Lord Puttnam, chairman of the joint scrutiny committee on the Communications Bill, has called for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to be given full control over the new super-regulator, Ofcom.
The creation of Ofcom, which will regulate radio and television broadcasting as well as the telecoms industry, is one of the key elements of the bill which is due to go through Parliament next year.
The government is planning to split responsibility for UK media between the DCMS and the Department of Trade and Industry. However, speaking at the Westminster Media Forum yesterday, Puttnam claimed that it would be “catastrophic” to place the media sector and Ofcom under the joint control of two separate departments.
In particular, he maintained that power sharing would merely cause confusion and could fatally weaken the DCMS. “In that kind of battleground, over a number of years, the DTI will set up a situation in which it will end up controlling the [media] sector,” he said.
On the burning issue of foreign ownership, Puttnam re-iterated concerns that US media groups would “use their acquisitions to leverage their own interests” and called on the government to investigate the likely implications of media liberalisation.
However, he held up the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as an example of a strong and highly-respected regulator and expressed the hope that Ofcom would prove to be equally effective in the UK.
