Clause 1 (Hansard, 23 July 1974)

§ Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)
I beg to move, in page 1, line 8, at end add 'or such later year as the Secretary of State may by order prescribe (being a year not later than 1981); Provided that no order shall be made under this subsection until the Secretary of State has received the Annan Committee's Report'. Even though it is nearly two o'clock in the morning I should like to use the vehicle of the amendment to briefly explore the Government's mind a little further. I hope that we might have a short, sharp exchange so that other proceedings can be dealt with tonight. I know that we are keeping many people in the building who would like to be else- where.
We had a Second Reading debate and we had Lord Annan but no names for his committee. We had the Committee stage, where we did know the names and Lord Annan has now had his first meeting. We can assume, if I may re- mind the House, that all members of the committee now own a television set following the edict which his Lordship sent out to the committee members be- fore their first meeting. Lord Annan has made a Press statement to the effect that most people watch television or listen to radio and that people say that broad- casting has a greater influence than any other medium today. Lord Annan suggests: that is why there are such frequent inquiries into a public service which is in almost everyone's home and is of such social significance. Lord Annan talks of "frequent inquiries" and it is to be hoped that the Annan Committee's inquiry will be thorough and comprehensive. It is to be hoped that it is not in the Government's 1506 mind as part of some continuing pattern of a whole series of inquiries stretching long into the future. Lord Annan has also said—if his inquiry is to proceed this is welcome—that in the first instance he would want the views of viewers and listeners. He said: A Committee of this kind really will give all viewers and listeners an opportunity to influence the kind of radio and television they will have in the future. The phrase "viewers and listeners" is interesting. Perhaps in Lord Annan's sub-conscious there is working the influence of the ever-present Mrs. Whitehouse, who seems to appear in our discussions at almost every turn. I shall not go over the ground that we have discussed before concerning Mrs. Whitehouse save to say that I would through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, urge upon Mrs. Whitehouse and others who feel like her to take advantage of the inquiry. I hope that they will respond to Lord Annan's invitation and that their views will be represented in the inquiry. Even if it did not run its full course, a number of valuable views would have reached a central point. No doubt that would be good for the future of television and radio.
It is also suggested by Lord Annan that standards are to be within the terms of reference of his inquiry. Surely that is not a bad thing. We used the vehicle of a broadcasting council in an amendment in Committee to explore this aspect of the problem. A broadcasting council, like the Press Council, has its followers. We believe that it is best always to build on existing machinery. We talked in Committee about general advisory commit. tees. The Independent Broadcasting Authority's Committee has not been with. out its successes. The British Broadcasting Corporation's committee is a somewhat top-heavy body and its complaints commission is slightly farcical and has not been able to deal with many problems. I hope that the Annan Committee will deal with all these matters. It will not preclude the Minister at the Home Office, or whatever Department is in charge, from taking a continuing interest in these matters.
In the proceedings on another piece of legislation the Minister of State said that journalists and others operating in television had a great responsibility to operate within the existing climate of 1507 public opinion. They cannot always be right, and there should be the apparatus to correct them if they are wrong. It is the Government's responsibility to take a broad view of the matter and keep an eye on the problem. We believe that for Lord Annan or any other inquiry to do its work the listener should have the widest possible choice of material on which to work. If Lord Annan and his committee are to do their job, that wide choice must be maintained.
I wish to put two questions to the Minister. I should like him to go a stage further on two vital matters affecting the future of radio and television. I refer in particular to the future of cable television. There are taking place the valuable experiments which were introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden), but they cannot go on indefinitely unless those concerned are told how they are to be financed and how they may develop.
We did not get very far in Committee on that subject. I hope that we can get a bit further this morning. Even if the Minister is unable to say anything positive now, I hope that at least he will give an undertaking that before Parliament rises for the Summer Recess we shall know about the future of this vital experiment. It is not good enough for something to appear on this topic in the Summer Recess. We could well be told now what is to happen.
Another important aspect of the problem is local radio. Lord Annan is to look into the future of local radio. I cannot see how he can do so if the future development of local radio is to be curtailed. We have the 13 stations which the Conservative Government authorised when in office and those stations will all soon be functioning. Some are already functioning and appreciated, but the future hangs in the balance for the next six stations. Has equipment been obtained for those six stations? Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the equipment has been ordered. The stations are Bradford, Wolverhampton, Ipswich, Reading, Portsmouth and Belfast. Are the people of those towns and cities to be denied the enrichment of their lives which local radio could bring?
We need to be given the answer to that tonight. We have asked the question 1508 before. Surely we could easily be told the Government's conclusions on that and on the future of stations in Blackburn, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Huddersfield and Leeds. The Government, if they have not made positively hostile remarks concerning local private enterprise radio, have not been very friendly towards it. I hope we can now have a cler indication from the Government that they have overcome their prejudice and will allow the stations to continue and develop.
We believe that the future development of radio and television should be a grafting on to the existing framework, not a wholesale demolition. I am interested to see the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) present. I do not want to prolong proceedings, and therefore I shall not provoke him too far, but I recall that he said in Committee that he intended—I think I am right—to sign the majority report of the Annan Committee. He said that he intended to be in that position. He was what I might describe as the rolling chairman of the Wedgwood Benn committee—

§ Mr. Phillip Whitehead (Derby, North)
No.

§ Mr. Cooke
It seems that he was at least a chairman of the committee which produced the Wedgwood Benn document on the media.

§ Mr. Whitehead
Wrong again.

§ Mr. Cooke
The hon. Gentleman will be able to put me right, but he was a chairman of that committee—

§ Mr. Whitehead
Wrong again.

§ Mr. Cooke
The hon. Gentleman had a great deal to do with the document produced by that committee, and it is on the record that he has claimed credit for it. There is no doubt that the hon. Gentleman intends that the Annan Committee should adopt a fairly substantial part of that document and he might even do his best to get the Annan Committee to adopt the whole document.
It is against that background that we pose our questions. Do the Government believe that whole system should be torn up or are they prepared to proceed along the lines we have followed of careful evolution based upon existing institutions? I 1509 hope that the Minister will give an indication this evening that the Annan Committee will not be used as an excuse for doing nothing and will not be a device for curtailing public choice, which would be even worse. That could be a real danger.
It would be possible for the Government to use the Annan Committee as a device to do nothing and so let cable television and local radio wither away. I hope that on this occasion the Minister will be a little more forthcoming.

§ Mr. Phillip Whitehead (Derby, North)
I do not wish to detain the House long at this late hour. We have seen in an earlier part of our proceedings tonight what can be done by unnecessary procrastination which can keep many people, including many servants of the House, here for many hours longer than they perhaps wish.
I found the somewhat laborious attempt by the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke) to breathe yet more life into the corpse of the Conservative Party posture on broadcasting more unconvincing than usual. It is not true—here I speak in a personal capacity, not as a member of the Annan Committee—to say that that committee was soliciting purely the views of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse when Lord Annan asked viewers and listeners to give the committee their views. Viewers and listeners are not placed in capital letters. They are taken in the general sense, and it is within the context of the general view of information about public attitude to broadcasting that the Annan Committee will shape its findings.
I have to say yet again to the hon. Member for Bristol, West that when that moment comes and the Annan Committee is deliberating, all the evidence that it receives, written and oral, will be considered with equal force. That goes for the document "People and the Media" as for everything else.
When the hon. Gentleman erroneously says that I was chairman of the committee, knowing that the whole document should be absorbed by the committee, he merely proves to the rather thinly-attended House that he has not read it, because more than two-thirds of the document, in terms of column inches, 1510 does not relate to broadcasting. It will be considered along with other things that are connected with broadcasting.
I want to follow the hon. Gentleman's probing remarks about cable television and local radio. He is right in saying, though he says it for the wrong reasons, that we should have a rather more clear indication than we have had hitherto of the Government's intentions on the future of commercial radio. My hon. Friend the Minister said on Second Reading that this was under active consideration. As I understood it, the matter was under active consideration at a high level in the Government.
I do not believe that we should progress beyond the situation in which we have 12 commercial radio stations and a thirteenth, the London Broadcasting Company, which would have to be altered in some way, if as a result of the diminution of the potential commercial system from 60 stations to 12—a reduction of four-fifths—its potential base as calculated by the IBA became unviable.
What we are looking for from my hon. Friend the Minister is some indication that whatever may have been spent on investigations or equipment in the outer reaches of the six next stations down the line where tenders might be requested, and, indeed, in all those other areas such as Huddersfield and Leeds where the population are pining for the choice of commercial radio, we can take it that the present commercial radio experiment—because that is what it is, on a par with the cable television experiment—will for the moment and for the purposes of the consideration of the Annan Committee be confined to the 12 stations plus a thirteenth—the spectre at the feast, the London Broadcasting Company—in whatever form all new stations in London should afterwards take.
On cable television, I say again that I too acknowledge that the present five experiments cannot go on indefinitely, though they are all providing information of value. One or two have shown that they could provide more in the way of programmes of merit and genuine local origination than they have been permitted to do within the narrow limits of the experiment.
Given what we know about the rapid expansion of cable television in other 1511 countries and the dynamic economic and social considerations that will impel it onwards in this country, it is fair to say that the cable television experiment should not be frozen at the existing rather low level of activity until 1979. It would be useful—again I am speaking in a personal capacity—if more evidence from a greater variety of sources could be presented to the Annan Committee about the functions of cable television.
2.0 a.m.
We on this side of the House hope to hear that the profligate expansion of commercial radio will now be controlled, if not halted, and that the rather niggardly expansion of cable television will at least be so strengthened and sustained that we have something like a nation-wide picture of varying experiments in cable television and relay systems to consider when the whole future of this valuable new means of transmission of broadcasting is further examined by 1979.
I have every hope that in the next few years we shall be able to reach a broad measure of consensus between the parties and between the various interested groups as to which way broadcasting should develop. For that to be possible we have to be able to take into account all the possible means of experimentation in all the available technologies now at the command of broadcasting. I look forward, at what is possibly this early stage of the debate, to hearing what my hon. Friend has to say on these points in particular.

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon)
At this hour I do not suppose that the House wishes me to go into great detail about the problem of 1981 as against 1979. Indeed, I do not remember the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke) even referring to the question of the date, which is the basis of the Amendment.

§ Mr. Robert Cooke
I said that the amendment was to be used as a vehicle for us to ask a number of questions. I have asked the questions and shall be grateful if the Minister will give us the answers.

§ Mr. Lyon
The hon. Member is unusually touchy at this time of night. I 1512 was only saying that he had not spoken about his amendment.
On that basis the hon. Member asked a number of questions. He suggests that there was something in a speech I made on the Cinematograph and Indecent Displays Bill which is in some way contradicted by something I have said since. All I said on that occasion—the hon. Member will see he has got it wrong when he reads it—was that television producers in particular ought to work within the climate of opinion current at the time and ought to have some kind of respect for it.
The hon. Member takes that to mean that the Government ought to have some kind of interest in what television producers do. I specifically deny that that was the intent of that speech. It has been the policy of Governments of both complexions throughout the years that we do not have any control, and do not seek to have any control, over broadcasting content. The point I was making in that speech was that although we rightly eschewed that responsibility, nevertheless television producers had a responsibility to the community at large and it was a responsibility which lay with broadcasters and not with the Government.
I do not wish to take any kind of control over broadcasting content. The interesting thing, despite all the criticism that has been made by the Opposition of the Transport House document on broadcasting, is that this is also the theme of that document, which the Opposition attack as some kind of attempt to take over the processes of broadcasting on behalf of the State. Far from it. The whole of the document is replete with the kind of statement I have been making, namely that, although there is a responsibility upon broadcasters, that responsibility should not be exercised by the Government. I take that view too. What the document says—and I agree—is that if responsibility is to be self-imposed in broadcasting it has to be imposed within the context of law, and law is necessary to limit the freedom of action of broadcasters—Press men—in the interests of others, namely the general public and the individuals affected by broadcasting.
The document sets out the balance that should be held in terms not very 1513 different from those used by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in our recent debate on the Press. He said that four current committees were considering aspects of the law which impinged upon broadcasting and the Press, which gave the Government a unique opportunity of drawing the line between an increase in the freedom of information for the media and a decrease in the freedom of information about private lives in the media.
That remark could not be more apposite than it is today. In The Times this morning there is an account of a report by the Press Council which suggests that there is a threat to the freedom of the Press from the introduction of a law of privacy which might impinge upon investigative journalism, and on the middle page there is a disgusting article which is a nauseating intrusion into the privacy of a person in public life setting out details of her life which are no concern of the public at large and should never have been printed. That shows the imbalance between the power which is given to the Press and to the media generally and their responsibility to individuals, which they have failed to acknowledge and in respect of which the law may be required to redraw the balance.
There is a distinction between the law holding the balance between broadcasters and the Press against individuals and the Government dictating to either broadcasters or the Press what they should or should not do. In the case of the law the distinction is that the judge or 12 people on the jury hold a balance and that it is not the Government who, acting through their executive power, seek to impose their will upon broadcasters. The distinction, I hope, is clear. It is a distinction which I draw in all respects in relation to programming by broadcasters.
The hon. Member for Bristol, West asked me about cable television and local radio. I am not in a position tonight to say much more than I said in the Second Reading debate, save that I give him the assurance that there will be statements upon these matters before the Summer Recess—that is to say, not in the very distant future. I need not speculate further about what those statements might include. I said all I could say about the matter in the Second Reading debate, but I recognise that it is of some urgency and I hope that we shall be able 1514 to satisfy the hon. Gentleman before the end of the Session.

§ Mr. Robert Cooke
Does the hon. Gentleman mean that there will be a statement or a Written Answer on Friday? When he says "statement", does he mean a statement?

§ Mr. Lyon
With the pressure on Government time between now and the end of the Session I cannot say that a full-blown oral statement in the House will be possible. I doubt whether the House would accept it. It may have to be in the form of a Written Answer. I am indicating to the hon. Gentleman that there will be an expression of the Government's views on these matters before the end of the Session.

§ Mr. Cooke
We have now heard that it might be a Written Answer. I do not think that would satisfy the Opposition unless it is given at such a time that it would be possible for hon. Members to raise the matter before we rise for the recess. Could not a Written Answer be brought forward to enable the matter to be raised on the Floor of the House? A Written Answer at a late stage which would preclude discussion would hardly be the statement which the hon. Gentleman suggested we should get.

§ Mr. Lyon
The hon. Gentleman has had his reply. I do not propose to say any more than I have said. The expression "statement" in a parliamentary sense is a technical term. I did not intend it to be taken as such. There will be an expression of the Government's view before the end of the Session, and the hon. Gentleman must do with it then as he wishes.

§ Mr. Jonathan Aitken (Thanet, East)
The Minister of State has made an extraordinary speech in certain respects. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke) has indicated, the purpose of the amendment was to probe the Government's intentions. We had considerable difficulty in discovering them in Committee, largely because of the boxing and coxing of Ministers, which some of us thought showed discourtesy to the Committee and to the IBA.

§ Mr. Lyon
The Opposition spokesman on broadcasting, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden), 1515 was not on the Committee. I do not see why the fact that I was not on it either should be a cause of criticism.

§ Mr. Aitken
I was not making a point about the Opposition spokesman, but it is extraordinary that three different Ministers should have handled three different stages of the Bill.
Far from probing anything with the amendment, we have come up against a brick wall. It is not clear whether we are to get a statement or a Written Answer. It is clear that the Labour Party, which talks about open government is a closed book as regards disclosure on the important subjects of cable television and local radio at this stage. I hope that the Government will change their attitude in the next few days.
The hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) sneered at my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West for breathing life into the corpse of the Conservative Party's policy on broadcasting. As in many other things, that policy is to conserve things, and while on the whole we have many criticisms of the existing broadcasting institutions we do not want to see the IBA or the BBC torn down.
One of the reasons for the considerable disquiet about the Bill is our fear that in extending the life of the IBA for only three years we shall be seriously reducing its effectiveness, because we shall be removing from it the sanction to take away the licence of a programme company. If it is known that the authority has only three more years of life, one could not ask another contracting company to come in for only three years.

§ Mr. Whitehead
The hon Gentleman is again showing that he is totally unaware of the provisions of the Television Act. The authority has power if it feels it necessary to take over programme making for itself. It would be possible to withdraw a contract from a company even if there were only six months of the contract to run, let alone three years.

§ Mr. Aitken
The hon. Gentleman is really living in a fantasy world if he thinks that Lord Aylestone and his colleagues on the authority could suddenly step in and make programmes. The hon. Gentleman is talking nonsense. He said 1516 on Second Reading that he thought it was necessary for the Authority to have dentures and to bite and he was worried that in a three-year term the whole powers of the Authority would be allowed to coast downhill. I gave the exact reference in Committee. I do not think I am paraphrasing his remarks inaccurately.
2.15 a.m.
The Opposition were worried that by extending the life of the IBA for only three years we would make it not the Independent Broadcasting Authority but the incompetent broadcasting authority because we had removed the one sanction. The reason for our concern was our fear that under the guise of the Annan Committee, which might end up in simply a mish-mash of minority reports, there could be heavy pressure to introduce some of the remarkable proposals in the Labour Party's document "The People and the Media".
The main proposal in that document is to scrap the IBA and the BBC and to bring in a public broadcasting commission and two completely new channels, We would regard such proposals as extremely unwelcome, to put it mildly, and we believe that we are right to press the Government for their intentions. As we have received no assurances, I can only say on behalf of the Opposition that we remain very worried and anxious about the Government's proposals.

§ Mr. Alexander W. Lyon
Is the hon. Gentleman serious? We have appointed the Annan Committee, with the prospect of two and a half year's work, and it will then report on the very issue about which he asks us to take a view. He should know from the Second Reading debate that the Transport House document will be simply a piece of evidence for the Annan Committee to consider. At the end we shall consider the committee's recommendations about it and about all the other evidence that it gets. Clearly the Government could not have a view today about what they will do.

§ Mr. Aitken
The Minister keeps saying that the Annan Committee will treat the document "The People and the Media" only as a piece of evidence. However, we have seen already how minority reports can shape the future 1517 of broadcasting more than a majority report can. Independant television came into existence thanks only to a minority report from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Lloyd), now Mr. Speaker, who recommended the proposals which brought into existence the ITA, as it was then known, against the majority recommendations.
It is more than reasonably possible to suppose the members of the Annan Committee, composed of as many diverse and loquacious people as are appointed to it, disagreeing among themselves and producing a number of minority reports, some of which might closely follow the proposals in "The People and the Media". One of the authors of that document, the hon. Member for Derby, North, is capable of submitting strong proposals along similar lines. There is a genuine fear that the Annan Committee may break up into a mish-mash of minority reports and act as a Trojan horse for the proposals in "The People and the Media".
The Minister brushed aside the document, describing it as a harmless little affair rather like the Prime Minister's ideas on the Press. Having sat through our debate on the Press, I cannot see any similarity between the proposals in "The People and the Media" and the Prime Minister's ideas on the Press.
What is more, I cannot see what relevance there was to this debate in the Minister's extraordinary attack on The Times. He seemed to think that the law was needed to redress the balance because a serious invasion of privacy occurred in an article about Lady Falkender publised in The Times today. I read the article only a few minutes ago. Some of the more waspish comments in The Times were more than equalled, if not excelled, in the warpish comments made in Lady Falkender's own book on the subject of the Civil Service. I do not see how invasions of privacy—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas)
Order. If at all possible, we try to avoid discussing Members of another place.

§ Mr. Aitken
With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the subject was raised by the 1518 Minister. I thought that in the interests of The Times and the freedom of the Press some rebuff was necessary and was called for.
We are dissatisfied with the Minister's approach tonight. We have asked some reasonable questions about the, future of broadcasting and we have received no replies whatever. The sinister proposals contained in "The People and the Media" the hon. Gentleman insists on dismissing as a mere nothing. We fear that these may lead to a drastic take-over of our existing good broadcasting organisations which we would like to conserve.

§ Mr. Whitehead
rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has exhausted his right to speak.

§ Mr. Robert Cooke
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.