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Can I come back to page 21? In subparagraph (b) you say: "For these reasons it is our view that strong and effective links must be developed with Ofcom and the National Assembly – both with its subject committees and the Welsh Assembly Government – to ensure:" – and you set out three issues: "That the regulatory framework provides the right conditions for the effective delivery of Assembly policies across all its functions. That the Assembly is fully aware of regulatory issues and developments as they affect its functions, with the timeliness that allows a proper input to policy formulation as well as delivery. That Ofcom has proper regard to the interests of the people of Wales, as represented democratically by the National Assembly." Can I talk about mechanisms, the statement of aims, what the Assembly should do, et cetera? How do you think they should do that? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I think the set up of the Committee was that there will be – Ofcom certainly is going to have to report to the Assembly, will have to lay a report before the Assembly on its actions in Wales. I assume Ofcom officers or the Chair of the Advisory Committee would actually appear before the Culture Committee. I think there is a better mechanism under what's proposed in the Communications Bill. There is a better mechanism for drawing input in from the Assembly in the policy-making stages than there is now with half a dozen separate regulatory bodies all operating in different ways. There's going to be something more converged and coherent and focused, I think, about it in the relationship between Ofcom and the Assembly, and that will happen at Ministerial level and at committee level, I think. |
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A second thing I would say and, I suppose, coming from a media background, I would stress the importance of information. One of the difficulties is, I think, that a lot of the regulators currently will take a UK view largely because they do not have the sort of granularity of information about what is happening at each local level, and I know that from some of the statements that have been made, particularly by Ian Hargreaves who ran the Centre of Journalism at Cardiff University and is now on the Ofcom main board. I think one of Ofcom's big things will be to start researching how these media policies work out at the local level. I'll move away from broadcasting for a minute. If you look at matters of press ownership, the situation in Wales will be quite different, say, from the situation in a place like Birmingham or London. There are issues of near monopoly. I think that over the next 10 years you'll also get cross-media ownership issues that will arise in a way that haven't before. |
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Lord Richard |
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There is nothing so special about the position of Wales as to demand that there is centre of the Communications Bill for Wales. By and large, Wales can piggy-back on the existing legislation. What I'm interested in is what effect it's going to have on the Assembly and the Assembly's powers. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Even within the existing powers I think you're going to see a significant improvement in the way – let me give an example. The ITC a year or more ago set about creating what was called, very grandly, "A Charter for the Nations and Regions." This was largely in response to a desperate plea from ITV companies to reduce their regional programming requirement because of the downturn in advertising. The ITC carried out a series of citizens' juries where about sixteen people were brought to Cardiff for two days; a case was set out for them, witnesses were called (I appeared as a witness in this thing) and various options were put to a citizens' jury. The citizens' jury in Wales, as it happens, was absolutely unanimous that there should not be a single minute's reduction in the quantity of regional programming. What they wanted to see was the quantity of programming maintained and they wanted to see better investment, wanted to see better quality and so on. You might say they were asking for too much. What eventuated was that the ITC decided on a two-hour reduction in regional programming across the whole of the UK. |
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That debate never really surfaced publicly at all. I think it was dealt with within the ITC and it was dressed up as some sort of charter, but basically it was to help out the ITV companies because they were facing an advertising downturn. I must say I disagreed with the decision, not that I had any involvement in it, but what seemed to me to be wrong was that a permanent reduction was being brought about for what might be temporary financial reasons and there were other options available. I don't think that under the new dispensation with Ofcom, particularly if there was a Wales Communication Council around, that that issue could have played out in that particular way. I think it would have been a more open issue; it would have been before a Wales Communication Council; a Wales Communication Council, I'm sure, would have stated a view; that would certainly have been debated by the Culture Committee – probably more on the Culture Committee than in plenary session, and the whole issue would have played out in a different way. So, that, I think, is, if you like, one illustration of a way in which you would have a much-improved situation. |
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Paul Valerio |
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Could I come in and take a bird's eye view where we're going here and looking very much forward to what this Commission might recommend in its report. Among other things, the Communications Bill is likely to be wrapped up this summer, one assumes, and therefore that would have already passed by the time we're preparing our recommendations. There are sort of three headings that might be relevant here and I'd like to just prompt your thoughts whether there is anything on any of them where they could lead to recommendations from this Commission. The first heading is broadly looking at the powers of the Assembly as compared with Whitehall, Westminster, in relation to broadcasting. |
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We seem to have arrived at a point of saying there is nothing that we would actually be seeking to devolve in that area. I'll move through the three. Maybe if you could confirm that. The second is to see whether there are ways that the relationship between those two centres of power can be made to work more effectivelyThere may be something that you would crystallize as an issue that you think, in the context of something post-Communication Bill, post-Communications Act, that we would at that point be right to be including in the report of this Commission. The third issue is one that we haven't really taken up so far and it's this. If you want a healthy Welsh democracy, it requires Welsh media that inform the people of Wales what is going on, and that is a crucial element to effective working of democracy. |
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Is there anything that could lead to a recommendation because it has some sort of regulatory impact we ought to be thinking of? And, as an addendum to my last point, we were faced with a situation only a few weeks ago where the new digital television channels might have ended up with the loss of the privileged position of BBC1, BBC Wales on 1, and BBC Wales 2 on 2, and HTV on 3, and people would have had to search for them somewhere in the ether. Has that situation been dealt with long-term or is there anything arising out of that specifically that ought to be dealt with under this general heading of the health of democracy and the coverage of Welsh-based stations reaching the people of Wales? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I wouldn't have anything to put forward in terms of the devolution of broadcasting powers. The only issue on the table is the S4C issue, whether that should come over or not, and you can argue the toss about that and we need to look at the broadcasters in the round and the financial issue. On the second issue of the relationship between Wales and the centre, I think that is essentially what this report is about. There are ways in which I think it's a pity myself that the Government didn't accept the proposal, not that it was in this report, but the previous proposal that there should be Welsh representation on the board of Ofcom. I thought it was a rather weak response to say that the main reason for not putting Scotland, Wales, Ireland on the main board of Ofcom was that they wanted to maintain the advantages of a small tight board. That seems to me to be not a very robust argument, particularly because when they came to appoint the board they immediately increased the board by one to put a person onto it. |
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Paul Valerio |
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That's part of the Communications Bill. |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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The Communications Bill isn't even there yet, so I'm not sure now is the time to look beyond that. As things work through, I think there will be an issue as to how far Ofcom can make particular provision for circumstances in different parts of the country. There are some areas where the practice is already established. You can require ITV companies to make more regional programming in one place than another. Under the tier 2 and tier 3, you can require different broadcasters to take a different percentage of programmes from beyond the South-east so that different provisions can be made. We haven't seen yet to what extent they might allow that within the competition area. If you were to take ownership provisions in newspapers, you might have one set of numbers or circulation limits, and so on, on a UK-basis, which would mean nothing would be affected in Wales, but you might need to take a separate view. Let me give an example. I think when Trinity Papers bought The Mirror, it became Trinity Mirror; an issue arose in Northern Ireland and they had to sell the Belfast Telegraph, I think, to get it through the Competition Commission, and my understanding is, if you look at Trinity ownership in Wales at the moment, probably its dominance in Wales is no less than its dominance was in Northern Ireland – Western Mail, Daily Post (both morning newspapers), South Wales Echo, Wales on Sunday, Celtic Newspaper Group, and so on. So, the other way the competition issue will work out – we've yet to see quite how it will work out – is what approach is taken , say, in the extension of telecommunications where there can be a conflict between the need to generate competition and the need, let's say in rural areas, to achieve universal supply of services. That is really an issue in Wales. I know it's an issue that has certainly been exercising BT. If somebody wants to extend into a rural area, they're not likely to be a big commercial gain, so you need to know whether you've got a free run there or not. So, the whole issue of monopoly and competition plays out differently in a rural area than it would, say, in Birmingham or London. |
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Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth |
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Can I raise a point about the effectiveness or otherwise of the National Assembly Committees on broadcasting and the media. We were told a while ago that the Communications Bill had been subject to pre-legislative joint procedures, but the Committee and its Chairman elected to make no representations at all during this process, which I found rather striking. What are your impressions of their efficacy or otherwise? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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The Committee may not have done. My understanding is the Wales Assembly Government… |
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Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth |
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They did, but did it to the Department. They didn't do it to the… |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Pre-legislative scrutiny. |
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Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth |
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I mean, usually lobbyists try once and, if they don't get what they want, they go, so to speak, up one to Brussels, or whatever it is, and it seemed rather odd. Are they effective? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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I think this comes back to the issue of how stretched people are. |
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Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth |
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They're so stretched that they couldn't put in an appearance before the Joint Committee? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Yes, it would have been better had there been an approach, but I think that it would be right to say the broadcasting is not central to their remit because it's an oversight of responsibility rather than a specific devolved power, as you say. I think they've tended to leave it to the Executive. I'm not sure that situation would change currently. If the Cultural Committee or if committees to the Assembly are going to meet on a less regular basis, it's going to be more difficult perhaps to do that, but that's why in some sense I think the debate – a Communications Council attached to Ofcom will have quite a responsibility to put material into the public domain as well as discussing in private, and I think that when that information is in the public domain elected members tend to pick up on it and it actually feeds the debate. One of the most difficult things in Wales is actually to have a debate. You can have it in the Assembly, but, outside the Assembly, there is nowhere to have it. There isn't an array of broadsheet newspapers where competing understandings of our circumstances can be tossed around. You can’t have a Daily Mail view of Welsh life, or Daily Mail or Guardian view of Welsh life. It doesn't happen. I know when I was running the BBC in Wales, I sometimes used to say that my main problem is there is no external pressure, whereas my counterpart in Scotland was being barraged daily by the Scottish press and politicians, and so on, and that whole debate was created. It wasn't always constructive, but being under that kind of pressure gives you quite a lot of levers. |
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Vivienne Sugar |
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You could try addressing the Bevan Foundation; that seemed to stimulate a debate last week. |
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Paul Valerio |
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The situation could get even worse if the privileged positions of the BBC in digital were not maintained, and, if I just press you on that last point, is that now sorted? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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No, I think it's a real worry. If you look at information in Wales, I talked about the weakness, I think, in terms of information in the printed media. People are very dependent for their information on what's happening in Wales on broadcast media. Broadcast media traditionally have had high audiences for their programme in Wales because they've not been in the multi-channel environment. You get into a multi-channel environment and first of all you have an inevitable fragmentation of the audience, but the worry then about the electronic programme guides is that if you lose a privileged position in the electronic programme guide it just exacerbates the whole problem. My understanding is that after the BBC's recent decisions, BBC1 Wales and BBC2 Wales are still guaranteed number one and number 2 positions on the Sky EPG, but it would have to be said that in commercial life there are no such things as guarantees; there are only current intentions. I think it will be up to the regulator again to ensure that the interpretation of due prominence is actually effective at a [Welsh] national level rather than just UK level. I'm not quite sure what S4C's position will be with the complete separation of S4C and Channel 4, but, again, these issues, I think, have to be teased out in different ways and different places in the UK. |
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Paul Valerio |
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If we crystallise what you're saying the Commission might recommend on this point, it would be that the regulator ought to ensure that the requirement of due prominence is interpreted in a way which covers the regions and nations and, therefore, that in the electronic programme guide you would ensure coverage through the postcode areas of Wales in the current privileged positions. Is that the size of it? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Absolutely. I think what you come back to, on a general point, is that there is a huge quantity of news around, and a recent report done by Ian Hargreaves for ITC I thought was very, very instructive and an important conclusion, but, with all the news that's available to us now in multi-channel – you can get it on your radio, PC, mobile phone; you can get news anywhere, standing in an airport lounge – you can't miss the news. But, people are now better informed about international matters; they're well-informed about UK matters. The weakest area of information is about what's going on in people's localities. There is a real big, big gap there. That's something I'd have thought that Ofcom will need to keep an eye on. That's why it's very important, that clause 3O8 on the Communications Bill on protection of localness. I have to say that, you can argue that maybe it's 10 years too late, but I think it will be very, very important in the context of a more liberalised regime. |
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Paul Valerio |
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Other than broadcasting, the other two items vital to Wales are broadband – the expansion of it and the telephone network. In Wales, because of geography, it's one simple solution. Welsh media doesn't bother greatly if we had roaming as far as mobile phones in Wales is concerned. There isn't a problem, certainly not for England, but we don't seem to make any progress in that. Equally so, but on a different basis, the expansion of broadband in Wales requires vast capital sums of money to be invested in it. On the one hand, if Wales had more control on communications, we could put in the regulations to require mobile companies to do roaming, but we'd still be faced with the problem of broadband not having funds to respond. On one aspect we'd be better off with relaxation and on another aspect the situation would be the same because we wouldn't have the funds. Which way would you go? |
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Geraint Talfan Davies |
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Certainly you may be better informed on this than I am. I'm reaching the frontiers of my knowledge quickly. You're right to flag it as a crucially important issue and I think I'm dodging around your particular options because I'm not clear myself on those two options. What I would say about broadband is that within 5 or 10 years the shape of broadcast delivery will change very, very radically and I think that some of the debates we're having now about broadcasting structures may in 10 years' time look a bit quaint, so I think the broadband issue is crucially important for the Assembly. My worry is that in that new situation where effectively the concept of the channel almost disappears and people are turning to whatever piece of machinery they've got in their homes in a way that's more like a jukebox than a radio, in that situation there is a real worry about the level of access to news and information, but I don't think we can be behind anyone. We've got particular difficulties even in urban areas like the valleys. You do not have digital radio here in Merthyr now. There is very little prospect of it. |
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Lord Richard |
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Can I thank you very much indeed for exploring that with us, ending on that incomprehensible note. Terribly helpful. Thank you very much. |
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