Sir John Whittingdale
MP for Maldon · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s confirmation of our continuing support for Ukraine. He has set out the sustained threat from Russia facing not just Ukraine, but this country and the whole of Europe, yet for too many people, it is still business as usual.”
“That is perhaps even more relevant to the second prong of the Government’s proposals, which is about social media. I will come to that point, but before I finish talking about local media, I want to mention that another of the Government’s flagship policies is devolution.”
“The hon. Member is completely right that this issue must be addressed before we proceed. There is also the question of cost, raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke). There are people who probably do have access to broadband, if they choose to pay for it, but they cannot afford to do so.”
“I was the Minister responsible for the passage of the Media Act 2024, during the previous Parliament. It is a great delight to see some familiar faces with whom I have worked with in the past on the officials’ Bench.”
“Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) that young people are turning more and more to social media, but I do not think that this policy is the answer, because it looks to me like a very dangerous extension of Government interference in the freedom of the press and the right to free speech.”
“My right hon. Friend asks a perfectly valid question, and I want to acknowledge that there are concerns. We had a debate in Westminster Hall not that long ago, and a number of my colleagues—particularly from Scotland—turned up to express concern about the fact that the quality of reception via broadband in their constituencies is very poo…”
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“Given that that spectrum is a valuable resource for which there would be several alternative uses, there was always going to be a time, sooner or later, when we said to people, “Look, it is not in the country’s interest that you go on sitting on that spectrum when it could be used for many more beneficial purposes.” To that extent, I accept the Government’s case. We must recognise, however, that there are considerable costs attached to the project. A range of estimates has been made, but I think that everyone agrees that the costs will be in the billions of pounds. There are also risks attached to the project. The hon. Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr.”
“Given that large parts of my constituency are among the 25 per cent. of the country that does not get freeview, I understand why people who cannot get it resent being bombarded with advertisements about the joys of what they can see on BBC3 and BBC4. Those people have to commit to a freesat or Sky subscription if they are to access those channels. There is clearly a benefit of extending freeview coverage to as much of the population as possible. The second justification for the project, which is probably the stronger one, is the need to free up the spectrum. As the proportion of people who have opted to switch to digital continues to climb—it is more than 70 per cent. now—it becomes harder to justify using a prime chunk of the spectrum for the dwindling number of people who have not chosen to switch over.”
“The dangers of over-running the estimated timescale … or consumer revolt; or over-spending; or of partial or complete failure, are far too high for comfort … What we have here is the makings of a fiasco, beside which the Dome will be relegated to the status of a footnote in the petty cash column.” When David Elstein originally gave evidence to the Committee, I could see the colour draining from the faces of several Members who were listing to him. I do not share his pessimism. I think that the project can be made to work and that there are good reasons for proceeding with it. There are two principal justifications for the project. First, there is a need to extend coverage of freeview to nearly the entire country. There is a target that freeview should cover 98.5 per cent. of the country.”
“There are some who still question whether digital switchover is necessary at all. Those who do so are not necessarily Luddites who are resistant to new technology. Indeed, some of our most distinguished broadcasters and experts have raised doubts about the necessity of switchover. Only last month, in The Parliamentary Monitor , David Elstein, in his usual apocalyptic fashion, wrote: “The process is immensely complex, and fraught with difficulty.”
“Even though the digital penetration of households is more than 70 per cent., the vast majority of the households that the Government deem to be digital still have analogue devices lurking in upstairs rooms, kitchens, or children’s bedrooms. Those sets will have to be converted, unless they are to stop working when switchover occurs. The fact that the project was huge was the reason the Culture, Media and Sport Committee chose to make it the subject of our first inquiry in this Parliament. Since then, we have had a useful debate with the Minister about several points raised in Westminster Hall in July. However, as far as I am aware, today’s debate is the first opportunity that we have had to discuss the matter in the Chamber. I am glad that we are putting that oversight right.”
“As has been said, the purpose of the Bill is relatively narrow, given that it focuses on one specific aspect of digital switchover. The right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) touched on some of the important aspects of the process under the Bill, which I will return to. However, the Bill also gives us a welcome opportunity to debate digital switchover. Switchover is a huge undertaking. The Secretary of State compared it to North sea gas conversion, as she has done in the past, while others have made comparisons with decimalisation. The project is likely to affect almost every household in the land.”
“People who want access to more choice and better quality services may in time migrate from DTT to IPT, satellite, cable or some other offering, and before too long, we could well be returning to the Chamber to debate the switch-off of the digital terrestrial signal. However, that is still a little way off. I hope that everything will proceed smoothly, and I hope that the Select Committee’s recommendations have contributed towards achieving that aim. Switchover is in the national interest, but the Minister does not need me to tell him that there is a considerable political risk, if it goes wrong.”
“We are experiencing the beginnings of the launch of internet protocol television, and before too long, people may increasingly choose to get their television down wires. That will give them much greater ability to set their own schedules and access video on demand. Satellite already offers high definition television. Whether or not it is decided to make HDTV available on the digital terrestrial platform, it is unlikely that there will ever be sufficient spectrum available on DTT to match the kind of HDTV offerings that will be available on satellite; there could only be a small number of such channels on DTT.”
“I hope that the Minister can provide reassurances that all those faced with switchover will be told about their eligibility for assistance in good time. As I say, I commend the Government on deciding to proceed with switchover. I was a sceptic to begin with—I foresaw a huge number of problems, and I still foresee some, but we are now at a point when switchover clearly makes sense. It would be easy for the Government to say, “Let’s just do nothing; let’s leave it for other countries to go first,” but they decided to take a risk. I do not want to depress the Minister, but the speed at which technology is advancing means that before too long, digital terrestrial television, too, may be seen as a somewhat old-fashioned technology.”
“I know that Digital UK is already in talks with groups such as Help the Aged, Age Concern, and the WRVS. In many constituencies, including mine, the WRVS delivers meals on wheels, and it would be ideally placed to provide advice while it did so. It is essential that we mobilise a large number of people, and I am slightly concerned that not enough attention has yet been paid to that issue. I echo the worries about the delay in providing details about the assistance package. That raises concerns about whether the details will be ready in time for the beginning of switchover. The concern was expressed that they might not be ready in time for the borders region, and obviously, there is even greater concern that the details about the assistance will not be in time for Whitehaven, where switch-off will take place in less than a year’s time.”
“When the Select Committee considered the targeted assistance package, we had concerns about not only the groups that the Government identified, but groups outside those categories that would be in genuine need. I come back to the concern expressed by the Ofcom consumer panel about those who are socially isolated. Such people may not have family or friends who are readily available to give them advice about what the whole process entails, and to show them how to switch the box on, plug it in and tune it, and meet all the other requirements. They will be quite frightened, as they will keep being told that the date is looming ever closer, and they will find it difficult to know where to go to receive help. That is why it is vital that we mobilise the whole voluntary sector to provide help.”
“The Government propose to identify them by identifying those who receive disability living allowance, or attendance allowance, but as the Minister will know, part of the problem is that not all disabled people claim those benefits; there is still a problem of under-claiming. If people fail to claim their disability benefit, they will not be identified as requiring help under the assistance package. The same problem will arise for those who are over 75 and on means-tested benefits. Such people will qualify for free, rather than assisted, conversion but, again, not all pensioners take advantage of all the means-tested benefits for which they are eligible. Those people, too, will be difficult to reach, as they will not be in receipt of benefits and so cannot be identified through the social security system.”
“Clearly, in a targeted scheme, the first thing that must be done is to identify the target. The United States of America decided to put aside $1.5 billion to give coupons to pay for set-top boxes to all households that will lose analogue signal as a result of switchover. Before the Minister rushes off to say that I am proposing additional expenditure, I should say that I am not. I do not necessarily suggest that we follow the example of the USA. However, the Government’s choice of a targeted scheme, and particularly a means-tested one, inevitably creates problems, the first of which relates to take-up. Let us first consider those who qualify for assistance because they are disabled.”
“If the BBC can demonstrate that the assistance package will cost more than it was told it would, it is entitled to expect the ring-fenced sum to be increased to take account of that, but one rather hopes that we are speaking of hypotheticals, as £600 million seems a huge amount as it is. As I was saying, I hope that the system will be fully transparent, and the same point was made by the Voice of the Listener and Viewer. The system needs to be clear, so that licence-fee payers can see precisely how much of their licence fee payment will go towards paying for digital switchover, and how much will go towards paying for the BBC. The measures in the Bill are necessary because when the Government drew up the assistance package, they chose to make it a targeted scheme.”
“I recognise the need to increase the amount of energy that we get from renewable sources, but does the Minister accept that there are many preferable alternatives to onshore wind farm development, and is he aware that the application to build 10 400 ft wind turbines at Bradwell-on-sea, in my constituency, is massively opposed by the local community and has been rejected by the local planning authority? If it is allowed to go ahead, it will spoil one of the most beautiful and historic areas of the country.”
“Is the Secretary of State aware that the chief executive of the Central Council of Physical Recreation told the Select Committee two weeks ago that the hiving off of an additional £340 million from the main lottery to the Olympics will leave Sport England without the resources necessary to generate the legacy of participation which was a main plank in our successful Olympic bid? Will she put in place the national strategy and the necessary funding to ensure that we achieve a successful legacy right across the country, which is what we all want?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman not find it slightly worrying, however, that both the independent reports commissioned by the BBC governors—the first on the BBC’s coverage of Europe, the second on its coverage of the middle east—concluded that the coverage was biased?”
“The viewer will become far more powerful—able to decide what he wants to watch and when, from a huge choice. Nor will he necessarily watch it on a television in the living room, but perhaps on a mobile device or an iPod. The whole of broadcasting will look very different. Given that, it is strange that the BBC’s charter is to be renewed for 10 years and set in stone for that time. I agree with the Secretary of State that there will still be a role for the BBC, although it will be a different role.”
“There has been a steady increase in digital penetration, and we have also seen the launch of digital audio broadcasting—digital radio. In the next 10 years, the pace will get even faster. We are beginning to see what that world will look like. For example, later this year BT Vision will launch internet protocol television—IPTV—a serious option that will allow video on demand for hundreds if not thousands of movies and seven-day catch-up, as well as the digital channels through Freeview, and HomeChoice already offers that service to some extent. But that is just the beginning. Most broadband providers will move into television, with the consequence that we will have widespread video on demand, so scheduling will become a thing of the past.”
“It was slightly a case of the mountain coming to Mohammed rather than the other way round, because the BBC had to tear up all its plans for publication instead of our moving the date of the debate, but it was obviously sensible that the debate should come after publication. The charter that we are debating will last for 10 years and take us up to the end of 2016. It is difficult to envisage what the broadcasting world will look like by then. Even during the 10 years of the last charter, we saw huge changes taking place. The charter began in 1996. On 1 June 1997, Five launched, so we had four terrestrial broadcasters. Shortly after that, Sky went digital and offered far more channels. In July 1998, ONdigital was launched, which soon became ITV Digital. Then it collapsed and eventually became Freeview.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Alan Keen), whose contributions in the Committee and in the Chamber are always interesting. I do not agree with everything he says, but he always makes some interesting points. I welcome this debate, which is the second that we have had on the BBC in only a couple of weeks. I said in the last debate that I regretted the fact that it had taken so long to get a debate on the BBC: it was the first since the general election. Like buses, they come along in twos. I am glad that the Secretary of State was successful in her attempts to persuade the BBC to move the publication date of the report.”
“As long as the BBC is capable of providing good-quality public service broadcasting, of which there are plenty of examples, I shall support it, but strong safeguards are needed. I am not sure that the charter proposed by the Government goes far enough in building in safeguards to ensure that the BBC maintains the quality we expect in its public service output while not becoming over-mighty and inflicting real damage on some of its commercial competitors, who are struggling to survive in a difficult broadcasting environment.”
“It also has a joint venture to create one of India’s largest magazine companies. Where does it stop? Would it be right for the BBC to set up a chain of antique shops under an “Antiques Roadshow” brand? Perhaps it could move into car dealerships based on the success of “Top Gear”. There must be a limit to what the BBC does. The BBC’s original purpose was to provide public service broadcasting—to do things that the market will not provide. That is why I support the BBC, but it worries me when it extends its power and we hear the director-general saying that he wants to build the BBC into a competitor to Microsoft or Google. It is all very well to be ambitious, but the evolution of the BBC into a worldwide conglomerate is not appropriate. It takes us too far away from the corporation’s original remit.”
“However, that has resulted in the BBC extending its activities into areas that are a million miles removed from broadcasting. The BBC is now the third largest consumer magazine publisher in Britain; it has 50 titles, 21 of which are in the children’s market. It recently launched a magazine called Amy for five to eight-year-old girls. Apart from the fact that CBBC was printed across the top of the magazine, it bore no relation to any BBC programme. The BBC decided that it wanted to become the third biggest magazine publisher in Britain, and I am sure that it has ambitions to become the second, if not the first. BBC Worldwide recently bid for and acquired seven radio licences in India—not the World Service, but BBC Worldwide. The BBC is now a big player in the radio market in India.”
“However, Treasury Ministers tell me that currently there are no proposals for such a tax, so the BBC has put in a bid for a precise—and large—sum before any proposals for the tax have even been introduced. I hope that we shall look at all those components, and I look forward to hearing the Government’s announcement, when it finally comes, about the future of the licence fee. I want to touch on the contribution made by the BBC’s commercial activities to keeping down licence fee costs. It is certainly right that the BBC should exploit the value of its assets to the full. The BBC brand is a powerful one and it is worth money, so it is right that the commercial arm of the BBC—BBC Worldwide—should try to get a return for the licence fee payer from the use of that brand.”
“I shall not get drawn too far down the salaries road, although it seems extremely unwise to award quite such enormous increases at a time when the BBC is asking its staff to suffer painful reductions in the number employed and in their pension entitlements. At the very least, such increases are somewhat insensitive. On top of the base cost increase, the BBC wants another £1.6 billion for quality content. No new services are being launched in the main broadcasting area, so that £1.6 billion will go straight into programming, which must further increase the inflation. Then there are things such as the spectrum tax, for which the BBC says it needs £300 million.”
“As the chairman says in his annual report, the missing piece of the jigsaw is the licence fee settlement. He told the Select Committee a year ago that the figure for which the BBC has bid—2.3 per cent. above inflation—was a reduction from the original sum proposed in the BBC, and that he had somehow beaten it down to 2.3 per cent. over inflation. The Secretary of State, on the other hand, has said that she regards that figure as an opening bid. I hope that we shall look carefully at each part of the bid, because each seems somewhat excessive. The BBC says that it needs an extra £1.4 billion just to meet the increase in base costs. It talks about super-inflation in broadcasting costs, but if anybody is responsible for that, the prime culprit is the BBC itself.”
“Furthermore, it is of some concern that although the market impact assessment is carried out by Ofcom, it is subject to the oversight of the joint steering group, half of whose members are from Ofcom and half from the BBC. The BBC will still have considerable power over the assessment. That situation is unsatisfactory. It bears a depressing similarity to the arrangements for the National Audit Office, which has some access to the BBC’s accounts, but only subject to agreement with the BBC. I fully endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) and all the others who have said that the situation must change. The BBC enjoys vast amounts of public money, so it should be subject to the same efficiency scrutiny as every other part of the public sector.”
“That initiative has not been subject to any of the tests to which the Secretary of State has rightly drawn attention, and there is concern that such trials, which may last for several months, may themselves distort the market. There is a case for their being subject to some kind of assessment before they are launched. When new services are launched each should have its own service licence and be subject to a market impact assessment. The fact those assessments are to be conducted by Ofcom is a step forward, but even though Ofcom has some role in the process, the eventual decision about the public value test still rests with the BBC, which is unsatisfactory.”
“The Beethoven week experience, when the number of downloads of Beethoven symphonies was far in excess of the BBC’s expectations, shows that even a pilot scheme can have a vast impact on the market. I welcome the BBC’s recognition that the Beethoven week caused the music industry profound concern, so it changed the format for the Bach week so that whole BBC symphonies were not available free for downloading. That was a welcome recognition of the fact that the BBC needs to work with commercial companies, not in competition with them. Even BBC pilots can have great impact, so I was slightly concerned when Mark Thompson announced recently that the corporation is to extend its podcasting trial “for some months to come”.”
“I have a great deal of respect for some of those individuals, especially one of them, whom I worked alongside for some time and for whom I have a high regard. However, I hope that in future appointments to the BBC Trust we will look a little further than those who have worked inside the BBC or who have a history of working with the BBC. I hope that the new appointees will bring a degree of scepticism. If the BBC Trust is truly to be a proper external regulator, as the BBC likes to claim and the Government try to claim, its members must be genuinely independent of mind and willing—indeed, positively keen—to criticise the BBC when it is going wrong. The most important factor will be oversight of the new services. The creative future spelled out by Mark Thompson represents a huge ambition.”
“There is not much point in having huge amounts of consultation if the Government give the impression that their mind has been made up before the consultation even started, and nothing will change as a result of it. The concerns rightly centre on the new structure of governance. I admit that the BBC Trust is an improvement on the board of governors, in that the separation between the board and the executive will be clearer. They will actually be geographically separate, but the trust will still be part of the BBC. According to the charter, the first job of the BBC Trust will be to set the strategic direction for the BBC. It still looks very like a board of governors: the first four appointees to the trust are all existing BBC governors.”
“However, all the feedback from that consultation has been largely ignored. The enormous reports commissioned at vast expense by the commercial broadcasters have all reached conclusions, none of which seems to have been accepted by the Government. The Burns committee, set up by the Government, produced some very good recommendations, including the establishment of a public service broadcasting authority, but that too was rejected by the Government. The House of Lords Select Committee wrote to the Secretary of State saying: “Despite so much informed opposition to your plans you have rejected almost every one of our recommendations for improving the model”.”
“My criticism of the BBC in the past is that it has strayed too far from that core responsibility of the provision of public service broadcasting. Given that the BBC rightly has ambitions to move into the new areas of technology, it is right for it to say that whichever platform the viewer or listener chooses to access programmes, they will find the BBC there. That means that very strong safeguards need to be built in, as several hon. Members have pointed out. There is a real danger that the BBC, with all its resources and power, will distort the market in those new areas. That is why the charter is so important. The Secretary of State has talked about the charter being subject to greater consultation and transparency than ever before. It is true that we have had consultation, with lots of seminars, a Green Paper and a White Paper.”
“Well, to an extent I am crystal-ball gazing, but I think that the new technology will make a difference. For the first time, the viewer will have access to thousands of different programmes and films that can be summoned up with the press of a button. We have not had anything like that before, and it is bound to change people’s habits. Scheduling will continue to some extent, and the Secretary of State was right to talk about the importance of water cooler moments. People will still want to all watch the same programme and then gather the next day to talk about it, but broadcasting will be hugely different in the future. In fact, that will make it harder to enforce public service obligations on commercial channels, so to that extent the BBC will have a stronger role in providing real public service broadcasting.”
“I also visited Sandy Heath, which is one of the large transmitters operated by Arqiva, to see at first hand what switch-off entails. Switching off analogue transmission is a vast task—particularly in this country, where television viewers are more dependent on analogue than in many others, where there is wider penetration of cable and satellite. It will require hugely complicated organisation. The Secretary of State has compared the task of switch-off to decimalisation, and one witness to our inquiry, David Elstein, said that switch-off had “more potential for chaos and consumer revolt than any other civilian project in our history, including North Sea gas conversion and decimalisation.””
“I welcome the opportunity that this debate provides to consider both the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport report into analogue switch-off and the wider subject of analogue switch-off, which has not received as much attention in the House as it merits. Analogue switch-off is a huge undertaking. It will affect almost every household in the land, and for that reason the Committee, which I chair, chose to examine it as our first subject of investigation at the beginning of this Parliament. During the course of our inquiry we received 54 submissions and took evidence from 41 witnesses. The Committee visited Berlin, which is the one place on the globe that has so far switched off its analogue transmission, to see what lessons we could learn from the experience there.”
“There is already freesat from Sky, the possibility of freesat offerings from the BBC and ITV in due course, and IPTV—internet protocol television—through broadband connections, which is a real possibility in the near future, with BT Vision intending to launch in October. So why are we forcing the pace and removing choice from people who say that they are content with their existing analogue service and do not see why they should have any more services?”
“Digital television offers huge advantages, particularly for watching 24-hour news channels— [ Interruption. ] Perhaps not the movie channels, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) is devoted. Digital television has been available to everyone who has wanted it for a considerable time. Anyone who wishes to have access to digital TV can install a Sky dish. In large parts of the country, they can obtain it through cable and in about 70 per cent. of the country through freeview. The question is why we are compelling people to switch to digital, particularly as other means of distribution are coming on stream.”
“There are parallels, but they can be taken only so far. It would not be practical to expect the Government to send out a converter to every household, because the cost of doing so would be astronomical—it will be quite considerable as it is. That gives an indication of the scale of the undertaking on which the Government have embarked, and the first question that my Committee addressed was therefore why we are doing it. Much of the justification given for switch-off is based on the benefits of digital television. I need no persuasion. My life was transformed when I installed my Sky box and had access to multi-channel television. It was transformed again when Sky plus came along and offered personal video recorder capability, and I look forward to a third transformation, when high-definition boxes eventually reach the shelves.”
“Switchover will also require new wiring and perhaps new aerials to be fitted in a number of households, so for each household quite a considerable cost is attached.”
“Elstein told us that it would be about £13 billion, although he included the public service publisher idea of Ofcom and the power costs of the additional boxes. The Sunday Times told us that the switchover would cost £23 billion but, on examination, that included providing every household with a plasma screen, which might have pushed up the cost a little. The one thing that everyone would accept, however, is that we are talking about a considerable sum of money. The cost is likely to be borne by almost every household, because the consequence of switchover is that every television receiver will have to be digitally enabled. That will probably require at least one set-top box, and perhaps another for analogue recorders, such as video cassette recorders.”
“I agree in part and shall come to extending freeview to universal coverage, which is one of the potential advantages of switchover. The chances are that his constituents will benefit and will have access to freeview once switchover takes place. However, a small number of people might still be unable to receive freeview. I shall come back to that group, because it is deserving of help. To return to the case that has been made, the Government first advanced an economic cost-benefit analysis. The cost of switchover is relatively easy to quantify, although the figures range considerably, depending mainly on what is thrown into the pot as part of the cost. The Government have said that the cost will be of the order of £5 billion, whereas Mr.”
“I agree and shall come to that argument, but I welcome the fact that the Government have recognised that they have a responsibility to help those who are most vulnerable and likely to find the process most difficult by providing an assistance package. However, it was the Committee’s view—not only the Committee’s, but almost every outside commentator’s—that that is a welfare action and should therefore be funded by the Exchequer, not the BBC.”
“I was amused by what I imagine was the look of horror that passed across the face of the chief executive of Digital UK, when he checked the current freeview coverage for each Committee member’s constituency and found that mine is one of the worst in Britain. Another benefit of switchover is that it should allow the power of the digital terrestrial signal to be boosted to enable almost universal coverage of digital terrestrial television. That will extend choice to almost every household, which is a benefit that will restore an element of fairness.”
“When that was first discussed, people got a little bit carried away with memories of the amount of money raised by the 3G auction, but I do not think that we will see such sums again. The return on the spectrum that is released will depend on the use to which it is put. The Government concluded that there was a net present value benefit to the process of between £1 billion and £2 billion, about which we were not wholly persuaded. We are talking not about a cost-benefit analysis but a decision taken on stronger grounds. There are two main reasons for the analogue switch-off, including to extend the coverage of freeview. However, I have received complaints from some of my constituents who cannot get freeview.”
“The Government have argued that a monetary value can be attached to the benefit of the new services that will become available to people receiving digital terrestrial television. My argument is in part that if people attached a considerable value to those services, they would have obtained them already and would not be waiting to be compelled to get them. The Government have come up with a curious concept that they call the imputed consumer benefit of compulsory migration, which the Committee regarded with a degree of scepticism. Nevertheless, there are concrete and quantifiable benefits. There will obviously be a saving to the broadcasters, because they will no longer have to transmit programmes both in analogue and digital. In addition, the spectrum released as a result of the analogue signal switch-off will have a value.”
“At this moment, when it is looking to the Government for assistance in the licence fee settlement, the BBC probably regards it as highly unwise to express anything other than enthusiasm, although I am not sure that it would necessarily say the same thing in private. In a sense, it is immaterial whether the BBC is happy with the arrangement. My view and that of many others is that the cost should have been picked up by the Exchequer. I was just completing the list of costs attached to the process. The other two considerable costs will be the conversion of transmitters and the necessary marketing exercise to inform everybody that that is taking place. If all the costs are added up, the £5 billion estimate may be about right. Some of the benefits that will flow from switchover are more theoretical.”
“The Committee heard about a number of different applications, including wireless broadband and mobile television. The broadcasters are keen to reoccupy the spectrum for HDTV, having only just given up analogue transmission.”
“DTT will always be subject to some capacity constraints, particularly when compared with the alternatives of satellite reception or internet-provided television. Therefore, we wondered whether it was sensible to promote a technology that might become obsolete. The lifespan of DTT may be no more than 10 years, by which time most people will be more demanding and will want better quality, more choice and interactivity, and something like BT Vision, or its equivalents in IPTV services, will be taking hold. At that point, we may have to consider “Switch-off 2” to shut off the DTT signal and release that spectrum for more valuable uses. Switching off the analogue signal will release a chunk of spectrum. One of the big questions facing the Government is what they will do with it.”