§ Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw)I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the constitution of the British Broadcasting Corporation to allow the Corporation to raise revenue, as and when required, through transmitting advertisements subject to the same rules as to advertisements that apply to independent television.I welcome this opportunity to put the Bill before the House because, believe it or not, since 1923 when the BBC began the House has never had any say in the fixing of the television or broadcasting licence. It has usually been stitched up as a deal between successive Home Secretaries and Governments and announced at midnight. The public have had to put up with that form of poll tax whether they liked it or not.
There is no doubt that the proposal to increase the licence fee to £65 will bear heavily on the poorer sections of the community. Many families in Britain, probably 5 million, never see £65 in a lump sum. It is not that they do not want to pay £65 for a television licence; it is just that they can never afford to pay that.
The time has come to re-examine the method of financing the BBC and there is a great public demand for that. Obviously, many of my colleagues are opposed to advertising on principle. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I have yet to see similar opposition to advertising that appears in Tribune, Morning Star, Labour Weekly or the Radio Times, or any other form of financial help which is given to those organisations.
Obviously, it would be better if a subsidy could be paid to poor people so that they would not have to pay a massive £65. But the fact is that no Chancellor, Labour or Conservative, has ever shown any sign that he is prepared to put up that sort of money. It would need about 1.5 per cent. on VAT to pay it. There is no sign even now that a future Labour Chancellor would be able to find between £400 million and £500 million to keep down the cost of the television licence and to pay a subsidy to people on low incomes. Therefore, we must consider how that could be financed.
There is no doubt that some of my hon. Friends will argue that already the poor pay more than £65 in the 1p that they pay on a tin of beans or the adverts on the other supermarket purchases that they make every day. But the fact is that that sort of payment is relatively painless. When people pay a penny on a tin of beans for the advertising, they can absorb that into their weekly budget far more easily than a £65 lump sum payment.
Nobody is denying that £65 would be tremendously good value for money. It would be. It works out at about the cost of a postage stamp per day. But the fact is that the BBC has not yet come up with any method of collecting it, other than in a lump sum. The benefit of paying by advertising is that the people who spend the most tend to pay the most. The poor families in my constituency who cannot afford continental holidays are not paying for the continental holidays to be advertised on television. If they cannot afford to fly British Airways or to pay for beer, they do not pay for advertisements for those. There is a principle in advertising that the ones who spend the most pay the most, which is a good principle on which to work.
The Bill does not tell the BBC how it has to run its affairs or raise funds. It allows it complete flexibility. It 193 has been worked out by advertising agencies that the BBC would need to take as little as 30 or 40 seconds an hour. I have just returned from making a television programme with Mr. Alasdair Milne, the director-general of the BBC. [Interruption.] It is not usual to shout hon. Members down on a ten-minute Bill, but I understand that my hon. Friends do not wish to listen to the argument.
Mr. Alasdair Milne confirmed on television an hour ago that advertising would work out at just over a minute an hour. One commercial an hour is all that the BBC would need to keep the licence fee at its present level. It would have a guaranteed per capita income of £46 and it could then raise as much or as little as it liked to finance its programmes.
Nothing in the Bill says that every programme must contain advertising. The BBC could choose to advertise on "Dynasty" or "Dallas", "Hi-di-hi" or "Blankety Blank", and leave "Panorama" or "Newsnight" alone. It could choose to show programmes from the Olympic games where there were adverts for McDonald's hamburgers or Coca-Cola and then use the cash to subsidise opera on BBC2. The Bill gives the BBC complete flexibility to decide how much it wants to raise and how to raise it.
An alternative argument that would probably be put forward is that advertising tends to lower standards and goes for the mass market. There may have been something in that argument until Channel 4 appeared. Nobody now can say that Channel 4 lowered its standards to get a bigger range of advertising, because it did not. Many programmes on ITV, such as "World in Action", "Weekend World", "TV Eye" and "News at Ten", do not pander to advertisers. They make no concessions to advertising at all. They are excellent programmes of integrity. The miners in my constituency will say that Channel 4 news has given them the fairest coverage that they have had. Therefore, there is no experience at all that advertising lowers standards in Britain, and that is the result of the strict controls that we have. Last year ITV won all seven Emmy awards for dramas such as "Jewel in the Crown" and "Brideshead Revisited" and made a profit from selling those programmes abroad.
We already have massive advertising on BBC every day, especially on sporting programmes at the weekend. The Canon league, the Gillette cup, the Nat-West trophy and all sorts of sponsored events are constantly thrust in front of the public. We now have the crazy situation where the BBC pays Embassy to show its snooker when it should be Embassy paying the BBC to advertise Embassy. How can that be Socialism? To expect people to pay £65 to subsidise Embassy is inconceivable to me.
Advertising is one of the best growth industries in Britain. It is making massive profits. We have only to look at the growth of free newspapers over the past 10 years. Ten years ago Britain never experienced free newspapers being shoved through the door. There has been a phenomenal rise in that market and its profit. In real terms ITV now charges 50 per cent. more for advertising than it did in the 1970s. That is possibly because there is a massive demand for advertising. ITV does not want to change the set-up because it does not want to face competition. If the price of the cost of advertising comes down because the BBC is showing it, it benefits the consumers and the poor people who pay 1 p on a tin of beans towards paying for it.
194 ITV experienced so much demand for advertising last year that it went to the Independent Broadcasting Authority and asked for an extra minute an hour and the IBA turned it down. The market potential there for fund raising is enormous. The only thing that prevents it is that on the one hand the BBC does not want to do it, and on the other it does not want a handout from the Government because it wants to retain its integrity. It cannot have it both ways. There must be some form of help to the poor and lower paid.
That system works well in Italy and Germany. In Italy the fee is £33. One can argue about quality, but we are arguing about financing.
§ 4.7 pm
§ Mr. SpeakerDoes the hon. Gentleman seek to oppose the Bill?
§ Mr. SedgemoreYes, Mr. Speaker.
Few Labour Members would have expected to see a Labour Member bring in a Bill to put the BBC in private hands and bring public service broadcasting to an end. I imagine that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) wants to be remembered as the person who gave the BBC over to commercial salesmen.
Frankly, I am horrified at the way in which the hon. Gentleman has run his campaign on radio and in the press. He knows the long-term and calamitous consequences of what he is proposing but he simply does not care. In bringing the Bill before the House in this fashion he combines, as only he is capable of combining, rampant populism with insistent philistinism and a profound ignorance of television and the importance of the BBC in the maintenance of our culture.
The Bill will damage entertainment, drama, news, art and culture. It may be the hon. Member's intention to turn Bassetlaw into a cultural-free zone before he dies.
The hon. Gentleman has consistently misled the public on radio and television. He has said that the BBC would need only 30 seconds of advertising per hour to keep the licence fee at the present level. That is incorrect, as I have always known. The hon. Gentleman has taken that figure from an advertising agency called DMM. In fact, the BBC would need three times that amount—one minute and 20 seconds of advertising per hour. If I can do my homework on that, I do not see why the hon. Gentleman cannot.
The hon. Gentleman has argued in public and in the House today that people who watch ITV should not have to pay for the BBC. Audience research figures show that 97 per cent. of the public watch BBC television for an average of 10 hours per week. That is the whole population except those who are moving house or happen to be away from home for some reason.
The hon. Gentleman said that the BBC had won no Emmy awards this year. Perhaps he regards those gargantuan competitions as reflecting the quality of television broadcasts, but if he had done his homework he would know that the BBC won no fewer than 100 national and international awards last year.
The hon. Gentleman says that he does not like the idea of lump sum payments by pensioners. I do not like it either. But instead of proposing that one of the most 195 important communications media on earth should be handed over to private, corporate vested interests, he should address himself to the problem in hand. He may not know that one sixth of the BBC's current income comes from the sale of 50p licence stamps, most of which are contributed by pensioners. Why does he not seek to develop that scheme?
Why does the hon. Gentleman not support Labour party policy, which seeks to give pensioners free television licences? I agree that paying the licence fee out of the national Exchequer would require institutional and structural changes, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to know how that could be achieved he need only read the article in New Socialist by Juliet Steyn and myself on future policy for the BBC and the arts.
The hon. Gentleman refuses to consider the mischief of his Bill. [Interruption.] Despite all the noise and "yahboos" from the Conservatives, I ask him to consider what will happen when instead of competing in the making of programmes the BBC and the independent television companies compete for advertising revenue. What will happen to the programmes when the BBC is run by advertising agencies? What will happen to public service broadcasting when Saatchi and Saatchi tell the BBC that it must increase its ratings to sustain its revenue? What will happen to dramas and documentaries of the type made by Ken Loach and Roland Joffe? "The Sponger's United Kingdom" on BBC could never have been made if the hon. Gentleman's Bill had been law.
The hon. Gentleman's proposal seeks to make it more difficult for the BBC to produce programmes which are disturbing, emotive, sensuous, imaginative, critical, analytical and intellectual. He is seeking to leave people unwittingly and helplessly subjected in their own homes to the lowest common denominator, unable to think sensibly about where they are and what they might become. Some people believe that Socialism can be achieved simply by questioning elitist statements, but any Socialist thinker will confirm that to achieve Socialism in this land we must question every popular assumption as well as every elitist assumption. Given the current state of ideology and popular opinion in this country, that is the only way to mediate between the world as it is and the world as we should like it to be.
One cannot always appeal to authorities, but I ask the hon. Gentleman to consider the words of Alasdair Milne, director-general of the BBC, who has said:
The fact that broadcasting competition in this country is confined to programmes alone makes for healthy, professional rivalry and is the cornerstone of the British broadcasting achievement.In this context, I quote with approval the words of David Plowright, managing director of the Granada company, for which I worked. I am no friend of his and I have had arguments with him about censoring programmes on open government, but he showed some sense when he said of the present system:It has enabled the two services to avoid damaging, cut throat competition for ratings and strive instead for a full measure of audience interest, appreciation, programme originality and excellence …The BBC deserves a significant increase in the licence fee. It has set standards we in ITV have done our best to emulate.In effect, he is saying that Granada would never have produced programmes such as "Jewel in the Crown" and "Brideshead Revisited" if the hon. Gentleman's Bill had been law.196 At a time when the licence fee and, indeed, the whole future of the BBC is under extraordinary attack from the Conservative party, the Government and the Prime Minister, as The Times today makes clear, the hon. Gentleman comes to the House with this damaging proposal. I do not know how Conservative Members intend to vote, but it would be a disgrace if any Socialist voted in favour of the Bill.
§ Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business):—
§ The House divided: Ayes 118, Noes 159.
198| Division No. 63] | [4.16 pm |
| AYES | |
| Ashby, David | Lawrence, Ivan |
| Baldry, Tony | Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh) |
| Beaumont-Dark, Anthony | Lightbown, David |
| Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay) | Lilley, Peter |
| Best, Keith | Lloyd, Ian (Havant) |
| Bevan, David Gilroy | Lord, Michael |
| Biggs-Davison, Sir John | McCrindle, Robert |
| Blackburn, John | McCurley, Mrs Anna |
| Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter | McGuire, Michael |
| Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n) | MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire) |
| Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes) | Maclean, David John |
| Bruinvels, Peter | Malone, Gerald |
| Carter-Jones, Lewis | Marland, Paul |
| Carttiss, Michael | Maude, Hon Francis |
| Cartwright, John | Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin |
| Chapman, Sydney | Miller, Hal (B'grove) |
| Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford) | Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride) |
| Cockeram, Eric | Molyneaux, Rt Hon James |
| Conway, Derek | Monro, Sir Hector |
| Corrie, John | Mudd, David |
| Couchman, James | Onslow, Cranley |
| Cranborne, Viscount | Osborn, Sir John |
| Dicks, Terry | Page, Sir John (Harrow W) |
| Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J. | Page, Richard (Herts SW) |
| Dover, Den | Parris, Matthew |
| Eggar, Tim | Pawsey, James |
| Fallon, Michael | Portillo, Michael |
| Farr, Sir John | Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down) |
| Favell, Anthony | Proctor, K. Harvey |
| Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey | Rathbone, Tim |
| Fookes, Miss Janet | Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon |
| Forsyth, Michael (Stirling) | Rost, Peter |
| Fox, Marcus | Ryder, Richard |
| Galley, Roy | Sayeed, Jonathan |
| Gardiner, George (Reigate) | Shersby, Michael |
| Glyn, Dr Alan | Silvester, Fred |
| Gower, Sir Raymond | Skeet, T. H. H. |
| Grant, Sir Anthony | Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick) |
| Greenway, Harry | Speller, Tony |
| Gregory, Conal | Spence, John |
| Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N) | Stanbrook, Ivor |
| Grist, Ian | Stern, Michael |
| Hamilton, Neil (Tatton) | Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton) |
| Hampson, Dr Keith | Taylor, Teddy (S'end E) |
| Hanley, Jeremy | Thorne, Neil (Ilford S) |
| Hannam, John | Thurnham, Peter |
| Hargreaves, Kenneth | Townend, John (Bridlington) |
| Hayes, J. | Tracey, Richard |
| Hayward, Robert | Trotter, Neville |
| Hind, Kenneth | Twinn, Dr Ian |
| Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling) | Ward, John |
| Holt, Richard | Warren, Kenneth |
| Hunter, Andrew | Watts, John |
| Jones, Robert (W Herts) | Weetch, Ken |
| Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine | Winterton, Mrs Ann |
| Kennedy, Charles | Wood, Timothy |
| Key, Robert | |
| King, Roger (B'ham N'field) | Tellers for the Ayes: |
| Lamond, James | Mr. Joseph Ashton and |
| Latham, Michael | Mr. Allen McKay. |
| Lawler, Geoffrey |
| NOES | |
| Abse, Leo | Dubs, Alfred |
| Adley, Robert | Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G. |
| Alexander, Richard | Eadie, Alex |
| Alton, David | Eastham, Ken |
| Atkins, Robert (South Ribble) | Ellis, Raymond |
| Atkinson, N. (Tottenham) | Evans, John (St. Helens N) |
| Banks, Robert (Harrogate) | Ewing, Harry |
| Banks, Tony (Newham NW) | Faulds, Andrew |
| Beith, A. J. | Field, Frank (Birkenhead) |
| Bell, Stuart | Fisher, Mark |
| Bennett, A. (Dent'n & Red'sh) | Flannery, Martin |
| Bermingham, Gerald | Forman, Nigel |
| Boothroyd, Miss Betty | Foulkes, George |
| Boyes, Roland | Fraser, J. (Norwood) |
| Bray, Dr Jeremy | Freud, Clement |
| Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E) | Gale, Roger |
| Brown, Hugh D. (Provan) | Garrett, W. E. |
| Bruce, Malcolm | George, Bruce |
| Buchan, Norman | Godman, Dr Norman |
| Caborn, Richard | Ground, Patrick |
| Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M) | Hamilton, James (M'well N) |
| Canavan, Dennis | Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife) |
| Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y) | Hardy, Peter |
| Carlisle, Rt Hon M. (W'ton S) | Harrison, Rt Hon Walter |
| Clark, Dr David (S Shields) | Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy |
| Clarke, Thomas | Haynes, Frank |
| Clwyd, Mrs Ann | Heathcoat-Amory, David |
| Cohen, Harry | Heffer, Eric S. |
| Coleman, Donald | Hicks, Robert |
| Cook, Frank (Stockton North) | Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L. |
| Cox, Thomas (Tooting) | Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth) |
| Craigen, J. M. | Home Robertson, John |
| Critchley, Julian | Howells, Geraint |
| Crowther, Stan | Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham) |
| Cunningham, Dr John | Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N) |
| Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly) | Hughes, Roy (Newport East) |
| Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'l) | Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S) |
| Dewar, Donald | Janner, Hon Greville |
| Dickens, Geoffrey | Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside) |
| Dixon, Donald | Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald |
| Dobson, Frank | Kilroy-Silk, Robert |
| Douglas, Dick | Lambie, David |
| Leighton, Ronald | Sheerman, Barry |
| Litherland, Robert | Sheldon, Rt Hon R. |
| Lloyd, Tony (Stretford) | Shore, Rt Hon Peter |
| Lofthouse, Geoffrey | Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood) |
| McCartney, Hugh | Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE) |
| McDonald, Dr Oonagh | Skinner, Dennis |
| McKelvey, William | Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E) |
| Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor | Snape, Peter |
| McWilliam, John | Soley, Clive |
| Madden, Max | Spearing, Nigel |
| Marek, Dr John | Steel, Rt Hon David |
| Marshall, David (Shettleston) | Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles) |
| Mates, Michael | Stott, Roger |
| Maxton, John | Strang, Gavin |
| Maynard, Miss Joan | Straw, Jack |
| Meadowcroft, Michael | Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth) |
| Meyer, Sir Anthony | Thomas, Rt Hon Peter |
| Michie, William | Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen) |
| Mikardo, Ian | Thompson, J. (Wansbeck) |
| Millan, Rt Hon Bruce | Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N) |
| Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby) | Tinn, James |
| Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe) | Torney, Tom |
| Nellist, David | Wainwright, R. |
| O'Neill, Martin | Wallace, James |
| Orme, Rt Hon Stanley | Waller, Gary |
| Park, George | Wardell, Gareth (Gower) |
| Patchett, Terry | Wareing, Robert |
| Pavitt, Laurie | Watson, John |
| Pike, Peter | Welsh, Michael |
| Powell, Raymond (Ogmore) | Wiggin, Jerry |
| Prescott, John | Wigley, Dafydd |
| Radice, Giles | Williams, Rt Hon A. |
| Randall, Stuart | Winnick, David |
| Redmond, M. | Wrigglesworth, Ian |
| Richardson, Ms Jo | Yeo, Tim |
| Robertson, George | |
| Robinson, G. (Coventry NW) | Tellers for the Noes: |
| Rooker, J. W. | Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours |
| Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight) | and Mr. Kevin Barron |
| Sedgemore, Brian |
§ Question accordingly negatived.