Community Radio (Hansard, 30 June 1986)

§ Mr. Hurd

Last year my predecessor invited applications for 21 experimental community radio licences, explaining that in selecting the successful applicants he would have the benefit of advice from a panel of advisers under the chairmanship of Mr. Stephen O'Brien. I am most grateful to him and his colleagues for their careful work in sifting the large number of applications which were made.

It had been hoped to start this two-year experiment several months ago. But various difficulties arose and anxieties were expressed about its exact form. There would have been no regulatory body, and yet the public would have expected certain minimum standards of objectivity and decency to be maintained. Even in an experiment in partial deregulation, some minimum would still be necessary, particularly when existing local radio stations are subject to the rules in the BBC charter and the 1981 369W Broadcasting Act. Home Office Ministers would in practice have been held directly responsible for the content of what was broadcast during the experiment. Their only method of control would have been to insert conditions in the licence, and their only sanction the withdrawal of the licence if the conditions had been breached—a sanction which might well have seemed arbitrary and open to challenge.

As we sought a satisfactory answer to this problem, it became clear that the whole question needed to be looked at in the light of other problems and proposals now affecting radio. The Indpendent Broadcasting Authority wishes to proceed with an independent national radio. Some ILR stations are concerned about their commercial future under the existing system. Professor Peacock's committee has included some proposals on radio in his report to be published later this week.

The Government have therefore decided to give up the idea of an immediate experiment in community radio, the exact form of which was still causing difficulty, and to look again at community radio among the matters to be covered in the forthcoming Green Paper on radio. As the timing has worked out, an experiment in community radio would have delayed the time when the whole future of radio could be coherently considered. The Green Paper will undertake that consideration.

I am conscious of the disappointment which this statement will cause to some, and of the effort which many people have incurred. I would like to express my regret in particular to all those who made applications and to the advisory panel which considered them. Their efforts have shown that there is enthusiastic and constructive support for community radio and I hope that we shall be able to devise suitable arrangements for it to take its part in our radio system.