This morning Luke and I attended the UK Parliament’s Trade & Industry and Culture, Media & Sport Committees’ joint session on Ofcom’s Annual Plan. Here’s my take:

Ofcom face a variety of constraints and forms of oversight. Whether it is judicial review or the scrutiny of media sources like OfcomWatch, we expect society to occasionally challenge Ofcom and its plans, proposals and evidence. But the most important source of oversight is Parliament. So I was eager to attend this important session and see how exacting and comprehensive Parliament would be. My assessment: this session was useful but more can be done.

It’s challenging to summarise this type of session other to say that the MPs on the Committees generally gave Ofcom a rough time. The questions were both tough and wide-ranging. The joint chairs Peter Luff MP and John Whittingdale MP should be commended for ensuring that Ofcom was thoroughly engaged on a wide variety of topics. Both Ed Richards and Lord Currie held up well, offering good, sometimes excellent justifications for regulatory choices and explaining delays and problems well.

Ofcom received the most scrutiny and negative reaction with respect to its Digital Dividend Review (DDR) consultation. MPs on the Committees appear to believe that certain of Ofcom’s initial DDR conclusions were wrong and are slightly distrustful of leaving a public policy matter solely to Ofcom, but struggled against Ofcom’s logic and reasonable-sounding position. Ed Richards did say that Ofcom would release another DDR-related document before the summer.

Two other items were notable:

1. Junk food (HFSS) advertising. There was an interesting exchange between Ed Richards and Philip Davies MP on this issue. Davies kept asking the basic question of how Ofcom would measure the success of its advertising restrictions. I thought Richards gave a good response, making the subtle distinction between measuring how many HFSS adverts children are exposed to versus measuring how much weight they lose. Still, Ofcom have a basic problem here — the costs of regulation are usually easy to calculate, but the benefits are sometimes elusive. Perhaps sensitive to this, Richards slyly noted that the obesity problem may continue to worsen, but at a slower rate. [Russ - ‘The fat kids are exposed to 70% fewer Cadbury’s adverts — it’s not Ofcom’s fault they keep growing!’]

2. The cost of regulation, including Ofcom salaries, headcount, etc. This issue — highly relevant to the annual plan — was only raised at the last minute and was done in a manner that was perhaps more confrontational than engaging. That’s unfortunate. I’d personally like to see more discussion of these issues and include with them the cost of various related schemes such as co-regulators like ICSTIS.

So what more can be done to improve this accountability opportunity?

First, I would suggest that if this session remains an annual oversight opportunity that Ofcom be given a brief opportunity to make an initial presentation of its annual plan to the assembled MPs. This would serve two purposes: (i) it would tend to focus the meeting on the annual plan rather than whatever Ofcom-related matters are in the news that week; and (ii) it would aid those MPs and attendees that haven’t read the plan too carefully (or at all).

Second, I think the session should be a more systematic review of Ofcom’s annual plan. One good starting point would be to review Ofcom’s take on how successful the previous year’s annual plan was. Then, perhaps the discussion could move to the current annual plan and review what is included, what is excluded and what the costs, timing issues and practical obstacles are.

Finally, there should be a time and place for MPs to confront Ofcom about constituent concerns and policy disagreements. Ofcom’s senior leaders should be exposed to that type of critical feedback and sometimes humourous, sometimes biting commentary. I think this means the Committees should hold a longer session and divide it into two parts: (i) a session focused solely on Ofcom’s annual plan and (ii) a session that is more open-ended.