BORDERERS ASKED TO PAY OVER SHOP PRICE FOR DIGITAL SWITCHOVER

11.32.46am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 2nd Jul 2007

Thousands of older people and people with disabilities in the Borders will be asked to pay £40 towards the cost of digital television switchover, despite digital boxes being available for as little as £20. This charge will be part of the Government's targeted assistance scheme for switchover. The figure was obtained by the Liberal Democrats, who have slammed the help scheme as being "over-priced" and "out-of-date".

Commenting on the release of these figures, Michael Moore MP, an active campaigner on this issue, said:

"The approach that the Government is taking to digital switchover is deeply worrying. While I applaud the recognition that they must provide assistance to the elderly and vulnerable, the scheme they are proposing is over-priced, out-of-date and seriously flawed. Not only has the Government consistently refuted my call to make retrospective payments under the scheme, effectively penalising people for making early preparations for switchover, but we now learn that they are proposing to charge twice as much as the shop price to provide a digital box."

Mr Moore believes that the Government is ignoring the scale of the problem they will face when switchover takes place next year. He continued: "When no-one seems to know how many people in the Borders can currently receive digital television, how are they identifying who they have to help, and when they have to help them? 11,000 households in my constituency of Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk will be eligible for assistance under the scheme. Many of them will not be able to receive digital television until the analogue signal is switched off and replaced by the digital one. For these viewers, only limited preparations can be made in advance. This means that an army of helpers will be needed on the ground right across the Borders, ready to assist with the installation and testing of set-top boxes for thousands of viewers as soon as the analogue signal is turned off."

The Borders MP also described the Whitehaven trial as a wasted opportunity. He said:

"While the trial switchover in the town of Whitehaven, Cumbria, in October will be useful in identifying some of the technical issues that need to be addressed, the Border TV region switchover will be on an entirely different scale. And, due to a lack of forward-planning by the Government, the assistance scheme is not even going to put in place until next year, several months after the Whitehaven trial. This would have been a great opportunity to iron out some of the problems that I have identified, but the Government has completely missed the boat."