§ Mr. YeoTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if she will make a statement on the number of prosecutions undertaken by Television Licensing in each of the last five years, stating for each prosecution (i) whether the defendant was convicted, (ii) where convicted, the punishment the defendant received and (iii) the age of the defendant. [48373]
§ Dr. HowellsThe available information relates to prosecutions for all offences under the Wireless Telegraphy Acts of 1949 and 1967 (though the great majority of these involve licence fee evasion) and distinguishes only between people aged under 21 and those aged 21 or over. The figures for England and Wales for each of the years from 1996 to 2000 are shown in the table.
§ Dr. HowellsIn the White Paper "A new Future for Communications", the Government made a commitment to ensure that the public service broadcasting channels (those of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5) are available on all the main platforms, both before and after switchover. The forthcoming Communications Bill will give us the opportunity to include any provisions necessary to achieve this objective. The access of other channels to the digital platforms is a commercial matter for them and the platform operators, subject to fair competition rules.
§ Mr. YeoTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on what(a)date and (b)grounds the recent change in the affordability element of the digital switchover tests was made. [48370]
§ Dr. HowellsThere has been no such change.