Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

My Lords, my Amendment 265 falls in this group. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, who has tabled it with me. I know he shares my gratitude to the public service broadcasters with which we have discussed this matter. Our amendment and the two in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, spoke, all attempt to bring protections for the listed events regime into the scope of the Bill, or at least to give us the opportunity to have the debate that my noble friend Lord Moynihan rightly says is needed and perhaps even overdue. In saying that, I am very mindful that we were likely to have had that debate in the exchanges on the now Media Act earlier this year, had the general election not intervened and had the then Bill not gone through the abbreviated processes in wash-up. I think my noble friend is right and that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, would have agreed, had he been here, that these issues deserve some consideration. The amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and I have brought forward is intended to probe the Government about how they plan to protect digital on-demand rights for the listed events regime. While live television viewing of events is currently included in the regime, there is nothing to stop clipped videos of digital on-demand rights from going behind a paywall. My noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere would certainly have enthusiastically taken part and would have made some very interesting points in the debate we could have had on the listed events regime. This is in the context of public service broadcasters that are broadcasting things that have been deemed particularly important for the public to see in a way that is different from the commercial suppliers, which can provide so many other things to people in the differing ways that they do.