VIEWER CHOICE OF BBC PROGRAMMES IN THE NATIONS AND REGIONS

Early day motion 1105, tabled 29 April 2003 by John Grogan (Labour). Signed by 96 members.

That this House welcomes the BBC's announcement that it will provide all its national and regional services in unencrypted form on digital satellite as soon as practicable from the end of May; believes this will ensure that more licence fee funds can be spent on programming rather than an encryption service which the BBC does not require, will substantially improve viewer access to the BBC's digital services and will lay the ground for other public service broadcasters to follow suit, thereby assisting the move towards digital switchover; is concerned however that BSkyB has responded to this welcome initiative by threatening to remove BBC ONE and BBC TWO from positions 101 and 102 on the satellite Electronic Programme Guide; believes that this is in contradiction to the requirements for due prominence for public service channels put in place by Parliament; and calls for these threats to be rejected by the regulator and for the position to be clarified through the Communications Bill to require that operators of Electronic Programme Guides shall, where there is more than one version of the service available, be obliged to offer easy access for viewers to select their preferred regional service through a prominent position on the Electronic Programme Guide, and that any technical change required to facilitate this shall be supplied at its direct cost plus a reasonable profit.

Signatures by party: Labour 63, Liberal Democrat 18, Labour/Co-operative 5, Conservative 3, Plaid Cymru 2, Scottish National Party 2, UUP 2, Independent 1.