I am very pleased to be following my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who has, as usual, raised lots of very good points. I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on bringing forward the Bill. I have to confess that this is not an area that I am particularly familiar with. Indeed, like my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood, I am actually a bit of a technophobe. I still cannot work out how to do certain things on my mobile phone, for example, but I now have a DAB radio in my car, so I am probably a bit more familiar with the technology than I was in the past. I had not realised that there were significant barriers to local community and voluntary radio stations getting access to the infrastructure. I was interested to learn about that, and it made me look at how things were going in my own constituency and what opportunities there might be there.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) mentioned earlier, this is a technical Bill. It focuses on opening up something that we already have, in order to make it more accessible for communities and small organisations. That must always be a good thing. We are really lucky in my constituency of Rochester and Strood, because we have a radio station called KMFM which operates across Kent and Medway. It is
run by the KM Group, which operates a number of radio stations at regional level across the county. In Medway, it is sited in my constituency, but it also operates on a DAB multiplex across the county. That involves one radio station operating across the county on that system. The separate analogue stations around the county also play a major role in getting news out.
One of the things that KMFM is really good at doing is supporting local events. It provides coverage of all the events in my constituency. Whenever we have a big festival in Rochester, Chatham or Strood, the local radio station always covers what is going on. It is massively important that local people can hear about and be part of what is going on by listening in if they are unable to get to such events.
Another key thing is live, real-time news. In some cases, it is far quicker and far more accurate than what we get from some of the bigger regional radio stations, such as BBC local radio. Only yesterday, the local radio station was able to get out news about the snow and about an unfortunate incident involving a man whose boat was set alight. He had to jump into the river and was taken to hospital. That news was live very quickly via local radio. I have not yet heard whether he is okay, but I am sure he is now.
The local radio station is also good at covering business, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham). Local radio is far more accessible for local businesses and for the local authority. When we want to advertise local events, local radio provides a cost-effective option for promotion, which is a major thing for the local community. Local radio is also prepared to cover the small events, such as village fetes, that larger radio stations will not cover. My sport is sailing, but the national regional stations rarely cover sailing events. However, our small community radio stations will cover what we are up to, which is important not least for getting out the message about what is actually going on in the constituency.
The range of programmes and coverage on small community and voluntary radio stations is diverse. Kent has a station called Channel Radio, on which Sian Murphy, a constituent of mine, hosts a show called “Women In Business”. Many women come to speak on her programme and talk about entrepreneurship or raising a family while running a small business from home. It presents a real opportunity for listeners to network without actually being face to face, and I have received feedback that that is really important. Loneliness might play a part, but if someone is bringing up a family at home and trying to contribute to the growth in our economy by setting up their own business, they can listen to other females’ experiences of what it is like to run a business and some of the challenges that they face. It is a really interesting programme. Sian is a businesswoman herself and does the show voluntarily because she just wants to help women get on.