Raymond Snoddy on Digital Britain

Raymond Snoddy discusses Digital Britain over coffee with Andy Burnham … and then he’s gone to tackle the NHS, leaving our new weekly commentator with the view that Digital Britain is unlikely to have much immediate effect on the marketing community, if anything happens at all …

“We all know that Gordon Brown has a lot to think about. Those in the media industries can hardly expect that the imminent publication of the Digital Britain report would be at the forefront of his mind. It went even further down the list of priorities when former Culture Secretary James Purnell threw his toys out of the pram in the failed personal coup against the Prime Minister.

Now three days are a long time in politics. Last Tuesday morning, journalists were invited into Andy Burnham’s vast office in Cockspur Street for coffee to discuss the report due to be published next week.

An odd occasion because although the culture secretary was enthusiastic to talk about Digital Britain, naturally he couldn’t actually say very much about what was in it – not least because battles were then still raging over what it should contain.

I asked Andy Burnham whether, given the chaos down the road at the House of Commons, anything would happen at all about Digital Britain in the 10 or 11 months before a general election has to be called, followed by almost inevitable oblivion for the Labour Government. Burnham insisted he was very confident that the June 16 deadline for publication would be met, that Digital Britain was an important policy initiative that would be in the Queen’s Speech in the autumn and that the necessary legislation would be passed.

And then three days later Burnham was gone – off to wrestle with the problems of the NHS, leaving his successor Ben Bradshaw less than two weeks to finalise a box of tricks that still has many loose wires hanging out.

At least Bradshaw is a former journalist who might just get to the heart of the matter quickly, unlike former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, who was notorious for wrestling every known fact and argument to the ground before finally making up her mind.

Whatever is decided in the end, Digital Britain is unlikely to boost advertising expenditure directly or have much immediate effect on the marketing community. Except to the extent that it is in everyone’s interest that the communications infrastructure of the UK is modernised and both intellectual property and the plurality of media protected.

It all sounds terribly abstract but it is important that advertisers have a strong Channel 4 to call on, so that ITV is not their only effective TV option.

It is equally vital that local radio and newspaper industries survive the current onslaught, for the marketing community just as much as civic society.

For the sake of the development of new media and avoiding social exclusion the dream of universal access to broadband pursued by Lord Carter is obviously a worthy aim.

The big question is where the money is going to come from to fund an almost limitless number of worthy projects. Alas for the BBC they have the only large pot of money available, so unsurprisingly everyone is now scrabbling to dip into it.

The BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons is trying to defend his corner, to protect, as he sees it, the integrity of the licence fee. He also argues, completely correctly, that money spent by the BBC is a sure and certain way of protecting public service broadcasting.

However, once the decision has been taken that there should be competition for the provision of PSB, then the chances multiply that any surplus from the move to digital – possibly as much as £250 million – will be on its way from the BBC. At least the money was never part of the Corporation’s programme budget.

Conservative shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is of a similar mind, so not even an election could save the BBC’s money.

The more contentious issue is who gets what. Lord Carter has made it clear he wants all the money to go to his broadband campaign. But it is equally clear that Burnham fought a robust battle before he left to divert some, at least, of the money to pay for content.

The battle lines could be seen last month when both Carter and Burnham attended a Local Media summit in the House of Commons. Speaker after speaker warned of the imminent crisis in local news provision outside the BBC and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger spoke of the growing need for the protection of what he called “independent verifiable news sources” in the age of the internet.

So it looks like money will go towards spreading the availability of broadband and the funding of contestable franchises for local television news provision – something that has been backed vigorously by Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards.

A limited form of enforced co-operation between BBC Worldwide and Channel 4 will probably be go through in the end.

Then there are other things that wouldn’t actually cost any money but could make a real difference. They include easing the ownership rules for local and regional newspapers and commercial radio.

The Government is also committed to strengthening regulatory controls over the illegal downloading of copyright material.

Taken together they could add up to a modest step in the right direction. Except that political events could now conspire to ensure that absolutely nothing happens at all.”

Do you agree with Raymond? Send us your opinion – news@mediatel.co.uk