I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, very much indeed for his contribution. If he is capable of that with an impending nosebleed, goodness knows what he would be like firing on full health. We certainly wish him well.
I thank him very much for the kind words of support. I will try to deal with the various questions that he raised. I have every sympathy with his fight with the statistics. I also have had one in this area with the acronyms, but am probably just about making my way through that.
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He raised the issue about the 50%, which is a trigger for looking at the position, but not necessarily a trigger for the switchover. Actually, the 50% initially came from a government White Paper in 2009, therefore under the previous Government. Since then spokespeople in the Commons on the Labour side have talked about a 70% trigger so I am not sure whether that is policy or a stray comment but, as I say, we are looking at this as being consumer-led. We do not see it as being an issue other than consulting with people when it gets to 50% as to what is the appropriate trigger. We have no set figure on that.
The point on competition that the noble Lord raised was well made. We have looked at that in the round but feel that the security of delivering the digital rollout is the important issue at this time. I should have said, and perhaps let me make the point at this stage, that community and local radios will continue to operate on the FM network, so they will be protected in so far as they are very localised and community radios such as hospitals and so on. We are looking at giving them some limited powers in relation to advertising and so on as well, which is the subject of some other regulations but not these today.
The noble Lord asked about the second commercial national D2 bidding process. He is absolutely right that two valid bids have come in and we are looking at them at the moment, and a decision is expected shortly. I think the names are in the public domain but one involves Arqiva.
I think the noble Lord was making the point about the analogue service licences commercial radio stations have until the end of 2017. That was out for consultation until the end of November. The consultation has ended. We are certainly expecting to give a decision on that. We are looking at the evidence and clearly there is an issue there before Parliament is dissolved—certainly that is the intention. That is a point well made, but we are on to that.
In relation to the other types of delivery of radio and indeed television services, I think this area is unique in that delivery can both be very local and global. The United Kingdom leads on internet hybrid radios and we are very proud of our role on that. I will write with more detail on that to the noble Lord since it is somewhat outside of these regulations. With that, I thank the noble Lord very much for the very helpful and relevant questions and commend these regulations to the Committee.