HC Deb 11 June 1990 vol 174 cc111-8

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

10.5 pm

Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of the FM radio reception in the Yorkshire dales and I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State for being here to reply to the debate. This is a matter of concern to many of my constituents who live in the deepest and most remote dales, particularly Upper Swaledale in north Yorkshire. In some such places, it has never been possible to receive the FM signal of BBC radio stations. Although some of my constituents have thus been denied the opportunity to sample the superior stereo quality of FM broadcasts, they have accepted this as an understandable disadvantage of living in mountainous surroundings and have tuned into medium-wave broadcasts.

But this minor irritant is about to become much more serious. From August this year, Radio 2 will be broadcasting only on FM, to enable its medium-wave frequencies to be used by the new Radio 5. In addition, I understand from the BBC that over the next few years, both Radio 1 and Radio 3 will become FM-only networks so as to free their medium-wave frequencies for use as national commercial radio outlets.

I accept that these changes are an important prerequisite of the substantial future expansion of radio services and that the overall effect for the great majority of people will be a widening of choice and the availability of a greater variety of programmes than ever before. That is obviously a good thing. However, on current plans the extension of choice for most of the country will be at the cost of reducing choice in services for a small minority. In my opinion and that of many of my constituents, that is not an acceptable trade-off, nor is it necessary. The provision of additional transmission facilities to serve regions such as Upper Swaledale would allow the whole population to share in the widening of choice rather than imposing on that minority a narrower choice.

I accept that this is a problem for the BBC to solve. I wrote to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Industry and Consumer Affairs about the matter, and he replied: In the cases of services in the Swaledale area it will be for the BBC to decide how best to fill any holes left in VHS FM services. That would be fine, but the BBC has decided not to fill some of those holes for the foreseeable future.

I have already corresponded with the director general of the BBC about this matter and he has been kind enough to explain that 98 per cent. of the United Kingdom population is served by FM radio and that the extension of this service is a high priority. That is fair enough. However, the director general adds: Although a relay is planned in due course to cover the deficiency in FM coverage in Richmond, it will probably not prove to be technically possible for this relay to serve all those currently without FM radio in Swaledale. Given the limited size of the population it is unlikely that parts of Swaledale will be served in the foreseeable future. The director general concludes: I realise how disappointing this reply may be to those living in Swaledale, but it would clearly not be right for me to raise any false hopes of an early solution to this very difficult problem. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will be able to encourage the BBC to find a solution to this admittedly difficult problem. My constituents in Swaledale may be few in number but they pay their television licence fee for the services of the BBC like anyone else. They are joined in the summer months by many thousands of tourists and other temporary residents who also have every right to be able to receive BBC transmissions. They are able to receive the transmissions of local radio stations such as Radio Cleveland and Radio Tees with sufficient signal strength to enjoy stereo reception.

They are therefore rather sceptical of protestations about extreme technical difficulties when it comes to national radio. If the BBC had at least a plan for rectifying the problem in Swaledale in advance of the transfer of Radios 1 and 3 to FM only, I think that we would have to say that that was fair and acceptable. My hon. and learned Friend will understand that the absence of any plan or hope while the plans to transfer radio stations to FM continue apace is not regarded as fair or reasonable by listeners or licence fee payers.

I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will be able to put the matter to the BBC in his future discussions with it. We are talking about people living near the middle of the British Isles in the late 20th century who are unable to receive the greater part of the broadcasts of the national state-run radio service.

Clearly the problem is not confined to Swaledale. It sounds impressive that 98 per cent. of the population is served by FM, but that means that about 1 million people are not served by it. Perhaps my hon. and learned Friend will convey to the BBC the likely feelings of the 1 million and inquire how many of them will continue to be without FM transmission when Radio 2 becomes FM only. Perhaps he will ask also how many are still likely to be in that unfortunate position when Radios 1 and 3 become FM only.

As far as I can tell from the BBC's engineering information maps, there are many gaps in coverage in the Pennine area, including parts of Teesdale, Wensleydale, Wharfedale and areas in west Yorkshire. Swaledale may be one of only a few areas that will still not be served after a few years have passed. If so, my hon. and learned Friend will understand that the irritation caused will be even greater. If there are to be only a few remaining gaps, it is surely worth the effort and expense involved in filling them and providing complete national coverage.

I am not technically expert in these matters and probably my hon. and learned Friend is not either. But he may have expertise. Perhaps his great abilities include this technical expertise. I understand that the solution lies in the provision of an additional repeater station or in the use of the Bilsdale moor mast. The transmitter, which is in my constituency, is used to transmit Radio Cleveland and Radio Tees and by the BBC and Tyne Tees Television to broadcast television programmes. Its signal for all those services is recieved all the way up Swaledale. There may be technical difficulties in the further use of the Bilsdale mast of which I am not aware, but if so they need to be fully explained. The alternative of a further repeater station would present siting problems, but that problem has been overcome elsewhere and I am sure that it could be overcome in Swaledale.

So far, the BBC has not made a very good job of satisfying local concern. Replies to letters of complaint from individuals and parish councils have often included leaflets advising people to listen to stereo radio, how to buy portable sets to receive it and how good the quality of FM reception is. Not surprisingly, that has infuriated many people. I hope that the BBC will not be daft enough to do it again as long as the problem remains. It is senseless to ask people in areas such as Swaledale to purchase multi-element aerials and FM radio sets if the signal is absent or too weak to be of value: when nothing is multiplied by something, the answer is still nothing. All the high gain aerials and signal booster amplifiers are a waste of money in areas of negligible signal strength, let alone on the radio set itself.

Presumably the key problem for the BBC is one of resources. It will not have sufficient money or engineering staff to cover all the gaps at once, or even over several years. Perhaps I can prevail upon my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State to question the BBC about the cost of removing the gaps in coverage in areas such as Swaledale. Many of us would regard it as no more than a necessary cost of the changes in radio services to attend to that problem. If 98 per cent. of the nation is to benefit from increased choice, it is not unreasonable to expect some of the money provided by the nation for radio services—through the BBC licence fee—to be used, as a high priority, to ensure that the other 2 per cent. does not suffer restrictions in service as a result.

Let me provide an analogy. Let us suppose that my hon. and learned Friend and I go into a restaurant where there is a fixed-price menu, and are told that at our table most items on the menu are about to be taken off indefinitely, and one course to be omitted altogether. On inquiring why, we are told that the reason is to allow a better and extended a la carte service to be offered to all the other tables in the building. In that event, my hon. and learned Friend would complain to the management, and then to the owner. I am here tonight complaining to the owner, having received no satisfaction from the management.

I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will accept that there is a powerful case for the matter to be examined again by the director general of the BBC, and I hope that he will encourage him to do so. It is all too easy and convenient for large organisations such as the BBC to forget people in sparsely populated rural areas. However, it should be remembered that those people pay the same fees, and live in the same country, as everyone else. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend can assure me that the Home Office will do everything that it can to encourage the BBC to rectify this irritating problem.

10.17 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Mellor)

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) courteously said how good of me it was to attend. I echo and reciprocate that sentiment. His speech was the only jolly part of my evening: I arrived here post haste after watching England fail to defeat the Republic of Ireland. What a joy it is that you, Mr. Speaker, are present for the debate, rather than one of your deputies. Clearly I must raise my game—as England were unable to do—to answer my hon. Friend's cogent points.

Obviously, we must examine what we are doing to radio generally before turning to its controversial impact on my hon. Friend's constituents. We have arrived at an important stage in the history of radio. Until 1973—less than two decades ago—there was only BBC radio. However, since 1973 there has been independent local radio, which has proved very popular. Those stations have provided the BBC with a degree of competition, and the listener with additional and enhanced choice. That represents a considerable achievement on the part of the companies concerned and the Independent Broadcasting Authrity, which has effectively regulated the arrangements.

As the Government said in the Green Paper of 1987, there was evidence of stagnation nearly two decades on, and changes were needed to build on the success that had been achieved. Those changes were heralded in the Broadcasting Bill. We stand on the threshold of a major radio expansion: while much of the discussion of the Bill has focused on television, some of its most important impact will be felt in radio.

Over the next few years, we can expect the new Radio Authority to introduce several hundred new services, which will range from the existing wide-area stations down to services for very much smaller communities. There will be no reason why a station should not serve just a small neighbourhood or an audience that shares a particular, specialised taste in music if there is sufficient demand for that to be viable. Broadcasters will need to cater specifically for the interests of their audiences in a way that has never been required before.

At the other end of the scale, there will be three independent radio stations to provide competition to the BBC at the national level for the first time ever. Under the Bill, those services will provide a challenge to the BBC on a broad front. One will be a speech-based service, another will probably broadcast music other than pop music—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Baker) will share my enthusiasm for that— and the third licence will be unspecified, and it will be open to advocates to put forward other ideas. I suppose that those will be inevitably bound up with pop music in some shape or form.

In order to introduce those new services, we must find new frequencies for them—and here we come to the heart of the problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks. For two of the new independent radio services, we have had to re-assign frequencies from the BBC. At its suggestion—I am grateful for its co-operation —we have selected the medium wave networks currently used for Radio I and Radio 3. That will leave the BBC with six networks on which to provide its services, and it is for the BBC to decide how to use those frequencies to fulfil its public service obligations.

There will be an end—and this is important—to the waste of scarce frequency brought about by simulcasting —that is, putting the same programme on two different frequencies. That is a luxury which, in truth, we can no longer afford. It is a waste of the ample range of creativities that exists within our broadcasting community and that would allow each of those frequencies to be used by a different service.

The BBC says that, in this new environment, it intends to make Radio 1, 2 and 3 FM-only services. Radio 4 would be on FM, but much of its output would continue on long wave as well. Speech-based services can exist much more readily on the AM network than can music, which undoubtedly benefits tremendously from the FM wave band. The remaining network on the medium wave will be used for the new Radio 5, to be launched in August. I gather that it will be mainly sports and education programmes, and will therefore continue to be an exercise in masochism for those of us who admire English football. There will also be room for children's programmes to make a welcome return—certainly a welcome return from what has been happening in Cagliari.

Those changes have implications for listeners, and not just the listeners in Swaledale, to whose legitimate concerns I shall come in a moment. Most people will have only to switch their sets from the AM to the FM band. If, as most people do, they already listen to FM, they need do nothing unless they want to tune to the new Radio 5 to find out whether Scotland has finally managed to beat Costa Rica.

The remainder may have problems. Some may need to purchase new radios if they wish to continue to listen to Radio 2 and if their present set receives only on medium wave. The great problem is that suffered by a small minority, but nevertheless they are an important group of people. As my hon. Friend said, in a true democracy all are entitled to equal attention. I take his point on that, and not simply because he mentioned matters gastronomic, which he well knows are a particular interest, if not an obsession, of mine.

A number of areas have no FM reception, so in those places listeners will not be able to receive Radio 1, 2 and 3. Obviously that is a matter of real and genuine concern. My hon. Friend was right to raise it, and he has done a service to more than just his own constituents in doing so. While it is true that services reach 99.2 per cent. of the public, that does not mean that we can be complacent about the 0.8 per cent. of people who are not properly served.

I hope, believe and expect that the loss of those services will be only temporary. The BBC is currently engaged in a programme of building new transmitters to extend FM broadcasts to areas that are not presently served. It is for the BBC—because it is independent of Government, and it is only right that it should be—to determine the speed with which, and the order in which, it intends to carry out that programme within the resources that it has available.

I know that the BBC would assert that it is moving as quickly as it can to minimise inconvenience to listeners. It aims at building 20 new transmitters each year—more than three times the average number built in the last decade. In the current financial year, the BBC will spend more on radio transmitters than television transmitters for the first time since television was first introduced. Over the next five years, the BBC will spend about £26 million on the radio project.

About 150 new transmitters will be needed, and clearly their construction will take some time. Generally, the BBC will give priority to the larger unserved populations, which means that smaller communities will be at the back of the queue. I understand why my hon. Friend should, on behalf of his constituents, find that irksome, and he is right to protest about it. However, I hope it is clear that there is a genuine will and intention to extend FM reception to as many listeners as possible as quickly as possible—although I accept that that will not be achieved as quickly as my hon. Friend thinks desirable.

As to the loss of Radio 1, 2 and 3 on the medium wave, when the BBC stops transmitting those services on AM, radio sets across the country will not simply fall silent. Listeners will find BBC Radio 5 on the Radio 2 AM network, and in truth one might prefer listening to a programme about England's labours in Italy to the prospect of an easy listening music show as an alternative.

New independent national radio services will be broadcast on the Radio 1 and Radio 3 frequencies. The intention behind what will have to be a commercial venture is that they should offer services that will be attractive to the public. While I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern about the loss of BBC services, albeit temporary, it will be made up for by the existence of new national independent services, which I have every reason to hope and believe will be good and attractive.

I accept that there will be inconvenience, and it is probably precious little consolation that, nationally, the disturbance will be outweighed by the enhanced radio choice that will become available to listeners over the next few years. Nevertheless, I am confident that, overall, over less than a decade those developments in radio will be in everyone's interests.

Turning to the specific problem of the Yorkshire dales, the BBC has established a tuning clinic that visited Richmond recently, as part of a service that it is offering to several parts of the country where there are similar problems. It offers advice to listeners about how they might best cope with the changes. The BBC recognises that there is a reception deficiency and that it will be answered only by the provision of additional transmitters. My hon. Friend mentioned the Bilsdale transmitter. It is primarily used for TV transmissions, although it does have transmitters also for BBC Radio Cleveland and an ILR station, TFM Radio.

I hope that the BBC will bear that in mind when considering that site, although from the inquiries that I have made—as my hon. Friend rightly surmised, I am a bit of a babe unborn on such technical matters, but I am doing the best I can—I am led to believe that it does not provide a simple solution. The BBC would need to check whether the site could accommodate additional transmitters, and would also need to find frequencies for use at high power to reach the areas concerned. Such high-power frequencies are in short supply, and a more efficient use of spectrum might be to provide low power relays for Richmond and Swaledale, rather than to increase simulcasting over a wide area. I hope that what I have said at least shows that the BBC has considered and is considering the matter.

I have every sympathy with the difficulty faced by my hon. Friend's constituents, and it is sad that even the expedient of putting a rooftop aerial up does not provide a satisfactory remedy for many of them. As a result, and having regard to what my hon. Friend has said, and the eloquence with which he has drawn attention to their difficulties, I would wish to bring his remarks to the attention of the BBC as a result of this debate.

In so doing, I assure my hon. Friend that I shall make clear to the BBC the importance and the urgency of providing the necessary transmission facilities in the area for FM reception, and of bringing them on to the air as quickly as possible. As my hon. Friend says—a Yorkshireman who speaks about money speaks with a special authority, as we know—the people of Swaledale are paying precisely the same sum for BBC services as the rest of us and, at the earliest possible moment, they are entitled to be able to receive all of its services. Therefore, I hope that it will not be too long before they do so.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.