Clause 70 - Specific types of access-related conditions
Communications Bill
5:30 pm
Mr John Greenway (Ryedale, Conservative)
I promise not to take as long as during the preceding debate, but clause 70 poses some important issues. I want to debate what Ofcom will do in future about the specific types of access-related conditions to which the clause refers—application programme interfaces and electronic programme guides. I confess to being no expert on application programme interfaces: in fact, I had some difficulty even understanding the definition.
I shall not bore the Committee on that point, but I do want to say a few words about electronic programme guides, which the Minister knows is one of the current flashpoints between public service broadcasters and satellite and cable operators. Clause 70 allows Ofcom to set access-related conditions. The key question is how Ofcom will use the power.
In the same spirit in which the Minister said a short while ago that the Government were technology neutral, I have no intention of coming down on one side or the other of any of the commercial arguments between the PSBs and the platforms. As the Minister knows, there are opposing arguments but the Committee has a duty briefly to air them to shed light on how Ofcom will deal with them, which it will have to do.
Clause 299 requires Ofcom to have a code of practice, which has yet to emerge. The prominence of programming displayed on EPGs is of particular concern to S4C. The Minister and the hon. Member for Rhondda will know that that matter is a particular bête noire for S4C. It is an extreme point, but shows the challenge faced by Ofcom in resolving such issues.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) is not present to contribute to the debate, because he would have a lot to say about the matter. Hon. Members will be reasonably familiar with S4C's point, which I do not want to labour, but in Wales if one has a Sky dish and receiver, channel 104 is S4C, not Channel 4. However, my briefing note from S4C says that people who receive their signal through a cable system get something called channel 7. The channels are certainly not in the same order as in England.