New Clause 14

HC Deb 11 April 1972 vol 834 cc1193-9

APPLICATION OF SECTION 1(4)(c) OF PRINCIPAL ACT

Section l(4)(c) of the principal Act shall not have effect in respect of local sound broadcasting.—[Mr. Golding.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Golding

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant Ferris)

With the new Clause it will be convenient to take for debate Amendment No. 69, in Schedule 1, page 10, line 14, leave out from 'sound' to end of line 16.

Mr. Golding

This is in danger of becoming the late night show tonight.

My new Clause seeks to delete Section 1(4)(c) of the parent Act. In other words, it would delete to secure a wide showing for programmes of merit". My hon. Friends have asked me why I have tabled this proposal. It has two functions. First, as that provision goes with the interpretation in Schedule 1 to the Act, this qualification will apply to sound radio programmes. That being so, it is important tonight to ask the Minister how he envisages that the I.B.A., as it will be if the Bill is passed, will secure

wide showing for programmes of merit in local sound radio. How will the I.B.A. do this? I have to raise the question of the failure of the I.T.A. to do this in its existing field, in which it would be easier.

Secondly, however admirable that provision is in the 1964 Act, it is basically an oddity when setting up a local radio service. The Minister continues to use the word "local" although we know that that is not what he means. He means regional-cum-national. However, he is still stuck with the word "local". So the Minister is establishing a local radio system in which the regulatory body is expected to secure a wide showing for programmes of merit. Does that mean that the regulatory body will be asked to provide that there be a wide showing for local programmes of merit?

One has only to ask the question to see what a nonsensical proposition it is. We hope that there will be very many programmes of merit in commercial radio if commercial radio comes into being. But we hope also that they will be locally based and orientated. After all, that is the purpose and function of local radio. When we discuss the power of radio stations on a later Amendment, we shall be discussing in greater detail the importance of having local rather than national radio. I am well aware that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) differs markedly from me in this respect, but I am one of those who want local radio. I hope that local commercial radio will be local. That being so, I wonder how it can be that those local programmes of merit can be justified in having a wide showing.

Having said that, I should draw attention to the fact that in the Television Act the purpose of the particular Section, as I understand it, is to ensure that small regional programme contractors can make programmes of merit worthy of national showing and have them shown, and to make it possible for the small programme company to produce national programmes. They are not cut out by the big four or five. That Section of the Television Act is very laudable because we want the small programme companies to be able to attract actors, artists, producers and directors to work in the provinces and regions, such as Scotland and Wales, knowing that they are not cutting themselves off from a national or even an international audience. We want that to happen. We want them to be able to sell their programmes.

That is not true of local radio, for which we want the incentive to be the other way round. In the Bill as it stands, we are saying to local radio contractors, "If you make a programme of merit we shall network it for you." We are making a promise which should never be made for a local system. We are saying to the contractors, "It will pay you not to make local programmes but to make programmes with a broader appeal and a broader base, from which you can earn money from networking." Those of us who want local radio want to avoid networking as far as possible.

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Whitehead

Is my hon. Friend equating merit with broad showing?

Mr. Golding

No, but I shall read what is in the Act, which refers to a wide showing for programmes of merit. It is the Act which makes the equation. The temptation will be there for companies to say to the I.B.A., "This is a programme of merit—network it." Under the Act as it stands the I.B.A. will have to do so. My hon. Friend shakes his head, but he will come round to the mystery soon. I want local production and transmission of programmes and I want to avoid networking.

Mr. Whitehead

The words "wide showing" or something equivalent to them go back to the 1954 Act, when networking as it is now envisaged in television, was largely unknown and was certainly not foreseen. Surely what the Act meant and what those drafting Section 3 of the Act intended was that a programme of merit should be seen wherever possible and a "wide showing" of it was defined in terms of the particular locality and did not have to be defined in terms of networking over the whole system.

Mr. Golding

In all the discussions in which I have been concerned and in all the speeches I have heard from my hon. Friend whenever the plight of the small regional companies has been put forward, the argument I have heard is that these companies are being denied a showing for their programmes on the network—I think the slang term in the industry is "slots"—that they are being denied these slots for their programmes and are being denied networking possibilities.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins

I seek a point of clarification. In seeking to remove the subsection is my hon. Friend also seeking a narrow showing for programmes of merit, or a wide showing for programmes without merit?

Mr. Golding

I want to remove the temptation, for example, to produce programmes which the companies will say, because they are of merit, deserve to be networked, that is, worthy of wide showing. I want to remove the entitlement that a programme of merit should be widely heard over commercial radio in Britain. B.B.C. Radio Sheffield is making many programmes of merit but we do not want to listen to Radio Sheffield programmes in Stoke. We want to listen to our own programmes of merit. To a certain extent the argument is between those who are fervently attached to the doctrine of locality and those who have broader concepts. If we are attached to locality, the programmes we want to listen to are the programmes produced locally.

How is the I.B.A. to implement the provision? It is constantly reiterated that the I.T.A. is not standing up to the big four programme contractors—or big five, depending on whether we include London as one or two. It is argued that it is not securing the implementation of that part of the Act, that there is no enforcement. How is it intended that the I.B.A. will do it? Will it be by monitoring? Will it be by applications for programme contractors? Will there be mandatory programming by the I.B.A.? Are local programme contractors to be ordered to broadcast particular programmes that have been judged to have merit?

Mr. Whitehead

I cannot follow the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding). As it developed it seemed to me worthy of the description Lord Palmerston gave to the Schleswig-Holstein question, a description with which the House will be familiar.

In his desperate attempts to show that a wide showing for programmes of merit meant that programmes had to be networked, my hon. Friend had recourse unsuccessfully to those arguments advanced by many of us throughout the Committee stage about the deficiencies of the networking system in television.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins

I am not familiar with the Schleswig-Holstein situation. I should be grateful if for the sake of the record and the information of myself and the House my hon. Friend would be more explicit on that point.

Mr. Whitehead

I fear I should be out of order if I were. I will tell my hon. Friend behind the Chair what Lord Palmerston said.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme has been misled, inadvertently I am sure, by the arguments many of us have used in Committee. We have said that one of the problems with television as the I.T.A. has administered it, or failed to administer it, has been that there has been no more than a coincidental connection between networking and programmes of merit. We have said throughout that programmes have been put together under the trading of slots to which my hon. Friend referred simply with reference to what large companies could do to put in their given share and get their given reward from the system known as the network. That essentially meant five large companies. If one of those companies had a programme of unadulterated rubbish, that unadulterated rubbish could receive a network showing just as easily, and sometimes more easily, than meritorious programmes from other companies not in the pecking order of the big five.

This is not to say that we do not wish to see a wide showing of programmes of merit and that we do not wish to have a wide hearing of programmes of merit in commercial radio as in public service radio. As I understand it, Section 3 of the Act is an incantation to the companies, which has been, in the case of television, unsuccessful, to consider merit rather than other factors which sometimes have weighed much more heavily with them when preparing their programmes and schedules. The merit criterion in this sense, and the relevant Section of the Act, can be or should be invoked equally to see whether there is merit in, for instance, programmes like "Calendar" of Yorkshire Television or "A.T.V. Today" or any other programme put out as for the enforcement of merit as the criterion rather than money or "slot trading" for network programmes. I cannot see how my hon. Friend can interpret the Act as he is doing.

We have all been at some time critical of the way in which the present system works. One thing on which I congratulate my hon. Friend on new Clause 14 is that it has enabled us to put, admittedly in a somewhat tortuous form, the whole question of and degree to which networking analogous with television will be allowed in commercial sound radio. We have a system envisaged of 60 stations, which will be much harder for the Authority to control and supervise in the sense of a wide hearing for programmes of merit, which I believe is the correct criterion, than the 15 television companies, where it has been largely unsuccessful.

Television companies largely put together their programme schedules ponderously and far in advance, with enormous capital outlay and ample opportunity for the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Authority to examine and decide, if it wishes to decide, the meritorious nature or otherwise of the programmes. But, as the ex-pirate from Brighouse and Spenborough and others have remarked, radio is much freer and easier and faster, and there is much more instant broadcasting, so there will not be that amount of application to the Authority, which will not be able to seek out merit and insist upon it, at least in advance, although it may have something to say ex poste factoabout it in the way it has theoretically been able to do in the case of television.

How does the right hon. Gentleman envisage, as I presume he will reject new Clause 14, consideration of merit being kept in the forefront of the minds of the Authority when looking at the programmes to be produced? I hope, as much as does my hon. Friend, that these will be local programmes of merit locally produced, if there are to be some local radio stations within the regional consortia which will comprise the system. What possible way will there be for the Authority to decide these matters in advance, or for us, the public and Parliament, to scrutinise the performance of the Authority as it decides between one company and another and one set of schedules and another on the criterion of merit, which I sincerely hope is left in the Bill for commercial radio a fortiori as compared with television?

11.45 p.m.

Mr. Chataway

I find myself much more in agreement with the hon. Member for Derby North (Mr. Whitehead) than with the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding). I am sure the hon. Member for Derby, North's interpretation of the Act is the right one. I want to see the new system with strong local roots. I accept entirely what the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme says—that it will be expected that these stations will devote a good deal of their time to local material—but I do not think networking is inconsistent with local radio. Networking is not inconsistent with regional television. One does not expect the best of the regional television companies to make all their own programmes, to be continually producing programmes about their own region. I am sure that there will be some networking in local radio, but I concede that it will be much less important than it is in television.

I would not want this provision taken out of the Bill. It is there for television to try to ensure that the smaller companies can get their best programmes on the network. Although networking will be much less frequent and important in radio, there could be similar circumstances in which smaller local radio stations, which would not have a dominant place in any network, would still produce a programme which they thought should have a wide showing. We should encourage the Authority to help such companies.

As to how the programme will be recognised, the Authority will have its regional offices and will have a duty to check up on the programmes. Tapes can be sent to the Authority. If a local station felt that it had produced a programme which merited wider distribution but that its attempts to get networking had been frustrated, it would have no great difficulty in bringing the matter to the attention of the Authority. And it would not be necessary for this to be done in advance of its first transmission. With radio, it is a good deal easier to slot these things in.

Therefore, I accept that, because networking will be much less important, because the nature of radio is different, this Clause will be less important in relation to radio than to television, but I would not want it deleted. That might marginally discourage the wider showing of the occasional programme produced by the local station, which would have a great appeal. If the hon. Member is not persuaded by me, I hope that he will have been persuaded by his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North, and that he will bear carefully in mind what Palmerston said about the Schleswig-Holstein question.

Question put and negatived.