Clause 11 - Television and radio broadcasting
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
9:00 am
Mr Ian Bruce (South Dorset, Conservative)
I may want to speak further about the clause in the clause stand part debate. I am concerned about how we define what the BBC is, not least because BBC World is broadcast on satellite television. The BBC is being encouraged through the new communications White Paper and the opportunity to earn money other than that which it receives from licence payers, to separate out its duties. I am worried that unless one defines the BBC, it may be able to carry advertising that the Government do not intend, especially if its programmes are beamed overseas.
If one goes down and looks at the BBC's facilities for making programmes for transmission on satellite channels in other areas—in Europe or in the United Kingdom—there is a man with an automatic machine, which feeds in a pile of cassettes with all of the different programme items. The transmission is beamed via an uplink to a satellite. That satellite zooms it over to another satellite and it comes down in China or wherever. Every 15 minutes or so the programme stops, and the advertisements are dropped into the programme breaks in those countries that are receiving the transmission. The whole delivery may be the responsibility of the BBC, or an independent television company.
The original name of the BBC was the ``British Broadcasting Authority''. Now the better-known name British Broadcasting Corporation is being included in the Bill. We must be careful what we are defining. As I understand it, the Government are trying to ring-fence what is paid for by the licence fee. The Government are telling the BBC that it must set up separate organisations, which I think are different, specific legal entities—limited companies, or even public limited companies. Those organisations are separate from what we know as the BBC of today, which is paid for through the licence fee. Activities such as running extra digital TV channels distributed by satellite, which may all have advertising in them, will be dealt with in a different way. I am happy to have a chance to analyse that; yet again a Government amendment prompts me to consider an issue, which is what exactly the BBC is now.
It may well be that the British Broadcasting Corporation controls what we know as the BBC, and also controls something like BBC World, which has a different remit and be financed in a different way. It may be financed by sponsorship, and is almost certainly financed by advertising. Have the Minister's ever-vigilant staff been thinking about that?