My hon. Friend makes the fantastic point that sometimes a community radio operation can take a broadcasting risk that a large-scale commercial operation, or even the BBC, with its requirement to satisfy licence-fee payers that their payments offer value for money, cannot take, and can develop a service and show that it works. Earlier this week we were talking about the Green Investment Bank, which was started to address a perceived market failure, but now private investors want to take it on and develop some of its actions into a profit-making venture because they believe the market has changed. As my hon. Friend points out, broadcasting is the same.
A service that may not be seen as inherently profitable, or as something that a broadcaster would want to launch fully commercially, could be allowed to build its name in a community setting. Indeed, an individual can build their abilities and talents with a community service, allowing them to move on in broadcasting more generally. Community services would effectively act as an incubator for what might become successful and popular services. However, if people cannot make that jump, we are in essence restricting the options to those who are tech-savvy and can go online to access such content. People will then find that there are no community services out there when they tune in on their DAB radio, or they will have to rely on FM technology, which clearly puts them at a disadvantage because of the quality of the output they will be able to produce.
The Bill would fix the issue with the scale of digital broadcasting by allowing the creation and licensing of smaller-scale multiplexes that can operate in a local area, giving a new opportunity to create the infrastructure to deliver digital radio. I make it clear that the technology has moved on hugely since the House last considered these issues.