Clause 2
Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill
12:00 pm
Don Foster (Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Culture, Media & Sport; Bath, Liberal Democrat)
I will make two very quick points. First, clause 2 states that the description of the information will be prescribed by the Secretary of State and that that prescription will be the subject of an order made by the Secretary of State. In other words, the House will have the opportunity to debate the details of that prescription and therefore the information that will come from the data and to whom those data refer. I wonder whether the Minister can explain to the Committee something that has been puzzling me for a very long time. Why is the prescription—a relatively small issue—to be the subject of an order when the description and the detail surrounding the whole scheme and its delivery are not to be the subject of such an order?
My second question, which I mentioned earlier, is simple. Will the Minister update the Committee on the number of people who will be covered by the data? He will recall his predecessor, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell), telling the Department Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 10 January that
“what we are doing is providing help to up to five million vulnerable households.”
I note that the 7 June report of the DCMS Committee states:
“We recognise some people will face practical issues in coping with switchover. This is why we are setting up with the BBC a very comprehensive programme of assistance to which 6.5million households where one person is aged 75 or over, or where one person is severely disabled, will be eligible.”
On 22 November, in a parliamentary answer to me, the Minister himself said:
“We estimate that around 7 million UK households will qualify for assistance”.—[Official Report, 22 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 113W.]
That is slightly bizarre given the number of households in which there may be more than one eligible person. In another parliamentary answer from the Minister on 19 December—only a month later—the number of households that qualified for assistance had risen to 7.1 million. Given that the number is going up by about 200,000 a month, can the Minister give us his latest estimate of the number of people who will have to be helped by a scheme that will be fully funded by the BBC—totally unfairly—out of the licence fee payers’ pockets?