1 December 2005
Parts of Wales risk being left behind in the digital TV revolution, it has been claimed.
Mark Williams, MP for Ceredigion, said that 85,000 people in the country do not have television reception - and this is even before analogue signals are switched off in the next four years.
Wales will be one of the first parts of the UK to go completely digital, and Mr Williams said that there is much work to be done - particularly when it comes to making sure that people have access to political news and associated broadcasts.
He told Commons: "More people depend on television to follow politics than any other medium and to deprive 85,000 people of TV coverage is tantamount to removing universal suffrage from two entire constituencies.
"If this were to happen there would be national outrage, yet why is the Government still so complacent in doing something about it? A lack of TV reception is symptomatic of a much wider problem, and that is that 85,000 people in Wales today are totally disenfranchised from society."
Junior culture minister James Purnell responded by saying that the analogue switch-off would in fact ameliorate the figure of people able to receive a television signal, and noted that Wales - with 71 per cent of inhabitants switched on to digital TV at present - is the world leader in this area.
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