405-line Television Transmitters (Hansard, 12 April 1983)

§ Mr. Whitelaw

After careful consideration I have decided to accept this recommendation and to close down the 405-line services by the end of 1984. The phase II engineering programme designed to bring UHF 625-line TV services to communities of over 500 people will be largely, though not wholly, complete by that date, but the additional programme to help smaller communities will for contractual reasons be slower and more expensive than was hoped. Self-help schemes, however, have also made a useful contribution, and thus the maximum possible figure I gave on 20 May 1980 announcing the timetable for closure of the 405-line services of 90,000 people outside UHF coverage by the end of 1984 remains unchanged. This figure should reduce to 60,000 to 70,000 by the end of 1986. The number of viewers unserved by UHF who will be receiving usable 405-line signals by the end of 1984 cannot be precisely identified but must be smaller than the figure of 90,000 because some of these will never have been able to receive 405-line transmissions, and because 405-line receivers will be at least 20 years old by that time. I recognise that by bringing forward the closure date as recommended in the Merriman report there will be a hiatus before alternative provision for some 405-line viewers is available, while some others will be denied a service earlier than had been foreseen. As the report recognises, however, there is no alternative but to make these bands available for land mobile services at the earliest possible date if the urgent requirements of these services are to be met.

There is some risk, as mobile services are introduced into band I and III, that they may cause interference to cable systems which use these frequencies to distribute 625-line services, but we think that these systems can be protected by suitable screening.