HC Deb 02 August 1972 vol 842 cc815-36

4.30 a.m.

Mr. Philip Whitehead (Derby, North)

It is often said that the hour that is darkest is the hour before the dawn. My hon. Friends and I hope that the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications will be able to bring a little light to these somewhat sombre proceedings, at least in the matter I shall raise this morning, namely, the urgent need for a committee of inquiry into broadcasting.

At this hour our felicitations should be as brief as the speech in which they are contained. But it would be wrong to open the debate without congratulating the Minister on his appointment, on the assiduity with which I observe him to have approached his new task, and on seeing him looking as spry and chipper as usual this morning. In introducing the debate on the need for an inquiry into broadcasting, I hope very much that we shall get a positive reaction from him. I should hate him to remember this debate, in the words of the concluding line of Act I of John Osborne's play "Luther", as the moment when the praising ended and the blasphemy began. I hope that the Minister will be positive and constructive in replying to the request, which is, as much as anything else, for more information about the Government's thinking on the matter of an inquiry into broadcasting.

There have been many statements already from the Government Front Bench on the rather dubious nature, as they see it, of the inquiry for which we have been pressing. I shall not bore the House with an account of the way in which the Annan Committee was set up, somewhat late in the day in my view, by the previous Labour Government. Suffice it to say that on 23rd July, 1970 —which was the day before the Summer Recess; in those leisured days the House rose in July—the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway), told me in a written Answer that he was not persuaded of the value of launching another major inquiry into broadcasting at this time. I propose to invite my Television Advisory Committee to undertake a study designed to identify the main technical questions and to report to me early in the new years. This will provide the basis for a more informed public discussion of the issues."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd July, 1970; Vol. 804, c. 189.] That was two years and one week ago. The "informed public discussion" of the issues has, partly at least, taken place, despite the Government of the day and not with their active encouragement, although there have been subsequent statements by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor in the matter of an inquiry. For example, on 15th December last the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor said; I accept that, nearer to 1976, it will be right to look in a comprehensive way at the options which are open. But I do not think that it can be sensible for broadcasting to be in a state of more or less permanent inquiry." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1971; Vol. 828, c. 572.] No, indeed—but it was not for that that we were asking. On 19th January last the right hon. Member for Chichester said: I have said on a number of occasions"— as indeed he had— that clearly we shall need, nearer to the time, to take a comprehensive look at the options open to us. I do not believe that the interests of anyone, least of all those in broadcasting, would be served if we had six years of inquiry, as the Opposition were proposing when they set up a Commission in 1970."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th January, 1972; Vol. 829, c. 479.] They were not so proposing. They were proposing an inquiry along the same lines as the three previous inquiries which had taken place.

I believe we have seen a small, but significant, shift of acknowledgment over these two years to the notion that some kind of compresensive look, in whatever form, as the future options open to broadcasting after 1976 may be necessary by the Government.

On 28th June this year the right hon. Gentleman said that he expected to be able to announce a decision shortly. There followed a laconic, but witty, exchange with the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) who asked how shortly was shortly, and the right hon. Gentleman said. "Before very long." So I want to ask today, if it is not a conversation which seems unparliamentary, how short is short? Can the decision be announced now before the Summer Recess?

There has been a roughly 12-year cycle, as is often observed, of inquiries—something which the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor much disliked. He wanted, as indeed the Prime Minister has said, and said in a debate when Leader of the Opposition, to avoid a situation where we were constantly "pulling up the tree to examine the roots".

Nevertheless, it is fair to point out that each of the three previous inquiries into broadcasting—the Ullswater, Beveridge and Pilkington Inquiries—marked a watershed in the history of broadcasting, and each in turn, in an area which is both rapidly expanding and is in a state of constant change and flux, has things to say to us even today.

For example, the recommendations of the Ullswater Committee, which were not acted upon by the then Government, relating to the relay stations and the primitive beginnings of cable relay in this country, are of extreme interest when we consider the experiment which the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor authorised on the possible future of cable, under whose auspices we know not yet, in this country.

Equally, the remarks of the majority report of the Beveridge Committee—we often tend to think of the minority report to Beveridge as the progenitor of ITV as we know it—and of Sir William Beveridge on the size of the BBC and the dangers of what he called Londonisation and the monopoly, are significant when we confront the possible future of the BBC, as it now is, as the main public service broadcasting organisation in this country employing 25,000 people.

The Pilkington Committee had to examine the options for the television services on UHF as they were to move on to UHF, and it had a wide range of possibilities open to it.

I echo the thought of Mrs. Brenda Maddox, by no means a raving radical, who has just written a comprehensive and lucid study of the technical options open to broadcasting called "Beyond Babel", where she says that the choices are immeasurably wider than ever before the Pilkington Committee and there is no such thing as pure technology. Therefore, to put things to the Technical Advisory Committee and say it is the technical options which should be examined at this time, which was the drift of the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor's remarks on 23rd July, 1970, is entirely to misunderstand the nature of the dilemma facing those of us in this House who have to secure, as best we can, the right choices for broadcasting. Those choices are inextricably political and social as well as technical.

It is doubly important because of the background of the times. The background is of philosophical uncertainty about the nature of broadcasting and its rôle in society as well as of brash technical opportunity.

Professor Stuart Hall in the Listener made a true statement when he said; Virtually any national emergency is almost immediately converted into an emergency within and about broadcasting. He explained that as being because of the nature of the fractured consensus of our present politics. The media have operated for a long time within a generally agreed consensus about the dominant social institutions. If it breaks or if it is under threat, as some would argue that it is now, the media and broadcasting generally are under fire for reflecting both the spokesmen of the institutions and those who attack them. Many of the current attacks on the BBC reflect the outrage of the Right at the subversive rôle of broadcasting and the outrage of the Left at its complacent authority-reinforcing function.

In such a climate all decisions about the future structure of broadcasting are doubly difficult to take, especially if Governments attempt to take them on partisan lines without dispassionate advice. Yet there are matters which can be put to the proof by exhaustive analysis.

I submit—I believe that this would also be the view of my hon. Friends—that the matter is best suited to investigation and inquiry. There are a number of question which should be examined, and time is slipping away. The phrase about the comprehensive study of the possibilities nearer to 1976 was all very well in 1970, but we are already nearer the end than the beginning of 1972.

If there was to be any kind of inquiry, whether a full inquiry on the lines of the Beveridge or Pilkington Committees or a small tightly knit group of advisers brought in by the Minister, it would have to take a reasonable time. The Pilkington Committee took two years. It might take less time, but it would have to take a reasonable time for its deliberations. There would then have to be a public debate not only about its conclusions but upon the conclusions which the Government of the day drew from the report. Such conclusions are not always 100 per cent. favourable, as was the case with the Beveridge and Pilkington Reports.

A number of questions could be answered by such an inquiry. For example, is the present method of financing public service broadcasting the right one? Many people now believe that after 50 years the licence, because it is a regressive tax and in many ways difficult to collect, has had its day. What, if any, should be the rôle of advertising in the financing of broadcasting? Should it have the rôle which has been cast for it under successive television Acts and now under the Act which has set up commercial radio, or should advertising be in some way limited or expanded and given a rôle within the financing of the BBC? Should there be competition between public service and commercial networks in the present form, involving, at is often does, wasteful overlaps?

In the Daily Telegraph on 12th May Mr. Sean Day-Lewis argued persuasively for a British broadcasting authority, a central planning authority controlling a four network system. I do not in any of these instances suggest that we have the answers or that we would come up, from either a party or a broadcasting point of view, with a bad series of answers to any of these questions. I merely hope to indicate that we are on the right track in asking the questions, that we are identifying the areas within which, given the existing broadcasting system, some conclusions must be drawn.

Remembering the failings of independent television and the flaws in the ITA plan for so-called ITV 2 which were expressed in the House on 15th December, 1971, I think that that brief debate, which was the nearest to a public debate which we have had on any aspect of broadcasting in recent times, reinforced the work for a comprehensive inquiry. To ITV 2 the overwhelming Press reaction was that there should be no further allocation of channels before a full public inquiry. It is also the view of the Federation of Broadcasting Unions, the ACCT Television Commission, set up after the scrapping of the Annan Commission, and even of papers like Television Mail which are clearly linked to advertising agencies and the commercial element in broadcasting.

The alterations which Parliament has willed and enacted in broadcasting, preempting an inquiry, if there were to be a comprehensive inquiry, fill me with foreboding. One observes with some dismay the IBA circular for commercial radio which has just come out saying, among other things, that there are to be nine minutes of advertising an hour instead of the six which most of us expected, on the television analogy, would be allowed, although we were assured in the Standing Committee that it should be left to the good sense of the authority. Also, national advertising to be permitted will be lengthy. What sort of community service is this to be? Perhaps we should have a better idea if that were also the subject of examination including the future of radio generally and the relationship of the new stations with the BBC stations by 1976.

I now turn to the question of technical innovation. The Minister only last month licensed the beginning of experimental programmes on a very small scale by Greenwich Cable Vision Limited. Cable television in one form or another through relay companies, which has existed a long time, is here to stay. Should we have an integrated system of broad band communication, or the piecemeal development of relay companies acting as common carriers and developing along the present lines from, perhaps, the present companies? The Post Office Engineering Union has advocated the former and I do not think that I would be unfair to say that probably the ideology of the Conservative Party would suggest the latter, with private enterprise relay companies rather like the present ones operating on an ad hoc basis as their system is seen to be working wherever profit can be found. It seems to me of crucial importance that we should make not the most partisan choice, the choice which most appeals to us depending on which side of the House we sit, but the best choice for broadcasting and the community and the least wasteful.

Equally, we should consider what if any the relation should be between the cable companies and the over-the-air broadcasting networks as we have them. The BBC is known to be extremely hostile to the expansion of cable, but we should be looking at the nature of the relationship between over-the-air broadcasting and the various cable systems and should be learning if we can from the American experience, which in some degree has something to teach us in this respect.

It is similarly the case with satellites. The right hon. Gentleman said recently that our investment in satellites and Intelsat was going up. We want to know what we are getting and also what precisely is the rôle of British broadcasting to be in, for example, a European satellite. If a European satellite is put up, is there to be or may we look forward at some stage in the not-too-distant future to there being a linked European television system? If that is so, would that system be from the satellite to ground stations and then on to one of the bands, perhaps one of the released UHF bands for eventually a fifth television channel in this country? Or could we look forward to direct satellite domestic receiver communications?

What rôle would the Government have? What, considering the considerable sums involved, would be the best role for this country? Should there be an attempt to standardise video cassettes so that the utterly incompatible systems now being developed do not merely eliminate each other in a jungle warfare fight to the finish? As the cassette goes on sale and print functions of broad band communications are developed, what rôle should broadcasting have? Will it move into a position much more analagous to that of publishing now in terms of what can be said and shown?

The Technical Advisory Committee can produce a technical prospectus. No doubt the Minister can tell us that, but a public debate and inquiry could do still more. An inquiry could measure opportunity against cost, political and social. An inquiry should also get us away from the problem of the recurring inquiry every 12 years, which means that the broadcasting institutions have only just settled down from the one before when they have to pull themselves together to deal with another inquiry. Another way would be to leave us with some permanent commission of inquiry to provide evidence and analyses for the Minister of Posts of the day about the technical possibilities in an ongoing sense.

We want to provide, in the broadcasting system in this country, not only a wider range of genuine choice, influence and control, but to provide meaningful systems to meet the needs of the time.

Edward R. Murrow said: This system can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can only do so to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely lights and wires in a box. If we leave the matter to the possibilities and options open, we will merely be counting the lights and wires in the box.

4.52 a.m.

Mr. John Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) I should like to begin from the answer to the Question he put on 22nd July, 1970. He has already told us that in his reply, the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway), then the Minister, said that he proposed to invite the Television Advisory Committee to undertake a study designed to identify the main technical questions and to report early in the New Year. That would presumably mean January, February, or March, 1971. That early report is still awaited.

The Minister went on to say in that reply that this technical inquiry would provide the basis for more informed public discussion on the issue. In this respect I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North. I do not think an informed public discussion has taken place on the technical aspects of broadcasting. In fact, there are hon. Friends of ours who are yet to be informed on this question.

Mr. Whitehead

With respect, I did not say that it had. I said that the only public airing or debate there had been was in the document "ITV 2".

Mr. Golding

It is essential, but in all discussion on broadcasting which I have attended, the technical aspects are usually very much neglected although they are so fundamental.

The Minister, in July 1970, went on to say that he would consider after the Technical Advisory Committee's report, and after public discussion of the issues raised, whether an inquiry into the structure of broadcasting is desirable and, if so, what form it should take.

I was very pleased with that Answer then, because I thought that a technical inquiry was fundamental and that we were going to have it early and that almost inevitably we would then have some form of inquiry into broadcasting. But it has not yet arrived and the discussion has still to take place. The importance of today's debate is that it is an opportunity to impress upon the Minister the need to publish the technical inquiry report and to establish his major committee as quickly as possible.

This Session I have had the pleasure of serving on the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, which examined the ITA. It will have reported before the end of the Session but, of course, the rules of the House forbid my saying what is to be in that report, although I am able to say that it will be a report that the Minister should study in some detail. Those of us who served on that Committee thought that we should be able to finish our inquiry quickly, that it would be a short inquiry slotted between two other inquiries. But it did not turn out like that, even though the inquiry was focused solely on the ITA and had to accept the present law as its terms of reference. That inquiry took a considerable time.

Having taken part in that, I am convinced that a considerable time will be required by any further inquiry into either the ITA or the BBC, whether it is a small or large committee that makes the inquiry. The Select Committee on Nationalised Industries was a small committee, but its inquiry still took a considerable time.

One thing that has emerged in the past year is that the former Minister's view that the industry was in no hurry for an inquiry was wrong. The industry is saying, "If we are to have an inquiry at all, the more quickly we have it, the better". The industry wants to know by 1974, if possible, what is to happen in 1976.

The former Minister gave the impression that we were reporting for 1976, but in the industry's view that is a nonsense. The industry wants to know well in advance what is to happen in 1976 and it therefore wants the report in its hands by 1974, and that is reasonable. If on that basis we are to give a committee 18 months in which to report, we need to establish an inquiry now so that it may report by the end of 1974. That is the time scale. The Minister should be announcing the terms of reference of some committee of inquiry as quickly as possible.

The former Minister said that we were to have a committee of inquiry into the technical aspects first and that he would later decide, in the light of public discussion of that report, whether to have an inquiry. I was pleased by that, but I would not hold the same view today.

I still feel that the technical considerations are very important. My hon. Friend has mentioned that I am an officer of the Post Office Engineering Union, and I believe that it is important that we should have an integrated communications system. It is very important that radio transmissions in this country be controlled by a unitary authority, and I would prefer that unitary authority to be the Post Office. This would be a very important step forward. I also believe that it would be valuable to have an inquiry into the technical reasons for this.

I have been impressed during the last 12 months by the argument that the technical quality of television pictures is well controlled by the ITA and BBC engineers. I agree that the technical quality is well controlled, but the quality of the content is not. There is an urgent need for an inquiry into the quality of television programmes in this country. Whenever one refers to programme content, people put up their hands in horror and say that the politicians are trying to interfere, but I think nevertheless that we must have such an inquiry.

We should recognise that in television there are three jobs to be done—to inform, to educate and to entertain. I submit that in the world of entertainment the standards of television are far too low and it is our responsibility to tell the television authorities. We have got to challenge what has become for the BBC and the ITA the be all and end all—namely, the system of judging by ratings, and adopting commercial criteria on every occasion. When we consider the charters and the relevant legislation under which the ITA operates we find that Parliament has said that due regard must be had to quality. Yet when we look at what actually happens, we find that these absolute standards are totally disregarded. The only thing that seems to matter is the rating. The only factor that seems to carry any weight with those who are responsible for television standards is the number of viewers who watch certain programmes.

It seems to me that the argument has shifted from how one can establish and maintain absolute standards to the subject of which ratings are the more scientific. I do not think that such a consideration is particularly important, because by becoming involved in this kind of argument one accepts the standards of the present television controllers who see their responsibility as attracting as many eyes as possible—I say "eyes" rather than "minds"—to watch a programme during peak viewing time.

There is a need for an inquiry into quality as opposed to considerations of technical change. Television is becoming so important in our lives that I do not think we can leave the present television controllers to go unchecked for year after year, without subjecting their work to public scrutiny.

It is right that people in television should exclude politicians from constant interference, but they, as people in the communications business, should be as subject to scrutiny as are Members of the House of Commons. We are subject to a great deal of scrutiny regarding how we exercise our responsibility to the community, and that is right. I concede that it may be argued that politicians are the wrong people to subject the media to scrutiny, but that is not to say that they should be completely exonerated from it.

They have a great public responsibility, and from time to time the way in which they exercise it should be scrutinised. I see this as one good reason for having a thorough-going public inquiry as soon as possible. I hope that the Minister will tell us that his committee of inquiry is to be established, that the technical report will be published, and that there will be public discussion of these matters as soon as possible.

5.7 a.m.

Mr. Gregor Mackenzie (Rutherglen)

We are all indebted to my hon. Friend the Member of Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) for initiating this debate, which gives us an opportunity to hear the Minister. I believe that it will he the right hon. Gentleman's first speech in the House on broadcasting matters, though he and I have faced each other across the Floor on many occasions at Question Time, and I join my hon. Friends in welcoming him to his place this morning. We look forward to hearing how he sees the issues which we have raised in the period up to 1976 when the Charter will have to be looked at again.

It is important that we listen to what a wide range of people have to say about the media in the pre-1976 period. We all have a point of view. Whether professional experts or simple laymen, a great many people wish to contribute to a careful consideration of the whole subject, and the more so since in recent years the tendency has been for the channels of communication in this country to narrow, with newspapers disappearing and, to some extent, the other media narrowing as well. I should like the widest possible range of people to be consulted.

This is an existing time in communications. All sorts of possibilities—some of which, frankly, are beyond me and, I imagine, beyond many hon. Members —could be considered, and it is right that we should have a far-reaching inquiry. We have had three such inquiries in the past, and they provided a wealth of information and opinion which has been exceedingly useful to the House and the country and—I say this with no disrespect to the Minister—to the Government of the day. I see great value in having a similar committee of inquiry now, even wider-ranging than that envisaged by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) when he was Minister.

It is clear to most of us that pre-1976 we shall have to hear from the Minister some idea of what he proposes to do. There will have to be some kind of inquiry, as was envisaged by his predecessor, but what we are concerned about is the timing of such an inquiry, the scope of it and its composition.

I should like to think that the committee will be broadly based. I have sometimes heard the suggestion floated in political circles that it should be a small group of specialists in broadcasting —perhaps five people. I think that I saw something on these lines in a Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) some time ago. In his Bill on public service broadcasting the hon. Gentleman envisaged a small group of people considering the problem. I have looked at the composition of the last three inquiries, and I have formed the opinion that because they were broadly based and consisted of specialists in broadcasting who had other interests as well, this was of great benefit at the end of the day.

I do not think that the committee should do a rushed job. I should not want it to do its work within six months or a year, merely collecting the evidence that is already to hand. I hope that it will listen carefully to representations made by all sorts of people, perhaps as the Fulton Committee did, for about two years, and even visit other countries to see how things are done there. The committee would then report and its views would be aired throughout the country so that people had an opportunity to discuss them. The report would then be debated in the House and the Government of the day would be given time to bring in the necessary legislation by 1976. Allowing a time-scale of that kind for the committee to do its job as thoroughly as it has been done in the past, it should get down to it as quickly as possible.

My hon. Friends have indicated the scope of the inquiry which they would like to see. They hit the nail on the head on several matters. We all have our own points of view, but I think it is fair to say that whatever we may think of the present organisation, or what we think of the BBC and the IBA, we all have thoughts on how they should operate in the post-1976 period.

The Minister's predecessor said that constant inquiries into the BBC did not do any good for the morale of the staff. Having heard a number of people who work for the BBC talk about their probems, I think that they woud like a committee to inquire into the whole structure of the corporation. There are hon. Members on both sides of the House who think that the BBC is too large and would like to break it up. Others feel that the base is fair and that we merely need to trim it.

There are other points that one could make about the structure of the Corporation. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North said that we ought to be considering the whole question of financing of the BBC. A number of us have been troubled in recent months about concession licences for old people and so on. These are all bound up with the question of finance and the independence of the BBC. It has often been said that the licence system was fair to operate in the days when only a select few owned television and radio sets. It is at least worth examining the system. I am not putting this forward as an official Opposition view, but 50 years after the setting up of the Corporation at least it is time for someone to look at the whole question of financing. When there are so many complaints for people like the Chairman of the BBC about money and the associated problems, we should see whether we are financing it as adequately as we should and whether would do it in the right way.

Finance is one of the things that trouble many people in the country about television. Before taking over my present responsibilities as an Opposition spokesman on broadcasting, I had two thoughts on broadcasting. One was that the licence fee should be as low as possible and the other was that the television programmes should be a great deal better. I now know that there is much more to broadcasting than that.

I move now to the question of the IBA. Here, too, there is room for an inquiry. I should like to think that the whole relationship between the IBA and the companies will be looked at once again. The question of financing comes up again. Are we doing it in the right way? The Ministers predecessor promised a statement on the financing of the IBA in the fairly near future and on whether the levy was right. When he told us of the changes in financial matters some months ago, he said that he would look at the levy question. Perhaps we could hear from the Minister in the near future how he proposes to operate this. It is something that troubles us.

Will the other points which have been canvassed on both sides of the House in recent months be the subject of an inquiry of the kind suggested? The right hon. Gentleman knows the pressure on him from many of his hon. Friends for a broadcasting council. This may be one of the things that a committee could consider.

There is also the question of whether the fourth channel should be given to either of the two present organisations or should be taken up by another organisation. There is a great deal of difficulty about the fourth channel. I do not understand all the technicalities, but there are parts of the country which do not understand all the technicalities, but it is a little hard that other people should be talking of having a fourth channel when many of us throughout the country can barely get one.

Both of my hon. Friends referred to some of the exciting prospects, such as new techniques of cable television and video cassettes. These matters have been discussed by colleagues in the House, and the Minister's own committee on technical matters is presumably examining some of them. I know that it is very difficult to arrange debates on broadcasting and Post Office affairs, but it would be helpful to have from time to time reports on what the committee is doing. If not, this is another matter which could be referred to the Commission.

I am sorry about two things. I am sorry that the Minister's predecessor should have pre-empted some of the decisions that could have been taken by the Commission. It would be wrong to set up a system of commercial radio prior to an investigation by an inquiry. My view is that it would be much better to have the inquiry and then, if the Minister was hell-bent on having radio on a commercial basis, to fit it in somehow afterwards. The same thing applies to the licences granted for the experimental stations. We have far too little information about the nature and control of some of these activities and therefore we have these two important areas which have been pre-empted in some way.

Almost everyone to whom I have spoken, and I speak to many with expertise in this area, has lots of exciting ideas for the post-1976 period. I cannot see why we cannot have an inquiry such as has been held in the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North said that the Prime Minister, when Leader of the Opposition, used to talk about pulling trees up and looking at the roots every 10 years. Those of us who are gardeners know that it is not necessary to pull up the roots to see if things are all right. I have been growing roses for many years and, just by looking at the flowers, and if I see that they look a little dusty I do something about it. I spray them or cut them down, and I do not need to pull up the plants by the roots.

We are not asking for this, We are asking that there would be an examination in depth. That does not mean that we want to destroy the whole structure of broadcasting. There is nothing wrong in listening to what people have to say. I am all for this kind of participation, particularly with communications which is an exceedingly important subject. I hope that we will not commit our successors to having the fullest possible inquiry. There is a clear duty on the Minister to convince the House and country by his arguments that the steps which he and his colleagues will take will be adequate to deal with the problems in the 1976-plus period.

So far I have not been persuaded that the decision not to hold an immediate inquiry is to the benefit of communications. I hope that the Minister will say something about how he sees the need for an inquiry and how he proposes to tackle it.

5.24 a.m.

The Minister for Posts and Telecommunications (Sir John Eden)

The House has been treated to three thoughtful speeches made all the more remarkable by the fact that they took place at about five o'clock in the morning. This is a tribute not only to the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) but to the great significance and importance of this subject. I accept that it is of the greatest possible significance and I think hon. Gentlemen are right to press me for answers about how we are to proceed to reach conclusions in the post-1976 period. They have reminded the House of the decision taken by the last Government to invite Lord Annan to begin an inquiry which I presume would have been on much the same model as the previous inquiries mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby, North. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Pilkington inquiry took two years. If the Annan inquiry had gone ahead as planned, it would have begun in 1970 and would now have been coming to an end. It is still four years from 1976.

I accept what the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) said, that the broadcasting authorities—those engaged in this work—need to know before 1976 the environment and circumstances in which they will be required to operate after 1976. As he said, many of them feel that ideally they should know by 1974. I have publicly recognised that they need to know well in advance, not simply for the satisfaction of knowing what will happen, but for eminently practical reasons of organisation and preparation for programmes, booking of artists, and a whole host of other factors which must be dealt with many months—over a year in many cases—in advance of the performance and broadcasting date.

I have also said that I am aware of the general interest among those who follow our proceedings in knowing the Government's decision on this matter sooner rather than later. The hon. Member for Derby, North reminded me of an exchange which I had with the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) and asked me how short was "short". I repeat that I shall make an announcement about this question as soon as I am in a position to do so. Let me explain what I mean by that.

My predecessor, the present Minister for Industrial Development, invited the Television Advisory Committee to investigate the technical aspects of broadcasting and the implications which they might have for the future of broadcasting in the decade following 1976. I hope to have its report in my hands this autumn. It will be of some significance. It will cover many of those topics instanced by hon. Members, especially by the hon. Member for Derby, North. The committee is looking into such questions as the development of video cassettes, the significance of satellites on a European as well as a United Kingdom basis, and the development of cable communications. It is absolutely right that we should have this information of a technical nature separated from the other matters which I shall mention later so that we can judge to what extent they will influence the shape of broadcasting from 1976 onwards.

I have already said publicly that the first indications are that the technical developments are probably already very well known. What is at issue is the extent to which finance will be made available to bring these developments forward into common service sufficient to make a marked impact on the structure and organisation of broadcasting from 1976 onwards. It is possible that they will not have a very major effect, though this is not to rule out that in certain situations, certain localities, certain circumstances, they will be called into use quite considerably, but by and large it is possible that they will not have a very major impact.

If the final conclusions of Sir Robert Cockburn's committee do point to this, then I think it is for serious consideration whether it would be wise at this stage to have that same sort of deep-seated inquiry as has taken place before in the form of Pilkington or Beveridge, because a great part of the technical discussion would by this means have already been isolated, and the general range of opportunities and options and assessments and the likely impact of them would have already been examined.

As a result of the report, those factors will later this year certainly become the subject of informed public debate. When we have that we will then be in a very good position indeed to judge to what extent we need to add to that a further form of investigation on these other matters such as the extraordinarily difficult question, raised especially by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme and the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie), about the need to scrutinise the quality of material actually broadcast. I am deliberately trying to separate these two things, because they are two such totally different things, and I believe that if this is done in the way I am indicating we may well find that something very much more limited in the form of an inquiry, if there is to be one at all, would be acceptable and would meet the case.

Mr. Whitehead

Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that falling between these two is at least one category, namely, the allocation of the fourth uhf television channel and that allocation may be said to be analogous to the main example considered by Beveridge, which was the provision of a competitive service, and the main subject considered by Pilkington, which was the destiny of the third channel?

Sir J. Eden

I think the hon. Member is absolutely right. If I had to choose into what part consideration of the use of the fourth channel should fall, it would come within the second part, not the wholly technical section.

The hon. Gentlemen between them have covered in a very comprehensive way certainly most if not all of the options which are open. They have referred not only to the technical factors such as the Greenwich cable television experiment, and where that might lead us, but video-cassettes and satellites and so on, which I have already referred to. They have also mentioned the question of what use to make of the fourth channel, and whether it should go ITV 2. If so, we should consider whether it should go to existing programme companies or to other programme companies; whether it would not better be used for a separate educational channel; or whether there is not some special consideration in the circumstances affecting Wales which could be assisted by means of a fourth channel.

These are all matters which are already under active debate: I know that this is so because of the strength of representations which are made to me on this subject. They are not factors which would be greatly assisted by a Pilkington type inquiry, because the collection of an enormous amount of material has already come forward to my Department on all these points.

The material needs to be brought together in a form which would facilitate public debate on these subjects. This is the major question which the Government still have to answer. We have not yet answered it, largely because we are moving close to the time when some part of this subject will be dealt with by the report of the Television Advisory Committee. It would be premature now to decide the exact form of machinery for arriving at decisions. But I accept that it is beyond question that the future of broadcasting is of the greatest possible importance and that the way of deciding on it should turn on the options available for the future and the best way of ensuring informed public debate about them.

The hon. Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) mentioned the desirability of establishing a broadcasting council, an idea which has been advocated on many occasions. It has its proponents and its opponents. The case for and against has already been argued publicly. This is an issue which needs to be brought forward in such a way that it will concentrate further debate.

It is absolutely right to say that another question which could be considered is the financing of the BBC. The hon. Member for Rutherglen referred to the levy on IBA. We have already made clear that this is to continue, but this does not mean that for all time it will be in exactly its present form. None the less, this is something which is to be continued.

The most important of all the problems which have been raised in this short debate are the quality of programmes; the need to ensure the maintenance of standards; the evidence which many hon. Members have of fairly widespread public disquiet about the impact of television on them and their families; the penetration of this powerful medium of communication into their own homes and lives; and the influence which broadcasters can have on the conduct and outlook of children. These are factors of the most supreme importance which, as the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme very fairly recognised, need to be handled, by Members of Parliament especially, with great sensitivity and care.

What all of us surely are looking for here is a recognition by those who have the opportunity to use this medium of communications of the great responsibility they hold. What strikes me is that, at the end of one's contemplation of all the range of options, the most important factor that we should have in mind is the interest of the viewer in the provision of the highest possible standard in broadcasting that is presented to him. There are many millions of ordinary viewers and listeners. They all have different tastes, interests and aspirations. It is a difficult factor, therefore, for any person, or even for any group of people, however widely drawn or however broad their outlook on life, to be able to be the effective arbiters in this whole question of standards.

I thought the other day that Huw Wheldon in a broadcast I saw in which he was in discussion with someone else, very interestingly pinpointed the objective that he had when he said—I am only paraphrasing from memory—that what really gives him most satisfaction of all is to have the highest rating for a programme of the highest quality. The two things must go together; not just the pursuit of rating for its own purpose, because that is not the ultimate goal, or should not be, at any rate certainly in public service broadcasting, but the association of that with the quality of the content.

I agree very much with the hon. Member for Derby, North in particular, that the issues before us must not be resolved on the basis of any partisan choice. The Government recognise their responsibility nationwide in the decisions which have to be taken, and it is because we do this and take this as seriously as we are doing that we want to ensure—perhaps moving more slowly than many would wish us to do—that we reach the point where there is the most informed public debate on what the future should be from 1976 onwards. I recognise that this should happen before very long, but that does not mean that it should be rushed. It is far too important a matter for that.