Clause 11 - Duty to establish and maintain Content Board
Communications Bill
3:45 pm

Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 7, in

clause 11, page 11, line 8, after 'OFCOM', insert—

'(aa) a deputy chairman appointed by OFCOM;'.

Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to take the following:

Amendment No. 9, in

clause 11, page 11, line 11, after 'chairman', insert 'and deputy chairman'.

Amendment No. 171, in

clause 11, page 11, line 11, leave out 'a non-executive member' and insert 'non-executive members'.

Amendment No. 172, in

clause 11, page 11, line 12, leave out 'is not' and insert 'neither is'.

Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I intend to speak to the whole group of amendments, as they are related and connected.

The amendments relate to the composition of the content board. Committee members, especially those who were involved with the Committee that considered the Office of Communications Bill, might recall that the Government limited the membership of the Ofcom content board to six people. The Joint Committee subsequently recommended that that number should be able to be increased and the Government responded by announcing their intention to use the powers in the Ofcom Act to increase the size of the board to nine and to include a sixth non-executive member. One reason why the Joint Committee came to that conclusion was that we were made aware, not least because of the presence of Lord Pilkington, of the amount of activity—the weight of

scrutiny—that is required of Ofcom, and of the content board on Ofcom's behalf, in relation to standards, complaints, fairness, privacy, and so forth. For such activity to be permitted to be divorced from Ofcom would be undesirable. Ofcom has—and should have—a legal responsibility for those matters. Although such functions could be devolved to the content board, there is a risk that it could acquire a life of its own and we might end up with two regulators rather than one. In order to reduce that risk, we felt that it was desirable that at least one, and preferably two, members of the content board should be non-executive members of Ofcom and that when the content board meets, its chairman should also be a non-executive member. In order for that to happen, we should prescribe that the content board should also have a deputy chairman and that both the chairman and deputy-chairman should be non-executive members of Ofcom. Of course, neither should be the chairman of Ofcom. There is a high probability, if not a certainty, that the content board would always be chaired by a member of Ofcom. Thus, at least one member of Ofcom would have a continuing familiarity with the content board's work and would be able to speak from a position of authority on how it is approaching its decisions.

There are two likely risks: the content board's decisions might become progressively separate from Ofcom, or instead of there being a single integrated decision-making process Ofcom might become too much of a court of appeal because it starts to second guess the content board. Those risks must be offset and these four amendments are designed to accomplish that: the Government said that that was desirable but that it was not necessary to specify these matters in the Bill.

Mr John Greenway (Ryedale, Conservative)

I anticipate that you, Mr. Gale, will not wish to have a clause stand part debate. Therefore, I wish to ask the Minister a question about the content board. It arises from my reading of the clause. Subsection (4) states that there is to be a person on the content board who represents

''the following parts of the United Kingdom—

(a) England,

(b) Scotland,

(c) Wales, and

(d) Northern Ireland''.

That is sensible.

Subsection (5) states that the person who represents the United Kingdom should also be capable of representing

''the interests and opinions of persons living in all the different regions of England.''

I am unsure what kind of person that would be.

Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)

That would be you, John—a Yorkshireman.

Mr John Greenway (Ryedale, Conservative)

I am very grateful for that comment. I was not going to ask the Minister about remuneration and pension but he has now tempted me to do so: that might be a good job application to fill out.

Subsection (6) states:

''The validity of any proceedings of the Content Board shall not be affected by any failure by OFCOM to comply with subsection (4) or (5).''

That begs a question: what constitutes a quorum of the content board?

Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)

I was hoping that another hon. Member would rise, because I am trying to find out the answer to that question.

These amendments would require Ofcom to appoint a non-executive member of Ofcom—other than the chairman—to be deputy chairman of the content board. I welcome the decision to designate Mr. Richard Hooper as the first chairman of that board. Currently, he is a non-executive member and the deputy chairman of the main board.

Subsection (7) states that the membership of the content board should predominantly consist of lay members—

''persons who are neither members nor employees of OFCOM.''

That lay membership is valuable; it will enable the board to be representative of many different aspects of public interest.

Other members of Ofcom may also be members of the content board, and I understand that Ofcom currently intends to appoint more of its members to the board. However, the Government do not believe that Ofcom should be burdened with even more detailed statutory obligations about the membership or internal structure of the content board. Ofcom should decide whether to appoint one of its members as deputy chairman or to leave that decision to their appointees on the content board. Flexibility will be crucial if Ofcom is to be effective.

We recognise the risk that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire identified of overload on the content board. I intended to make the following statement when we addressed clause 12, but instead I shall do so now: the Government intend to move an amendment that will increase Ofcom's flexibility slightly when determining the extent of the board's contribution to its work. That small flexibility was sought by Lord Currie. At present, any committee of Ofcom that is not solely advisory must include a member or employee of Ofcom. We propose to provide that any such committee that considers content matters may be formed with a member of the content board instead of a member or employee of Ofcom. That would allow Ofcom to establish a committee to consider fairness complaints, which would relieve the board of a resource-intensive task and provide a route of appeal for the remaining members of the content board. We envisage achieving that by amending the Office of Communications Act 2002 and I shall ensure that members of the Committee see the amendment in good time before we consider the relevant clause of this Bill.

I shall now address the question asked by the hon. Member for Ryedale about what constitutes a quorum for the content board because the answer has arrived from an unknown source. He will not be surprised to hear that that is for Ofcom to determine—

[Laughter.]—but as the law stands, a determination committee of Ofcom must contain a board member of Ofcom or an Ofcom official. I shall speak about that further when we consider clause 12.

Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. I understand that his objective, as shown by the additional amendment to which he referred, is to provide greatly flexibility for Ofcom rather than prescribing how it will work. I think that Ofcom will have to go down the route described in the amendments in practice, but if the Government want to resist the amendments, so be it. I shall not press the matter further and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: No, 177, in

clause 11, page 11, line 20, at end insert—

'(4A) In making such appointments with respect to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, OFCOM must consult with the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly as appropriate.'.—[Mr. Simon Thomas.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 17.