The Broadcasting Act 1990 contains a power, in section 193, for the Secretary of State to amend networking agreements by order as a result of a merger or a monopoly report under the Fair Trading Act. The Broadcasting Act requires the regional channel 3 licensees to enter into networking arrangements for the purpose of enabling regional channel 3 services, taken as a whole, to be a nationwide system able to compete effectively with other television programme licences provided in the UK. An application for a channel 3 licence must be accompanied by networking arrangement proposals. When an application has been duly made, the Independent Television Commission, the economic regulator for the sector, must send details of the networking proposals to the OFT and must not award a licence unless it appears to the ITC that the proposals are satisfactory.

The order-making power in section 193 of the Broadcasting Act is similar to the order-making power given to the Secretary of State to amend licences in other regulatory regimes as a result of an FTA report. Schedule 8 to this Bill contains amendments to other sectoral legislation to extend the order-making power to allow the OFT and the Competition Commission to modify licences and to allow that order-making power to be triggered following a report under the powers in the Enterprise Bill, rather than an FTA report. Amendment No. 375 brings the Broadcasting Act regime, which deals with the networking arrangements, into line with the other regulatory statutes. That is because, under the new regime, the OFT and the Competition Commission will be the decision makers in most cases.

Amendments Nos. 370 and 371 require both the Secretary of State and the Competition Commission to have regard to the duties of the ITC, as stated in section 2(2) of the Broadcasting Act, when considering amending networking arrangements as a remedy in a market investigation. Parliament has given the ITC those duties, and it is right that the Competition Commission and the Secretary of State, when considering modifying networking arrangements, should act with regard to them. Amendment No. 372 amends the definition of "sectoral regulator" in clause 160 to include the ITC.

These sensible amendments will bring the provisions in the Broadcasting Act into line with the new regime. I commend them to the Committee.

Amendment agreed to.