Hospital Broadcasting Services (Scotland) (Hansard, 30 June 1981)

§ Mr. Harry Ewing (Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth)

This morning, I wish to raise the subject of the serious situation into which hospital broadcasting services throughout the United Kingdom, and particularly in Scotland, are stumbling.

I do not hold the Government responsible for the problems facing hospital broadcasting services. I shall explain my reason for raising this debate. For several years, the land line rental paid by the various hospital broadcasting services, such as the Edinburgh hospital broadcasting service and the Radio Royal service, in my constituency, has remained static at £1,000 per annum. As a result of a decision taken by the telecommunications section of the Post Office, annual increases of 50 per cent. each year until 1983 or 1984 are to be applied to land line rental to bring the rental figure up from £1,000 per annum to £5,000 per annum.

Obviously, as the hospital broadcasting services are run by voluntary groups they soon experienced great difficulty in raising the money. The evidence shows that the difficulties that I forecast when I wrote to the then chairman of the Post Office, Sir William Barlow, are becoming a reality. Before I became a Member of Parliament I was a Post Office employee. Nevertheless, I am not proud of the part that the telecommunications section has played in this serious matter. Indeed, I attended a reception held in the House by the telecommunications section. It was attended by the then chairman designate of British Telecom—now chairman—Sir George Jefferson and his public relations official Ivor Mills. I took the trouble to speak to them both about the serious problem of land line rental. That was some months ago. Both of them promised to write to me. As I had explained the situation, they faithfully promised to write to me and to try to do something about it.

I am sad to say that to this day I am still awaiting a letter from the chairman of British Telecom or from Ivor Mills. I admit freely that I wrote a rather strongly worded letter some time ago to the deputy manager of British Telecom saying that if the hospital broadcasting services died due to the actions of British Telecom, I would make it my business to ensure that the British public were made aware of who was responsible. That is why I say that I do not hold the Government responsible for the problem in which the hospital broadcasting services find themselves.

The main reason why I raise this Adjournment debate is that I believe that the Government can take positive action to help to resolve the problem. As an example of the increased charges now being applied, I cite the case of Radio Royal, at Falkirk, in my constituency. It has paid £1,000 for a number of years in land line rental. Its first increased account at the end of March this year amounted to £1,600. That increase was higher than the 50 per cent. that the Post Office had threatened to apply in the first year. As a direct result of that increased bill, Radio Royal has taken action to cut the service to three hospitals—the Kildean hospital at Stirling, in my constituency, Orchard House hospital, also in Stirling, and Bannockburn 844 hospital, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan). It is significant that all three are geriatric hospitals.

I argue strongly that the hospital broadcasting services are just as much a part of a patient's therapy as many of the therapeutic acts applied to patients, particularly during their convalescing period.

While the BBC and the commercial stations, Radio Forth and Radio Clyde, and no doubt, also, Radio Tayside, provide very good services, it is fairly obvious that these services are aimed at the general public. The difference between the BBC, the commercial stations and the hospital broadcasting services is that the hospital service is a specialised service aimed only at the hospital patient. Apart from Radio Royal, to which I have already referred, the Edinburgh hospital broadcasting service has dropped two hospitals from its broadcasting circuit. All this is in order to try to reduce the land line rental figure with which the hospital broadcasting services are faced.

I know that the Minister will say that the Government, in an effort to help, have announced that the hospital broadcasting services can advertise and can accept commercial advertisements. I am sure that the Minister will also be the first to agree that the suggestion is impracticable. It is not possible for the hospital broadcasting services to accept commercial advertising. There are good reasons. The hospital broadcasting services are not licensed under the 1969 Act which requires anyone broadcasting commercially to be licensed. It is very expensive to obtain a licence.

The hospital broadcasting services do not have to negotiate with the three performing rights societies, which is also a costly business. If the services were to embark upon commercial advertising, the first requirement, at further expense, would be to get themselves licensed. They would then have to negotiate with the three performing rights societies—again at considerable expense.

The Scottish Office, in a circular dated 20 June 1980, sent to the health boards in Scotland a list of the subjects on which hospital broadcasting services could not advertise. The list is extensive and it is fairly obvious. The services could not advertise any medicine or medical treatment, medical appliance or pharmaceutical product. They would not be allowed to advertise a product which included any reference to sickness, infirmity, death or hospitalisation. They would not be allowed to broadcast an advert which contained a reference to alcoholic drink, cigarettes, tobacco, cigars or any other smoking products. They would not be allowed to broadcast any advert which required the use of testimonials and no advert may be broadcast which guarantees that the purchaser of a product shall have the purchase price returned to him in any specified circumstance, unless the advertiser has given the health authority, not the hospital broadcasting service, an undertaking in writing that he will comply with the guarantee. Finally, no advertisement inviting any person to take part in a competition may be broadcast without the written consent of the health authority.

I understand, and I am not critical of, the extensive list of prohibitions. The list is eloquent testimony to my claim that the possibility of the hospital broadcasting services accepting commercial advertising is impracticable.

The other point that I want to make is real, relevant and practical. The hospital broadcasting services are voluntary organisations. In my constituency in Falkirk the service is 845 run by a dedicated group of young people. They would not want to compete with the Falkirk Herald, the Stirling Observer or the Edinburgh Evening News in advertising. They have to depend on the good will of all those newspapers that circulate in our area to ensure that they can raise the necessary finance to keep the broadcasting going. They would not want to compete commercially with Radio 4 or Radio Clyde. Those stations are professionals in attracting radio advertising. Dedicated amateurs—I do not use the word "amateur" in a derogatory sense—could not compete with professional salesmen in selling advertising air time on the hospital broadcasting services. I hope that the Minister will accept that the possibility of the hospital broadcasting services being able to go in for commercial advertising should be dismissed.

The other point I make on advertising is that if, by some chance, all the criteria I have mentioned were made—the station were to be licensed and the performing rights agreements made—there would still be a major problem, because hospital broadcasting services would have to keep recordings of their programmes, in case some advertiser were to claim that his or her advert had not been broadcast at the agreed time for the agreed length of time. To prove that that advert had been run at the agreed time for the agreed length of time, the programme would have to be kept, produced as proof and played back to the client to prove that that advert had been run.

At present—I am sorry to say this—most of those dedicated young people who have tried to keep this very essential service for hospital patients going now have to spend much of their valuable time in raising money and precious little of their time in broadcasting to the patients.

I spoke this evening to one of the members of Radio Royal hospital broadcasting service, Mr. Bill Gilchrist. He told me that each Saturday for the last month the service has towed a caravan to galas to advertise and attract additional resources to keep the hospital broadcasting service afloat.

I make a suggestion in a genuine attempt to solve the problem. By 1984 the land line rental will cost £5,000 a year. That certainly applies to Radio Royal, at Falkirk. The sum for the Edinburgh and Victoria hospital broadcasting services will be similar. The responsibility for the land line rental should be transferred to the health board.

A condition was laid on hospital broadcasting services that any profits from commercial advertising should go to the health board and not be retained by the hospital broadcasting service. I suggest that the land line rental should be paid directly by the area health board and that the job of the hospital broadcasting service should be to maintain the record library, purchase and maintain equipment and set out studios. This is what the young people in Stirling and Falkirk did, and they made a marvellous job of it. They converted an old hospital ward into a marvellous studio. By voluntary effort young people raised enormous sums to soundproof walls and to purchase and recondition equipment.

There could be a spin-off for the Minister and the health boards. In the case of Radio Royal, it is possible that by October this year the youngsters will have taken their project a stage further by producing newspapers in braille on a machine which they bought and reconditioned themselves. They have undertaken to deliver the newspapers to every blind person in the Central region. That should be encouraged.

846 I do not blame this Government in particular, but Governments generally should not countenance youngsters having to raise £5,000 to give to the Post Office before they even start to update the record library or have maintenance work done on broadcasting equipment and receivers. The fire prevention conditions for radio studios are stringent. It would be a scandal if Parliament saddled the dedicated youngsters who run the hospital broadcasting services with the land line rental imposed on them by the Post Office.

I plead with the Minister to tell me, irrespective of what his brief may say, that he will talk to the health boards about the possibility of transferring the cost of the land line rental directly to them. I can give him a guarantee that the groups involved will accept, as they have always accepted, the responsibility of keeping up the record libraries and all the other facilities to which I referred. I am sure that the Minister and I will agree on one thing, and that is that it would be an absolute disaster if the hospital broadcast services were to disappear. Many patients and their relatives depend on the hospital broadcasting services to keep the sick cheery and happy. It is just as much a part of the patient therapy as are any other therapeutic measures that are used on patients in hospital.

I hope, therefore, that I have persuaded the Minister of two things. One is that commercial advertising is a non-starter from the beginning. No hospital broadcasting service in its right mind would go in for it. It should be dismissed out of hand. The other is that I hope that I have persuaded the Minister that the hospital broadcasting services are worth keeping. If that is so, we must accept that the cost of the land line rental should be transferred direct to the health boards. I am not talking about massive sums of money, but about reasonable sums. I hope that the Minister will give me some encouragement that I can transmit to the hospital broadcasting services.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Russell Fairgrieve)

This short half-hour debate has drawn par for the course for Adjournment debates. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth (Mr. Ewing) spoke for 20 minutes, leaving me only 10. I hope, therefore, that he will understand if I am not able to answer all the points that he made. The attendance in the Chamber is about par for the course, in that we have present the hon. Member who initiated the debate, me, the Whip on duty, yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and a few Officers of the House, but that is what we expect at 2.42 am.

However, I am glad that the hon. Gentleman put his case in a calm way, because when we last met earlier today in the Scottish Grand Committee, where some interesting situations arise—I do not know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether you have had the pleasure of attending Scottish Grand Committees—we ended the day in somewhat of a turmoil. So it is pleasant to be talking calmly tonight.

I shall try to answer some of the points that the hon. Gentleman put. It may mean—the hon. Gentleman, as an ex-Minister, may be glad to know—that I shall have to cut out certain parts of the brief to which he referred. I shall deal with his questions straight away, so that my replies are on the record, although obviously I shall be cut short before I finish saying everything that I want to say.

The question of the land line rental being taken over by the health boards is certainly something that we can put 847 to the health boards, as long as the hon. Gentleman realises that if they take it on something else has to be cut. The money cannot be conjured out of thin air. While I am quite willing to put it to them, I expect that if the health boards say that they will take this land line rental they will cut out something on the clinical side.

I want to make a point about hospital advertising, because I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman said about it. In June 1980, in a circular, authorisation was given for hospital broadcasting services to include advertisements in their broadcasts and means of improving the quality of their material and of improving their equipment. Any remaining surplus should be handed over to the hospital authorities for use in the hospital. This followed on a pilot scheme in Islington and Camden and Enfield and Haringey health authorities where advertisements had been successfully introduced into the local hospital radio network by the previous Administration. There are safeguards against the inclusion of unsuitable material, in particular against the advertising of medical products, alcohol and tobacco. In fact, those two pilot schemes introduced by the Labour Government are working satisfactorily, and six are in operation. Unfortunately there are none in Scotland, but that will come.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising this subject, since the debate is a welcome opportunity for us to recognise and pay tribute to the voluntary efforts of all those involved in providing the hospital broadcasting services. However wide the choice of national radio and television or local radio available to patients, there is always a place for the programmes produced by the voluntary organisations especially designed to meet the needs of those in hospital. As in many other areas of the health and social services, the work done and interest shown by those who give freely of their time makes an invaluable contribution to the quality of care. However excellent we may make official provision—and there will always be limits on what society as a whole is willing and able to spend—nothing can replace the special contribution of the voluntary workers prepared to give of their time to help those less fortunate than themselves.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will receive a reply from the chairman of British Telecom and from the other friends to whom he has written on the subject on the basis of his experience and knowledge from working as a member of that organisation.

The hon. Member drew attention to the particular difficulties facing the hospital broadcasting services because of steep increases in charges for land lines rented from the Post Office. It would be helpful if I spent a little time clarifying the position.

Charges for particular telephone and telecommunications services are, of course, a matter for the commercial decision of British Telecom, as we should now call it, but I feel it would be useful if I were to fill in something of the background.

848 Post Office rental charges for land lines were held static from 1975 to 1980. The rapid expansion of the telecommunications network coupled with the benefits of technological change allowed the Post Office to keep to its financial targets without increasing charges at a time of generally rising prices. When charges had eventually to be reviewed it was found that for many years the rental for private land lines, particularly over the shorter distances commonly used by hospital broadcasting services, had been running well below the costs of providing the service. Provision of land lines had not benefited to the same extent from technological improvement.

As a result, substantial rental increases were necessary, the precise amount varying with differing qualities of circuit and the length of connection supplied. Short-distance circuits were particularly unprofitable and increases of about 100 per cent. were justified for links of around eight to 10 miles rising to increases of about 500 per cent. for the very shortest circuits of under 200 metres. To mitigate the effects of such increases on its customers generally, the Post Office held the rise in rental for any one year to a maximum of 50 per cent. That increase was applied to all circuits from 1 February 1980 and was well below the rise in the retail price index since private circuit rentals had last been increased in 1975. Now, where necessary, a further 50 per cent. increase has applied from 1 February this year. That has brought rentals for most circuits, certainly over about eight miles, close to economic levels. For the shorter links, increases will, however, have to continue, at 50 per cent. a year through to 1984 or 1985 for the very shortest links.

The impact of the increases on particular local hospital broadcasting services depends on the quality and lengths of the circuits rented. In the case of the Edinburgh hospital broadcasting service mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, covering eight or nine hospitals, the total of annual rental payments would increase fivefold between 1979 and 1984 or 1985, from about £800 to some £4,000 a year. Even when spread over a period, those increases represent a considerable extra burden on the finances of any voluntary organisation.

There is much more that I wish to say. I must conclude in case I am cut off in mid-stream. I wish to mention again what I said earlier about our views on advertising. It was introduced by the Labour Administration and appears to be working satisfactorily. I have taken a note of what the hon. Gentleman said about financing. It must be a matter for the health boards to decide. Had time permitted I would have gone through the health board areas one by one and pointed out that even with the increases we have not received requests for assistance in any great form from health board areas. However—