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§ Dr. George Turner (North-West Norfolk)I wonder whether I am the only Member of Parliament who, when sitting down to watch television on the odd occasion at the weekend, consults the weather forecast before looking at the television guide. The problem of poor television reception experienced in my part of rural Norfolk is shared by many other sparsely populated areas, but it is uniquely annoying in north-west Norfolk because, although over the years there have been technical attempts under the analogue transmission system to improve reception, they seem to have failed abysmally for many thousands of my constituents.
Mrs. Ellen Ward from King's Lynn says:
We only have Yorkshire TV despite having two aerials. The chap who came to fix our second one tried in vain to get Anglia for us. The picture is awful and we have not been able to watch it. I am disabled through illness and although I watch very little TV I do especially love news items. I think most of this area gets pretty peeved off about the coverage we get.Not only do we have problems with the weather, because reception is marginal from the transmitters designed to serve East Anglia, but, as in Wales, where I understand that 30 per cent. of people get better coverage from English than from Welsh transmitters, we get better reception from transmitters serving Yorkshire and northern England than from those meant to transmit to the people of East Anglia.Yorkshire Television is transmitted from Belmont and has plenty of news about what is going on in northern England in its regional news programmes. To be blunt, people in Norfolk are more interested in the Canaries and the King's Lynn football team than in the affairs of Barnsley football club. One of my constituents, in a letter to the press, said:
I have spent hundreds of pounds on aerials and boosters trying to obtain Anglia TV and BBC East so my family and I can see the local news for our area. But to no avail, we still have to look at Yorkshire TV (wonderful picture, super picture and sound) and hear about what is happening in Leeds and Bradford…that is unless the atmospherics are feeling benevolent and allow us through the snow to get a glimpse of something nearer home, and hear how Norwich City or King's Lynn got on at football, instead of Barnsley and Huddersfield!On a more serious note, a constituent tells me:We are just a couple of miles from the coast, with the Ouse and Nene nearby. I am fearful that in not having our own local news, storm and flood warnings might be missed, while we were watching the news from the North!One of the best quotations, in the technical environment in which we live, came from a constituent who said:It does seem quite abysmal that men can travel to the Moon and back yet, even with a booster fitted to the aerial you are unable to get reception to my sitting room!The problem has been long standing. As an electronic engineer, I at least can understand what the engineers tell me. Since I have been a Member of Parliament—and indeed when I was seeking election—they have told me woefully about the technical problems in transmitting analogue television. I know, because the King's Lynn Citizen mounted a strong campaign, that at least 5,000 people in my constituency have been troubled enough to write and say so.978 I know from the campaigning of some borough councillors, especially Charles Ward and Marcus Liddington, who are bringing the issue to the borough council today, that the problem is large; and the solution, with analogue television, could be expensive and, given that we as a nation have stopped building relay transmission for analogue television, would probably not be achievable in the present regime.
As an electronic engineer, I am also extremely well aware that there is a solution. I am in the fortunate position, I hope, not of merely carping to the Minister but of being confident that the technical problems of the past, so well expressed by my constituents, can be solved by modern technology. I refer in particular to the revolution in communications represented by digital transmission, which is the distinctive way of transmitting information much more efficiently on the same radio waves.
The House will not want a technical lecture on the subject, but let me outline the two major advantages of digital television. First, some clever engineers have ensured that, by compressing data, the frequency spectrum, which is finite and governed by equations not even in the control of the Minister, can be more effectively used. For every television station that we can transmit by analogue transmission, using the same range of frequencies, we can transmit at least four, and probably more next year and the year after, digitally.
We shall have an enormous number of options in terms of picture quality, added services, interactive television and help for the handicapped. Fifty or so frequencies are available but, with analogue transmission, only four or possibly five channels can be received nationally—and those with difficulty, as my constituents know—but without cabling, which will not happen quickly in rural areas, and without people having to subscribe to Sky, we shall, with digital transmission, be able, with the transmitters that are currently in use, to transmit 20 to 30 television channels to every home. That is a huge advantage in terms of the wealth of communications that we can deliver from every transmitter in the land, as we move from analogue to digital.
The second advantage is that digital television will be much less susceptible to interference than the analogue that it replaces. We are about to enter an interim period during which analogue television may well be interfered with by digital. That is a jolly good argument for speeding up the process by which we move to the digital domain with its much greater efficiency. Under digital, much lower signal levels will allow high-quality pictures to be received, which will be a godsend in the sparse rural environments and the difficult patches of Norfolk to which I have referred. As an engineer, I have a clear understanding that there are no technical objections to the solution, which should be explored and implemented.
As a nation, we should have a social requirement that the key channels—bluntly, it is BBC1 and channel 3 that have the proper regional variations—should be, as of right, universally received in the United Kingdom. To do that, all we need to do is to ensure that transmitters that are now technically capable of transmitting only four channels and which will, as we move forward, be able to transmit 20 or 30, include within their expansion the channels that the people who receive broadcasts from that transmitter want to watch. Greater priority should be given to ensuring that people get the television reception that they want before they are plagued with requests to 979 pay for the extra facilities, many of which they will not want, that the new technology opens up. People will not thank the Government if, in several years, they can receive 20 channels, but they still cannot receive the key local coverage and the channels that they most want to receive.
I am particularly grateful to the Library for trying to bring me up to speed on the legal side of the issue. Emma Downing has served me especially well in guiding me through the labyrinth of legislation. I shall summarise what I have gleaned from that. It seems to me that there is nothing in the legislation which stops us achieving what I have suggested, but there is possibly not too much that encourages it. The responsibility to ensure universal coverage, or the nearest to it that we can obtain, seems to be divided between the Minister, the Independent Television Commission and the BBC.
I have had mixed responses from the BBC. When complaints were made some time ago, its local spokesman said that the television licence was like a fishing licence. It enabled people to receive television, but it did not guarantee that they could do so. That was not an acceptable response to my constituents, given the extra facility that the BBC is given in legislation to transmit extra information around the country. I must say that I received a much friendlier hearing from the chairman of the governors last week. He has at least offered some meetings, so that I can discuss with BBC technical advisers a more satisfactory route forward.
Neither has the ITC held out any prospect of an easy solution. My predecessor was told that it did not see the prospect of a solution with the move to digital television. Bluntly, that is not acceptable. Today I have my opportunity to ask the Minister to ensure that a fresh look is taken at the matter. It seems to me that a fresh look is appropriate for a new Government.
I and the many other hon. Members who represent sparsely populated rural areas do not expect immediate solutions, but given the wealth that the technical advances have given us in terms of our ability to communicate better, I hope that we can hold out a prospect today that we shall not wait for ever—mañana, mañana—for our problems to be solved. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will accept the validity of my complaints on behalf of my constituents, but will also acknowledge that many others in other rural parts of the country could argue similarly.
I have already mentioned that one third of the people in Wales receive English television more clearly than Welsh. They, too, could be helped by my proposed solution. In taking a fresh look at the problem, does the Minister accept that, in the array of opportunities made available by the move to digital broadcasting, there is a possibility of solving the problem that I have emphasised today at least for the vast majority of my constituents, and possibly for many others in this interim period of mixed analogue and digital broadcasting?
Will my hon. Friend the Minister undertake to ensure that those responsible—it is a divided responsibility, and that is one of the problems—face up to the issues that I have raised and give proper priority to universal reception of core television channels? The new Government have made much of the need for communities to act, and for community solutions to problems, whether crime or problems of regional 980 development. We have an obligation to ensure that those communities are given the support of community television, at least in the regional variations that the main broadcasters provide. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to use not only his power under the Broadcasting Act 1996 but, probably more important, his influence.
I suspect that technology will ensure that we legislate yet again on broadcasting during the lifetime of this Parliament. The fact that telephone, computer and broadcasting communications are merging technologies will necessitate that. I should have thought that my hon. Friend the Minister would tell those who had vested interests to protect and wanted to see the licence fee retained that constituents such as mine were not prepared to pay the licence fee while the BBC viewed it as an opportunity to receive television signals, but did not put enough effort into making sure that its services could be watched.
I have a more personal plea. As a former lecturer in digital electronics, I am confident that the fastest possible track should be given to the revolution that engineering has made possible and which politicians now need to ensure that we exploit.
§ The Minister for Arts (Mr. Mark Fisher)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) on securing an Adjournment debate on the important issue of television reception in his constituency, on which he and I have recently corresponded. As he says, the issue is of interest to a wider range of people, because it affects many rural areas in different ways.
I am sure that my hon. Friend's constituents will appreciate his assiduous pursuit of their interests, including his detailed discussions with the engineering division of the ITC, which is responsible for terrestrial transmission arrangements in my hon. Friend's part of the country. His advocacy, as he modestly did not stress, is given extra weight by his expert knowledge of the technicalities of transmission. He is a former university lecturer in electronic engineering. I suspect that he speaks with greater knowledge than any other Member of Parliament on a difficult and abstruse issue. The people of north-west Norfolk could not have a better champion than my hon. Friend, with his determination, his success in obtaining this debate and his almost unique expertise.
Many of my hon. Friend's constituents are unable to receive their preferred regional television service. He cited Mrs. Ward of King's Lynn. She and others must be baffled that, at a moment of huge technical advance, they cannot receive their preferred transmission. It is frustrating for them to pay a licence fee to receive a service which is not the one that they want.
I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend's constituents and, indeed, with my hon. Friend himself, who is one of his own constituents who does not receive the service he wants. However, as he is only too well aware, the problems that we are dealing with are, first, the properties of radio transmission and, secondly, the topography of East Anglia. I know that, with his considerable technical knowledge, my hon. Friend is familiar with those issues; but it might be helpful if I summarise, for the benefit of those less expert in these matters, some of the difficulties that are encountered.
981 The radiomagnetic spectrum is a finite resource and we must operate within the constraints of what is available. We have available for broadcasting 46 frequency channels to cover the whole of the United Kingdom and, as my hon. Friend is aware, broadcast transmissions from one site can readily interfere with and distort transmissions on a similar frequency from a neighbouring site. In addition to meeting the spectrum demands within the UK, we must have regard to the impact of our plans on our continental neighbours, given that broadcast signals do not respect national boundaries and travel a long distance, especially over water.
Reconciling those constraints and problems can be hard and can lead to limits on the coverage area of transmissions within the UK. In some circumstances, it might simply not be possible to use certain frequency channels because of the potential to interfere with existing services in other nations. It follows that there are certain areas within the UK where available spectrum for broadcasting is a genuinely scarce commodity. Coastal regions such as my hon. Friend's area are especially prone to such limitations and there is undoubtedly a genuine difficulty, not easily resolved, in north-west Norfolk.
The television services of BBC East and the Anglia Television ITV franchise are, as my hon. Friend knows, transmitted from three transmitters—Tacolnestone, Sandy Heath and Sudbury—and are extended by associated relay stations. I gather that the ITC's engineers have made every effort to extend coverage and to remedy anomalies in the region, for example, by setting up three relay stations at Burnham, King's Lynn and Wells-next-the-Sea. Because of the frequency limitations that I have already outlined, those relays are limited to two channels: Anglia Television and BBC1. There are four other relays at Creake, Little Walsingham, West Runton and Overstrand.
I recognise, as does the ITC, that there are areas in my hon. Friend's constituency that do not receive a satisfactory Anglia Television service in particular. I gather that about 30,000 people, including my hon. Friend, have to rely on the Belmont main transmitter in Lincolnshire as the source of their programmes, and that Belmont delivers the Yorkshire Television ITV service and BBC North. Clearly, much of their programming is unlikely to be of major interest to most people living in north-west Norfolk, although I understand that some of Yorkshire Television's programming broadcast from Belmont reflects East Anglian issues to a certain extent. Nevertheless, I understand that the consequences can be serious, especially in a coastal region.
§ Dr. George TurnerI should like to state publicly that today I approached Yorkshire Television and BBC North and asked them, exceptionally, to consider covering this debate, so that my constituents can see that I am speaking up for them. Interestingly, the BBC told me to get lost, but Yorkshire Television did at least say that it would give such coverage fair consideration as part of the news. I hope that my hon. Friend accepts that having the odd item on Yorkshire Television is only a patch and can never be an acceptable solution to the problem. Until we 982 get proper broadcasting from the Belmont transmitter into Norfolk, presumably in the digital domain, the problem will not be solved.
§ Mr. FisherI am concerned that serious broadcasters did not take my hon. Friend's request more to heart, given that public service broadcasters have a responsibility to cover events in the House. He might have noticed that there is another Adjournment debate tomorrow, on the broadcasting companies' responsibilities to cover debates in this Chamber, which might be of some interest to him.
Although I appreciate that there is no direct comfort for my hon. Friend's constituents, north-west Norfolk has received a considerable degree of special attention—perhaps more attention than most of the rest of the country—from the ITC in an attempt to address the regional anomalies, as illustrated by the number of additional relays provided. However, I accept that existing analogue transmissions can never fully solve the problem. My hon. Friend, in his excellent contribution, envisaged the solution as being digital, and that does indeed offer greater potential than analogue. However, it must be recognised that, even with digital, frequency availability will remain a constraining factor, at least during the early years before the analogue transmission network is switched off and not least because, in most locations, people will receive their digital transmissions from the same main transmitter source as their analogue transmissions.
My hon. Friend will know that digital transmissions differ from analogue in that there is no gradual decline in the quality of reception; consequently, there are no "mush" areas between different transmitters and coverage may therefore be more easily defined. People will either receive a signal of sufficient strength to obtain a service, or they will not. That will ease some planning difficulties and further increase the efficient use of the 46 frequency channels available. However, I would not want to mislead either my hon. Friend or the House by offering a certain prospect that digital will offer his constituents a quick or necessarily total solution to their reception problems. In the longer term, with the closure of analogue, digital might offer a solution to reception problems in north-west Norfolk, but until further spectrum planning has been undertaken, that solution cannot be certain—at least, not as certain as my hon. Friend believes.
Digital terrestrial television is a new technology and we are still at an early stage in its development. At present, the transmission plans of only the first 81 transmitters are being devised. Those are the main transmitters and some of the larger relays, which together will deliver digital services to more than 90 per cent. of the UK population for multiplexes carrying existing terrestrial services. Those 81 transmitters contrast with about 1,200 transmitters required to achieve analogue coverage for 99.4 per cent. of our population. Further relays may be brought into the digital plan, but the spectrum planning for them cannot commence until the plans for the first 81 are completed.
I am not in a position today to inform the House definitively whether digital terrestrial television will solve the problems that my hon. Friend described. He suggested that the increased capacity offered by digital would enable Yorkshire Television to broadcast from the Belmont transmitter both Yorkshire and Anglia regional variations. The Belmont transmitter is in the first stage of the digital 983 plan, and it will be operational on the launch of DTT services. However, the issue is not as simple as that, and we need to examine it more carefully. The ITC companies might consider that it would be sensible to use their digital capacity to deliver regional programming more accurately, and I assure my hon. Friend that I shall pass on his concerns and those of his constituents to both the Independent Television Association and Yorkshire Television. I am sorry to be unable to give my hon. Friend the categoric reassurance that he would like at this stage. Obviously, the extent of digital delivery of regional services will be an issue that the Government will have to consider when determining our strategy for switching over from analogue to digital terrestrial television.
I emphasise that there are no quick solutions, but I assure my hon. Friend and his constituents that the Government take these matters seriously. He has raised valid complaints and described valid problems on behalf of his constituents, and we need to consider them seriously as the potential of digital is realised. I look forward to continuing the dialogue, both through correspondence and in other ways, with my hon. Friend.