HC Deb 05 April 1967 vol 744 cc365-80
Mr. Channon

I beg to move Amendment No. 19, in page 8, line 33, to leave out 'the Channel Islands'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I think that it will be for the convenience of the House if with this Amendment we take Amendment No. 20, in Clause 10, page 8, line 36, leave out from 'Man' to 'with' in line 37.

Mr. Channon

I should be equally happy, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to discuss also Amendment No. 21, in line 37, leave out 'exceptions'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Yes, if that is acceptable to the House.

Mr. Channon

I do not think that in Committee we had any discussion about the position in regard to the Channel Islands although we had a detailed and long debate on the subject of the Isle of Man. I am no lawyer, and I am certainly not an expert on Channel Island law—I doubt whether many or any hon. Members are. I understand, however, that the position in the Channel Islands is very different from that in the Isle of Man, and I should like to know the Government's intentions with regard to the Channel Islands.

Do they propose after the Bill is passed to make an Order in Council extending its provisions to the Channel Islands, and do they intend to make that Order extend to all the Channel Islands? They have taken power, which Amendment No. 21 sought to remove, to make exceptions. An Order in Council should deal with all the Channel Islands or with none of them. I cannot see any reason for an exception to that rule.

If the Government intend to make regulations applicable to the Channel Islands, are they certain that such regulations would have any force there? I understand that according to Guernsey law there is no doubt that Orders in Council would have the force of law, but I am advised that the position is very much more doubtful in Jersey. Can the Government confirm that after this Measure has been enacted, the passing of an Order in Council would create an offence? I understand that the question of the power of the Privy Council to legislate for Jersey without the concurrence of the Estates has been raised on a number of occasions. I believe that there is considerable doubt about the position as to Orders in Council made under the Prerogative, and that there is even doubt with regard to an Order in Council made after specific United Kingdom Acts have been passed.

I should be grateful if the Government would clear up our doubts on this point, and tell us their intentions.

Mr. Joseph Slater

Even if the Channel Islands were left out of Clause 10—or even if Clause 10 were deleted altogether—the reference to them in line 33 would have to remain. Amendment No. 20 would prevent the Bill being extended to the Channel Islands.

There was much discussion in Committee about extension of the Bill to the Isle of Man, but there was no comment about extending the provisions to the Channel Islands. They must be extended to the Channel Islands for the same reason that they must be extended to the Isle of Man. As I said in Committee, we are responsible for the international relations of the whole of the British Isles, and we cannot leave any part of them outside the scope of the Bill to form a refuge for pirate broadcasters and so sabotage the European Agreement. The Channel Islands authorities have been consulted on the text of Clause 10 and have not expressed any objection to it.

I take it that Amendment No. 21 is really a probing Amendment, with the purpose of finding out what exceptions, if any, it is intended to make in extending the Bill to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The words "exceptions, adaptations and modifications" are best considered together, since they collectively leave scope for the Bill to be adapted to the particular case of the Islands. The principal exceptions will be in Clause 6. Clause 6(8) is not relevant to the Islands at all and some of the other subsections would not be relevant in their present form. Therefore, Clause 11(2) will also be omitted because the date of the coming into force of the Act in the Islands must be specified in the Order in Council itself.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Chanson

I am grateful to the Assistant Postmaster-General for his reply. I do not wish to bring him to his feet again unless he can give an answer, but I should like to know whether such an Order is prayable against.

Mr. Slater

I understand that it is not.

Mr. Channon

In that case, we would not have an opportunity of debating the matter but, since the hon. Gentleman has told us that the Channel Islands have raised no objection, this appears to be an academic point.

In view of the reply, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

9.17 p.m.

Mr. Edward Short

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I do not believe that there is any fundamental disagreement between the two sides of the House about the necessity for the Bill. We as a Government have been building on foundations laid by the last Conservative Government. There has been no difference of approach to this problem—I mean the pirate problem, not the problem of alternatives.

The Council of Europe was itself taking the first practical step to give effect to the prohibition of marine broadcasting embodied in the international Radio Regulations which came into force on the 1st May, 1961. This convention, was an imaginative international approach by the Council of Europe to a common international problem which fell outside the normal jurisdiction of Governments and which no one Government could solve on its own. The hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) played a not inconsiderable part in the drafting of the Council of Europe Agreement on broadcasting, which we subsequently signed.

The first recital in the Preamble to the European Agreement reads: Considering that the aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its Members. The stage we have now reached with this legislation today will be a marked indication to our European neighbours of our seriousness of purpose in seeking to achieve this unity.

I cannot sufficiently emphasise how disturbing it has been to me and to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to receive such strong complaints from authorities far and wide in Europe about the serious interference which the pirate broadcasters around our shores have been and are causing to various authorised broadcasting services. As a Government it was our duty to take what steps we could to put an end to this nuisance and the right and proper action to take was to follow the lines which hon. Members opposite helped to lay down in Strasbourg and to legislate as the House is now doing in this Bill.

Some of my hon. Friends behind me may still think that we could have gone farther than we have in creating offences to put a stop to this selfish disregard of the orderly regulation of frequency usage and of the rights of copyright owners, but I am convinced that we have, in the Bill, a legislative weapon which will be effective for its purpose.

To mention only a few of the difficulties which the pirate broadcasters will encounter: they will not be able to have offices here, or run their ships from here, or have advertising headquarters here, or to be supplied from here. No one in this country will be allowed to advertise on pirate stations.

When more European countries legislate on these lines the effect will, of course, be even more drastic, but from today, I suggest, these gamblers who have been playing for quite high stakes will begin to realise that soon the game will not be worth the candle.

This is as it should be. In a rapidly shrinking world, in which our actions impinge more and more on our neighbours—whether it be in the use of supersonic aircraft or speed boats or fast cars or the importation and transportation of oil-precautions, controls and restraints in certain fields of public concern become more and more imperative.

In the case of radio, where the legitimate claims on the limited frequency spectrum grow from year to year, the need for order is paramount if wavelengths are to be usable at all in the future, and the House has taken a significant policing step in bringing this Bill to Third Reading.

In many respects the provisions break novel ground—if I may use this metaphor for a marine Bill. I should like to congratulate the draftsmen on producing, in these circumstances, a piece of legislation at once concise and comprehensive.

9.20 p.m.

Mr. Bryan

I wanted to say all the happy things which are often said on the Third Reading of the Bill, but this has been an unhappy Bill, conceived in guilt and born in most embarrassing circumstances. The delivery has been especially painful to Government back benchers like the hon. Members for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) and Meriden (Mr. Rowland), who, over the last two years, no doubt pressed their case on the Chief Whip of the day and received the usual reply that it was not possible to put the legislation through.

They now discover that in five short Committee meetings we have more than squeezed the Bill dry. However, the Postmaster-General has steadfastly kept up his theory that attack is the best method of defence. He has said that our motto has been "Popularity before legality". It is absolutely certain from what we have heard that his motto has been "Popularity before legislation".

All the way through, once the Bill obtained its Second Reading, it has been the opinion of this side of the House that the most important improvement which could be made in Committee was to get the balance of the Bill right, to see that its powers were adequate but no more than adequate. In its original form, the Bill contained all the heavy-handed over-insurance of an over-frightened Government. To rid himself of these terrible pirates, the Postmaster-General was willing to make everybody criminals.

We were told in Committee that even the ardent evangelist who allowed his sermon to be reproduced on broadcast was liable to be put in prison. We were told that a parson who thanked Radio X for giving the date of his church bazaar could be thrown into chains. None of this nonsense have we been successful in removing, either by ridicule or by argument. We have merely frightened the Postmaster-General into increasing the penalties once again, and these clearly innocent types are still to be criminals.

I cannot understand why, in the later stages of the Bill, the Postmaster-General has not found an opportunity to humanise the Bill to some extent by getting rid of some of these less important crimes. One of the most revealing debates we had in Committee was that in which we tried to get the word "knowingly" inserted in significant places in the Bill. Even that was not allowed, although obviously it would have done almost no good at all.

It would be out of order at this stage of the Bill to talk once again about alternatives.

We have discussed at great length already the effects on the offshore radio stations which, in terms of personalities, I suppose, amount to a few score characters. The effect on listeners is far more widespread and may affect 20 million people or more. All the way through the effect on listeners has been underplayed by the Postmaster-General in probably the natural, human way in which we all relegate to the backs of our minds anything unpleasant or anything for which we feel slightly or more responsible.

There has been the suggestion that this audience is really a teenage affair and that it will settle down quite soon to Radio 247. In fact, I think that we all believe, certainly the professional and acute advertisers believe, that the public for this sort of radio is very much wider—old-age pensioners, housewives, and so on—and that these people have now been led to regard these programmes as perfectly legitimate and a reasonable expectation.

Whatever the Postmaster-General says, they will have every right to protest when the programmes are suddenly stopped and nothing faintly familiar is offered in their place. The public has had a brief look beyond the limits of monopoly radio and it has liked what it has seen. This uncontrolled enjoyment has so rattled a Socialist Government that we are condemned to monopoly until the Conservatives come back to set the people free.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins

To listen to the hon. Member for Howden (Mr. Bryan) one would hardly credit that when they were the Government hon. Members opposite announced their intention of introducing legislation to do precisely the same as the Bill which my right hon. Friend has just brought towards its conclusion. It is extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman's definition of setting the people free is setting the gangsters free.

As I said in Committee, this is Conservatism driven to its logical conclusion and it is most fortunate for the honour of the Conservative Party that throughout these discussions both here and in Committee it has had the presence of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Mawby) who has consistently spoken in a manner which has done credit to him and the party which he represents.

At no time has the hon. Member attempted to move away from the clear position that when they were the Government the Opposition intended to introduce legislation which, while it may not have been exactly the same as this, had the same object and the same intent as this. This is a very creditable thing, if I may say so, but I see by the bent of your head, Mr. Speaker, that I am inclining beyond what is permissible, and I will, therefore, not risk saying more on that line.

Perhaps I may be permitted a word of general support for the Government in their actions on this matter. As my right hon. Friend has said, in considering the question of alternatives there have been differences of view on this side and on the other side of the House. I cannot do more than mention that the alternative which has been proposed is not that which I would have advocated, but there has been no difference of opinion on this side about the desirability of disposing of this illegal form of broadcasting, although, I am sorry to say, there has been some difference among hon. Members opposite.

Finally, I hope that when the Bill goes to another place their Lordships will consider the possibility that, in addition to what it already provides, the Bill should make it illegal to sell or offer for sale any article or product advertised by means of a broadcast made on a pirate radio. I suggest that for consideration by another place, because if that is not done there is a grave risk that British-based companies will be at a disadvantage compared with international companies which are based primarily overseas.

With those words I welcome the approach of the conclusion of our consideration of the Bill. I hope that when it comes into effect it will do the job which it is intended to do. I sincerely hope that the proposed alternatives will, in the course of time fill the gap which the removal of the pirates, undesirable though they are in principle, will undoubtedly leave in the lives of many people.

9.29 p.m.

Dr. M. P. Winstanley (Cheadle)

I spoke at some length on Second Reading and I shall endeavour, therefore, to make suitable amends by being brief now. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I voted against the Second Reading, but not because we do not believe that measures of this kind must be undertaken. We said then and we say again now that, in our view, action of the kind envisaged under the Bill must be undertaken. We accept that the use of the air through frequencies and wavelengths must be rationed and must be internationally controlled. We accept that there is need to protect the interests of shipping. We accept that the interests of radio astronomy must be protected.

It being half-past Nine o'clock the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered, That the Proceedings on the Marine &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Bill may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour though opposed.—[Mr. Edward Short.]

Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Dr. Winstanley

We accept that certain interests should receive some protection, although we do not go so far as some hon. Members would, and that musicians, owners of copyright and so on are entitled to protection. We accept, also, that control of the air is vital if we are to prevent broadcasting being used for illegal political purposes.

For all those reasons, we were in favour, and are still in favour, of the measures in the Bill, but in seeing it have a Third Reading we have no sense of happiness or spirit of gaiety because we regret that other things have not been done at the same time. We voted against the Second Reading because we thought that it was not good enough for the Government to come along at the eleventh hour, having done nothing for two or three years, and ask the House to help them to get their chestnuts out of the fire. Our position is still the same, but we shall nevertheless support the Third Reading. However, we hope that between now and the time when the Bill goes to another place we shall have heard more about alternative courses.

We agree with many of the comments made by hon. Members on this side in the debate. We agree with much of what they have said about its defects, but we accept that some control must be applied. Our only regret is that, in applying that control, we are putting an end to the supply of something for which there is a sound demand, and we are, in my view, putting an end to something which people want and which the Postmaster-General could have given them by other means. I hope that, before the Bill becomes law, the right hon. Gentleman will have given people the things they want by some other means so that the Bill will not be an intolerable imposition but will be a useful Measure which the whole House can then support.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

This is a bad Bill. It is an anti-democratic Bill, because it goes right against the wishes of the clear majority of the people of Britain. This is not in dispute.

In my judgment, the Bill starts with envy, envy of success, for the pirate radio stations have been a success. It goes on from envy to spite. The Government were defied and they have determined to suppress. They have produced a Bill on this basis which is a compound of technical ignorance, financial ignorance and ignorance of the consumer, and, what is more, it is a piece of consummate humbug of the kind to which we have been treated by the Postmaster-General on several occasions today.

One of my hon. Friends said of the Government that they were taking a sadistic delight in suppression. I have no doubt of this. As I listened to the Postmaster-General on Second Reading, I was reminded of the inquisitors who said that they were condemning and punishing people in order to save their immortal souls. The right hon. Gentleman's speech was studded with words of oppression, including—I have taken them from his speech—to condemn, to suppress, to deprive, to prohibit, to control and to punish.

What a splendid catalogue of words from a Minister who has told us today that he was considering the consumer! How much better it would be if, instead of suppressing those radio stations, he attended to the business of getting our letters delivered on time, or making our telephone service work a little better!

Mr. Speaker

Order. That is just a little outside the Third Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

I have no desire to attack the public service principles of the B.B.C. I have no personal interest in pirate radio stations. If it can be proved that they have stolen other people's copyright, by all means punish them for that. If they interfere with legitimate transmissions, by all means push them off the frequencies where they offend. If they interfere with other broadcasts of legitimate organisations, by all means punish them for that.

But it is one thing to punish the pirates for particular offences, once they are proved, and quite another matter to use Parliament to obliterate them altogether. What the pirates have proved—I defy hon. Members opposite to deny it—is that large numbers of the British people want, and are determined to have, a much greater variety of sound radio than they can get from the present monopoly. I hope that the Postmaster-General will not imagine that all those who listen to pirates are irresponsible teenagers. On the contrary, they are large. numbers of our fellow citizens in all walks of life, men and women, rich and poor, country folk and town dwellers, who are now to be deprived of what they enjoy.

Another group of people who have particularly appreciated the service the pirates offered is the businessmen, a group on whom the Government like to cast slurs when it suits them but to whom they must go for help when they wish our economy to thrive. Dozens of company chairmen have appeared on Radio 390. Among the firms which have pushed up the pirates' advertising revenues to very large sums were Unilever, Beechams, Shell, the Egg Marketing Board and, believe it or not, the B.B.C. itself—although its directors did not know. Is that not an extraordinary situation?

The pirates have been a success story and it is for that reason, because they have demonstrated that enterprise and competition can create a new and profitable business, that the Socialists want to destroy them. For precisely the same reason, I oppose this kill-joy Bill, because, behind all the fancy words in it, it is an act of petty bumbledom, behind which lurks the notion so dear to the right hon. Gentleman that the people are not to be trusted, that they must hear only what he believes they should listen to.

I should like to examine briefly the charges which the Government have brought against the pirate stations and the arguments the Government now give us for consideration. They say that the pirates have not paid royalties. The truth is that some have and some have not, and it would have been much wiser to punish those who have failed rather than to seek to obliterate them all.

The Government also claim that the pirates have interfered with shipping. I have asked pilots on the North Sea ferries whether that is so, and they tell me that it is not. I have not seen a single example cited by hon. Members opposite of a case where shipping has been interfered with by those stations. I was told by one master mariner that he was always very pleased to listen to Radio Caroline, because he then knew where he was.

The most serious accusation that the Government have made is that the pirates are breaking international agreements. It is a serious matter if they break international agreements, but they are not the only ones. Altogether 208 wavelengths were allotted under the 1948 Copenhagen Agreement. Today, more than 300 additional stations over and above that allocation are operating without authorised wavelengths. Among these are the Voice of America, Budapest and Baghdad radios, half a dozen Communist stations, and, for good measure, Vatican Radio, too. I would say that we cannot have a holier pirate than that. The Copenhagen Agreement and what has flowed from it needs to be renegotiated. Of course that is so—

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Member is going a little wide now.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

I apologise, Mr. Speaker, if I was carried away and strayed beyond the frequencies on which I am allowed to operate this evening.

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member must come back again.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths

It does not lie well with hon. Gentlemen opposite, who have presided over the breaking of international agreement with our E.F.T.A. partners, who have broken faith with the Aden Protectorate, to make a breach of international agreement the reason for the suppression of these stations.

The heart of the matter is that the Bill is being forced through the House of Commons against the wishes of the majority of the British people, against the belief, in my view, of the majority of the Members of this House, simply because the Socialist Party does not really like what the pirates are offering. I do not like a lot of it, either, but I hope that I shall never be so arrogantly cocksure of my own dislikes as to impose them on others.

Higher standards, if we are to have them in radio broadcasting in this country, cannot be legislated; they can come only through competition and enterprise. That is why I believe that this Bill is a bad Bill. I hope that the day will come when my hon. Friend on the Opposition Bench will stand there at that Dispatch Box and will introduce a general broadcasting Bill which will provide the British people with what they are entitled to have, wider, free choice of commercial radio, and which will wipe from the Statute Book the very bad Bill with which we are being burdened this evening.

9.43 p.m.

Mr. Rowland

Though I am tempted to pursue if not to save the immortal soul of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths) I should be out of order if I tried to do that, and, indeed, I do not know where it would get me, either.

I should like quickly to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General on successfully concluding this part of the passage of the Bill. It may have been coincidence only—I am sure he would say it was only coincidence—that the action which was called for was taken soon after he took his present office; but, coincidence or not, his name will be associated with it, and I should like to congratulate him on having taken effective action in the last few months.

The Bill is the beginning of the end of a discreditable chapter in the history of British broadcasting. I freely confess that it has never been far from my mind, and I trust it has not been far from the minds of many hon. Members, that what in many ways the whole argument has been about is not only wavelengths or copyright or interference, but the question of the standards of British broadcasting.

I have always taken the view that experience abroad, particularly in North America, has shown that the end product of commercial stations competing with one another for advertising is a low level of broadcasting, and I am surprised that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, whose admiration for the United States is in many ways equalled only by my own—I speak as a very great pro-American on these benches—I am surprised that an hon. Member who knows America as well as he does—should not have been able to have learned certain lessons about commercial radio from American experience.

What I think doubly remarkable is that the pirate radio system, if one may call it that, has been operating without any regulation whatever. It is not only commercial radio, but unregulated commercial radio. Even the United States have a Federal Communications Commission, even though its powers may not always be effective.

I am surprised that any hon. Member opposite should, as it were, have sprung to the defence of an unregulated pirate radio system around our shores. My right hon. Friend, in moving the Third Reading, was more generous to the Opposition Front Bench than I would have been or it deserved. You, Mr. Speaker, will doubtless explain to me if I am out of order in saying that, on the Bill, the Opposition Front Bench has engaged in a sustained exercise in controlled hypocrisy.

When they were the Government, right hon. Gentlemen opposite put their hands to this kind of legislation which was needed to put the pirate radio stations off the air. Now, in opposition, they have deliberately confused this question, about which there should be no argument on either side of the House, with the other question—perfectly genuine and a legitimate subject for debate—about the legitimate radio system within the country.

The Opposition should have given the Bill an unopposed free run and tackled us, if they wished, on the Government's alternative proposals. The confusion of the two has been hypocritical and they have done it because they have hoped to curry some favour in the public mind by appearing to be in favour of the pirates and pop music. To this extent, the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has been more honest than his Front Bench colleagues. He is in favour of these stations continuing to operate.

I hope that, now that the Bill is nearly on the Statute Book my right hon. Friend will turn his formidable attention to ensuring a viable system of financing public service radio, both local and national. He knows, because I have expressed my opinion earlier, that I have some reservations about the proposed method of financing local public service radio.

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not tempt himself to go out of order.

Mr. Rowland

I will resist that temptation immediately, Sir, and in my peroration say that, with the Bill nearly on the Statute Book, the way will now be clear for further measures for the benefit of and service to the radio system of this country along the lines which my right hon. Friend started to indicate in his White Paper. The Bill has been the essential prerequisite to further steps in strengthening our public service radio system.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.