HC Deb 24 May 1971 vol 818 cc188-98

Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Monro.]

11.23 p.m.

Mr. Phillip Whitehead (Derby, North)

Debates upon the Adjournment have one thing in common with the external broadcasting services which I wish to discuss tonight. Neither can be judged by their impact upon the immediate audience. There is no immediate test of audience reaction. There is that moment of doubt and sometimes despair that nobody may be listening and that nobody perhaps cares. In preparing for this debate I could find no record of a debate on the financing of the external broadcasting services over the last 10 years.

At the outset I declare a marginal interest. It is confined to having worked for the external services of the B.B.C. nine years ago and having been in the employment of B.B.C. Television until about four years ago. During the whole of that period, and indeed since, I formed the conclusion that the unsung heroes of Bush House are not just an ornament of the B.B.C. but are the finest investment for the expenditure of £12 million annually which Britain could have in the propagation of the British point of view, and not just the British Government's point of view, overseas.

The best testimony in this field is without doubt the Duncan Report, which hon. Members realise was by no means wholly favourable to the B.B.C. external services as they are at present constituted. Paragraph 18 of the report says: As an instrument of communication, the B.B.C. has the decisive advantage that it has a worldwide reputation for telling the truth. Its overseas broadcast bulletins are therefore widely believed to give true and objective accounts of world events and they provide a sure basis for influential comment. That, I think, is a fair tribute to the B.B.C., and I am sure that there will be general agreement with it. But the melancholy fact is that since 1950, in terms of broadcasting hours, the B.B.C. has declined from first to fifth place, and if the present rate of decline in relative terms continues we shall shortly be overtaken by Egypt. Nor is it just the big Powers which are expanding and the, so to speak, smaller ex-colonial Powers declining. The Netherlands and other much smaller ex-colonial Powers have expanded their broadcasting services since 1950, in the case of the Netherlands by almost 200 per cent., whereas our relative expansion has been about 20 per cent. In those terms, we have remained almost static, and in real money terms our expenditure on the external services has declined over the last five years.

This is not a party point. I am aware of which Government were in power for most of the past five years. It is my contention that both parties have consistently under-estimated the harm which has been done, and which can be done, by neglect of the external broadcasting services. The present Director-General of the B.B.C. has accused Governments of frantically looking for candle ends of economy without appreciating the light which can be cast by any one candle end if properly used. I agree with that view. Since the virtual disappearance of the Rapp Report some years ago, there has not been a coherent approach to the external broadcasting by either party. This indifference has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.

I shall consider, first, the number of services, and then the question of the frequencies and transmitters for these services. All hon. Members will have their own anecdotes about audience response to the B.B.C. I shall quote from a letter which, coincidentally, I received this week, by a roundabout route, from a friend in Prague who can no longer correspond with the West except by the occasional smuggled missive like the one I received. I am sure that this testimony will be accepted by hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Soref), who is waiting to intervene in the debate, and with whom I agree very little on B.B.C. matters. This is what my friends says: I am a regular listener to the B.B.C. World Service, but I find it extremely difficult to tune to it because it is beamed to the Middle and Far East, where your friends are, as they keep showing you on every occasion. But what can you do? It is still a newscast, it is fairly reliable, and I just have to listen, even if it is a tough job to get it on the 31 metre band. There are particular problems of reception in Prague, and especially so in the area where my friend lives. I concede, also, that since 1968 the medium-wave frequencies to Czechoslovakia have been stepped up. But I quote that example of a listener's response, from a man cut off from his friends, often in despair, linked with the outside world and a concept of truth and objective reporting by the B.B.C. on the 31 metre band

I wish to speak tonight, however, about the vernacular services of the B.B.C. rather than about the English language service to which my friend referred in his letter, and I do so because they have come under threat from the Duncan Report. The Duncan Report recommended a cut-back in the vernacular services in favour of English which, the Committee believed, was the lingua franca of the educated èlite in many countries. The Committee said: We have the impression that a broadcast in the vernacular makes the educated listener, with whom we are dealing here, feel that it is being specially slanted to him, and that he is therefore likely to be that much less receptive. Moreover, foreign language broadcasts are less likely to attract the influential few … It went on: In our view the assumptions underlying this review should be that henceforth no foreign language broadcasts should be conducted unless it can positively be shown that they are being listened to regularly by an audience (a) of significant size which would not listen to English, if the vernacular were not available, (b) consisting of people whom it is particularly important to reach because of the influence which they exert. I find that an offensive and ill-timed view, which grotesquely under-estimates the pressures of public opinion, particularly in some emerging countries. We must reach beyond the élites and realise that the teenager in many countries today, perhaps with a transistor radio picking up medium-wave transmissions, and perhaps at this time wanting, say, British pop, some news in his own language and, perhaps, some information about world sport and so on, may well become the educated listener of tomorrow. By getting him in his formative years, the B.B.C may well have one of its regular audience for many years to come.

The Duncan Report declined to recommend an increase in Government expenditure on the external services, no doubt confident that the improved transmitters which it recommended would balance cuts in the vernacular services. But I contend that those vernacular services should be improved. Time after time they have been cut just at the wrong moment. We have had no services to much of Western Europe since 1957. Ironically, at the very moment when we were missing the boat at the Messina talks we were also cutting back vernacular services to our friends in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium. Today, as our position on Europe and our negotiations with the countries of the E.E.C. are watched with apprehension or hope by our closest friends in both E.F.T.A. and the E.E.C., we are broadcasting only to the English-speaking élite in many of those countries.

It may be contended that all those people speak English anyway, but what about Vietnam, to which we broadcast for three-quarters of an hour each day compared with 12 hours by "The Voice of America"? There is no English-speaking élite there. In so far as it has an élite, it is French-speaking. Yet journalist after journalist has returned from Vietnam to say that the B.B.C. external services are listened to as major sources of news not just by the élite but by villagers in the delta. Last month the little five-minute weekly service on science matters broadcast by the Vietnamese service put on a programme on the use of new drugs for the treatment of farm animals and poultry, and in the very next mail from Vietnam there were 16 inquiries from Vietnamese farmers in the south about how those drugs could be obtained. That is remarkable testimony to the efficiency of the service, which should certainly be expanded.

Equally, in this troubled time for East Pakistan, when the House has been exhorted by hon. Members on both sides to exert an influence on the civil war there, there is a case for expanding the mere half hour a day we provide in the Bengali service.

In the Middle East, although the Arabic service is one of the great success stories of the B.B.C., and is acknowledged as such in the report, we stopped the Hebrew service in 1968, precisely at the moment when our influence and the British point of view should have been put in the Middle East.

In Africa the Russians now broadcast in 11 vernacular languages, and we are broadcasting in only three. Those who have lived and served in Africa, as I have, no doubt share my astonishment that the Russians have a Fulani service and we do not. The Afrikaans service of the B.B.C. was stopped in 1957, again, ironically, precisely at a mement when our differences with South Africa and the widening gulf between the Governments of Great Britain and South Africa first made it doubly necessary that we should have a service to the Afrikaaner people of South Africa. We do not broadcast at all in any vernacular language to Central and South Africa, south of the Zambesi. This, given the present difficulties with the régime in Rhodesia, is an astonishing omission.

I turn to the question of transmitters. Whilst the general overhaul recommended in the Rapp Report has not been carried out in its entirety, I concede that the picture is brighter here. There is improved power medium-wave transmission to Eastern Europe, and there is the slow conversion of the United Kingdom shortwave transmitters. There are the relay stations on Ascension Island and at Masirah. But still there are the questions of money and speed. The rest of the world is converting, too, and faster. We are losing the race for audibility in the medium-wave band.

At present the B.B.C. does not have the funds properly to programme and to use the relay stations at Masirah and on Ascension Island. The recent White Paper on commercial broadcasting, which we shall be debating on Wednesday, speaks of freeing four medium-frequency wave bands now used by the domestic services. It says: One of the channels thus freed will be used to augment our external broadcasting services. That is the only sentence in the pathetic White Paper that I applaud wholeheartedly, but it is not very explicit. Which service will benefit—the service for Eastern Europe or that for Western Europe? I hope that the Minister can tell the House exactly what the service is to be.

I have tried to outline the need to expand our external broadcasting facilities. Does the Foreign and Commonwealth Office accept that a case for expansion of the vernacular services can be made—we are talking not of millions but of perhaps £250,000 a year—or is it wedded to the arguments in the Duncan Report, obsessed with élites and ignoring the masses? Does it accept the need to accelerate the modernisation of transmitters and, particularly, to transmit to that transistorised medium-wave audience which has exploded all over the developing world in the last 10 years?

I am sure that when we talk about the need for expansion we should turn our back on the Duncan Report, which suggested that while every other country is expanding its vernacular services we should be cutting ours. There is an enormous audience and enormous good will all over the world among those listeners to the B.B.C. who know that truth is the best and only propaganda.

11.41 p.m.

Mr. Harold Soref (Ormskirk)

I am extremely grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the generosity of the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) for making time available for me to intervene in this debate, however briefly.

This is the first time, certainly in this Parliament, that it has been possible to discuss the B.B.C. in abstract or its overseas work. Nobody would doubt that the war record of the B.B.C. was un- surpassed. It told the truth. Many people endured and, in fact, survived the war because of the magnificent and heroic service performed by the B.B.C. But, in the opinion of many people, there has been a very considerable change.

I agree with many of the points—more than he would imagine—made by the lion. Member for Derby, North about the necessity for having an external service to reach the entire world, telling what is happening in this country, as long as it performs a national service for this country. We have failed to exploit the transistor revolution, particularly in Africa. The transistor radio, because of the activities of the Chinese and the Russians, has largely become the opium of the people in those parts.

But in the B.B.C. we have a service financed by the Government, who have inadequate control. There has been undue bias, and there is ample evidence that there is an independent foreign policy followed by the B.B.C. which is at times contrary to British interests. I have received many letters from different parts of the world complaining of the slant used by the people speaking on the B.B.C. For example, the newspapers quoted tend to be almost exclusively newspapers to the Left. The people invited to speak on Africa, according to the many people who write to me from Africa, are very distinguished but almost completely Left-wing journalists. There should be a fair balance.

Similarly there is ample evidence that the B.B.C. in its external services, no less than elsewhere, is engaged in psychological warfare against any country endeavouring to contain Communism. The speakers, the sources and the voice all tend to be that way. On programmes dealing with Rhodesia, in particular, and the Portuguese in Africa and in South Africa, there is a distinct slant.

I have received several dozen letters, but I should like to quote one which I received this week from someone in Denmark who is not associated with any political party but has written to me from time to time having listened to the B.B.C. He writes: The kind of news programmes put out by the B.B.C. quite clearly contain from time to time blatant and more frequently less easily definable nuances of sub-Communist propaganda. This letter is not from a political extremist but is typical of many letters I have received.

By all means we should expand the overseas work of the B.B.C. But let it be the true voice of Britain and let is speak in the national interest of this country.

10.45 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Kershaw)

I am very glad that the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) used the time at his disposal to raise the problems of the external services of the B.B.C, a subject which, as he says, has not been raised for some time. It gives me the opportunity to pay my tribute to the B.B.C. for its work, which is fostering civilised concepts of behaviour. We recognise that it does so largely because of its reputation for telling the truth.

Of course, it is the intention of the Government that the B.B.C. shall be maintained in a fit condition to present Britain to foreign audiences as it has done in the past, and we hope to use the new arrangements set out in the White Paper, to which the hon. Member referred, to augment our external services, and we plan to use our external facilities to beam our news towards Europe.

One thing which I think important is that I should take this opportunity to make clear and to emphasise the respective rôles of the Government and the B.B.C. in regard to external broadcasts. The Government provide the funds, and £13¼ million, or a little more than the hon. Member said, are envisaged this year, and we lay down what languages and what hours shall be used. The Government do not say what the B.B.C. shall say. That is entirely the province of the B.B.C. This policy gets us into hot water sometimes in foreign countries, as it has got us into some from my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Soref) tonight. But there are two views about this, and in this country we realise that the B.B.C. can say what it pleases.

I have seen fairly recently telegrams from abroad complaining about what the B.B.C. has said, and we know that foreign countries have sometimes objected, sometimes rather forcefully, to what the B.B.C. has said. I take this opportunity to make obsolutely clear that what the B.B.C. says is its responsibility entirely. In the end it is to the advantage of everybody, and to the reputation for veracity which the B.B.C. has, that it should be known that what the B.B.C. says is its responsibility, not that of the Government of the day.

The hon. Member drew attention to to the hours and expenditure we spend compared with those of other countries. We should not be too influenced by the comparative tables of the languages and hours broadcast by other external services. It is perfectly true that other nations since the 'fifties have built up far more, proportionately, their outside work. In particular, the Russians and the Chinese, as well as our American allies, have greatly increased the hours of their external broadcasting. The B.B.C.'s have increased, though, I agree, not in the same proportion.

Surely, however, quantity is not everything. Despite this increase in other people's broadcasting, the reputation of the B.B.C stands second to none, and I believe it is true to say of many parts of the world that if a crisis occurs the automatic reaction is to find out what the B.B.C. is saying about it, because listeners know they will get from the B.B.C. factual and truthful description and analysis of what has happened. These are, in general, the world's reactions to the B.B.C. I agree with the hon. Member that the foundation of this reputation was laid in the war, but I believe that the reputation has survived and exists today.

Also, the flexibility of our broadcasting enables us to take advantage of changes in news and changes in direction as necessary.

As to audibility, I must accept some of the criticisms which the hon. Member made. In some parts of the world the B.B.C. is not as audible as one would wish. Of course, it is a matter of cash. The matter is being improved all the time. We have new stations, and we hope to get improvements all the time. Our relay facilities for broadcasting to the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle and Far East, and Africa are now extremely satisfactory. It is true to say that there is no area of the world, certainly none where we consider our vested interests lie, where the B.B.C. cannot be easily received.

The question of the balance between English language and vernacular is difficult, and the hon. Member was right to call attention to it. We try to strike a right balance between broadcasts in the English language and that of the listeners. The possession of the English language is an inestimable boon to our broadcasters and releases us from the pressures and necessities faced by the Russians and Chinese, who have to use other people's languages all the time.

English is the lingua franca of educated people throughout the world. An increasing number of people throughout the world speak English, and the demand for English language teaching is insatiable.

The B.B.C.'s external services contribute to this, both by broadcasting English by radio lessons and the World Service in English. Measures to strengthen the signal of the World Service everywhere are under continuous study, as are the hours they broadcast in English.

The vernacular services are important. In some parts of the world where there are powerful languages and vast numbers of people who would hardly comprehend English, it would be idle to broadcast in English, as in the Arab countries, to which there is a regular programme in Arabic every day.

Balance is something we always bear in mind, particularly in areas of Communist domination where there is a difficulty in receiving and understanding the English language. There, and to the Arab countries, we particularly wish to have vernacular broadcasting.

We evaluate continuously by audience surveys the efficacy of these broadcasts in the vernacular, and I was interested in what the hon. Member said about the way our broadcasts reach Vietnamese farmers.

The external services of the B.B.C. have to operate within the general framework of the need to contain Government spending. That was also the view of the previous Government, as the hon. Mem- ber hinted. They introduced a cut in expenditure on external services. The need for economy applies to overseas official services as well as to the B.B.C. Of these, the B.B.C. is by far the greater spender.

It would not be easy to allocate extra financial resources in the way we might like to our external broadcasting. We have to ensure that present resources are well spent and are sufficient to enable the B.B.C. to play its rôle as guardian of western standards of civilisation. Whether or not we achieve it can be a matter of opinion, but I suggest that the evidence from abroad supports the opinion that the B.B.C. does a job much better than is commensurate with the broadcasting efforts of our competitors.

This is the best answer to the challenge posed by our competitors, that we should improve services to meet changing circumstances—continuous improvement in quality and audibility when we are able to do this. The B.B.C. has the capacity to do this and the resources are adequate to the task.

Mr. Whitehead

Would the Minister agree that part of that improvement could be to extend the number of vernacular services which the B.B.C. is permitted to broadcast?

Mr. Kershaw

Certainly. One would like to extend the whole thing the whole time, but within the framework of what we think possible, the balance between vernacular and English is of greatest importance. At the moment we tend to lean toward English rather than vernacular. But I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman said about the coming generation in the developing countries.

The B.B.C. external service does its best—a very good best—to foster the British way of life. It creates sympathy for our country and our ideals and a tendency to buy our exports. The 250,000 letters which are received from abroad shows that it is doing a good job.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Twelve o'clock.