§ The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms)My right hon. Friend. now the Secretary of State, announced on 9 November 2000,Official Report, columns 327–28, various measures to deal with interference from ADSL and similar systems, including interference regulations based on a standard, MPT 1570, to be implemented by regulations in due course. Since then, there has been only one reported and confirmed case of interference to medium wave broadcast reception and none to any other radio service. In view of this, I believe it would now be disproportionate to give statutory force to the standard. The operators of ADSL have made a voluntary commitment to take all reasonable steps to resolve any interference problems that do arise and I believe that is the pragmatic way forward for the time being. I expect that Ofcom, when it assumes responsibility for spectrum management matters on 2S December, will keep this matter under review.
The UK continues to contribute to work in Europe towards producing a harmonised approach to interference.