Interpretation

Part of Telecommunications Bill (Allocation of time) – in the House of Commons at 4:22 pm on 21 November 1983.

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Photo of Mr Peter Shore Mr Peter Shore , Bethnal Green and Stepney 4:22, 21 November 1983

I am not in Committee opposing the Bill because I have admirable representatives in my team there and, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is not in the Committee either.

The Opposition expected that sooner or later a timetable motion would be introduced. However, we are surprised by its timing and shocked by the draconian terms in which it is drafted. It was only on Thursday that the Minister for Information Technology made his first and major statement in Standing Committee A on what the Government's competition policy aimed to achieve. That, together with the abolition of British Telecom's monopoly position in clause 2 and the wide-ranging powers and functions of the Director General of Telecommunications and the Secretary of State in clause 3, provides the framework for a large part of the subsequent clauses.

Last Thursday we learnt from the Minister that BT's monopoly of supply and maintenance of the prime telephone instrument connected to BT's systems was to end by the close of 1984. We also learnt that the maintenance of newly installed call-routing apparatus was to be fully open to competition by November 1986. We learnt, further, that services provided over the public telecommunications network, other than the basic telephone service, were to be freely licensed. Already 60 value-added network services have been registered for general licence, with proposals for about 200 different services.

We learnt—at last—what at least is the Government's short-term policy for competition in providing public networks. Having granted Mercury a licence in 1982, the Government decided that no further licence would be issued until at least 1990. We learnt what the Government's policy was on the licensing of radio telephone networks. BT and Mercury are to be faced with two licence competitors and the Government will soon license their first new broad band cable network. That is a complex and, on its face, inconsistent pattern of competition. It should be fully debated and explored.