Broadcasting

HC Deb 01 May 1991 vol 190 cc321-67

Mr. Speaker

I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott).

3.52 pm

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor)

I beg to move,

That this House agrees with the Select Committee on Broadcasting, &c., in its First Report (House of Commons Paper No. 11).

The purpose of this debate is not to confirm the principle of permanent televising of our proceedings—that issue was settled by the House last July—but to consider, and I hope approve, the recommendations put forward in the report of the Select Committee on Broadcasting as to how parliamentary broadcasting should be organised and financed on a long-term basis.

The House will he aware that the arrangements originally put in place for the experiment have been extended for a transitional period lasting until 31 July this year. It is necessary to move ahead now, if Parliament approves, so that the appropriate arrangements can be in place by that deadline date.

The report that we are considering builds on and takes forward the work of the Committee under my two predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, South and Maldon (Mr. Wakeham) and, latterly, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe), to whom I wish to pay tribute this afternoon. As a comparatively new member of the Committee, I should like to congratulate and thank all the previous and serving members of the Committee. Much constructive work has been done and much thought given to bring us to this point.

I should also like to echo a theme that is dear to the heart of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East—the close collaboration and co-operation between the House and broadcasters, without which neither the successful conduct of the experiment nor the agreed package of proposals for the future would have been possible.

It might assist the House if I gave the criteria by which we were guided in reaching our conclusions. They were: the overriding importance of proper parliamentary control; the desirability of ensuring an efficient, cost-effective and well-managed televising operation., and the need for a fair distribution of costs.

The House quite rightly attaches much importance to the issue of parliamentary control. Let me reassure the House that firm parliamentary control over the broadcasting of our proceedings will remain. The Select Committee on Broadcasting will continue, but after some years its functions may be absorbed into the new "domestic" Committee structure recommended in the recent report to the House of Commons Commission by Sir Robin Ibbs. That will not alter its objectives, its powers or its effectiveness. The Select Committee will provide, as it does now, a vehicle for the general parliamentary oversight of the televising operation, a channel for any representations from Members or broadcasters, and a forum for the taking of any Executive decisions which may be needed.

Sir John Wheeler (Westminster, North)

My right hon. Friend is right to say that accountability for televising the House and its Committees remains firmly under the control of the House. However, does he take into account the fact that, when the television authorities wish to televise a particular Committee, it deprives other Committees of the use of the larger Rooms? To that extent, the affairs of the House are inconvenienced, and that should be considered in the review.

Mr. MacGregor

I am sure that the House agrees that the televising of Select Committees and Standing Committees is important. A wider audience should be able to see the important work of the House. That will sometimes create the practical difficulties that my hon. Friend described. The arrangements that we are trying to put in place for the televising of Committee proceedings will, I hope, ease some of the practical problems that have been experienced.

Mr. Roland Boyes (Houghton and Washington)

I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman so early in his speech, but my point is relevant to that made by the hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler). I voted consistently for the House to be televised. I support the televising of Standing Committees and Select Committees. However, I do not understand why—the right hon. Gentleman may not want to comment on this now, but he could write to me if necessary—this morning I was not allowed to take a photograph in a Committee Room, where only I and another person were present. However, as I walked down the Committee Corridor I saw two television cameras in another Committee Room. It is a ridiculous anomaly that television cameras can operate with a host of people, officials and hon. Members present, but neither I nor a professional photographer nor anyone else can take a photograph in a Committee Room.

I hope that the Leader of the House will consider that silly anomaly. It seems crazy to people outside that photographs cannot be taken when probably billions of people watch pictures produced by the television cameras day in, day out.

Mr. MacGregor

The hon. Gentleman's point could be considered again through the appropriate channels, but I am sure that he will agree that it is not a matter for the Select Committee on Broadcasting. I take note of what he said; it can perhaps be reconsidered by the appropriate means.

Perhaps I can finish the point about parliamentary control. The Supervisor of Broadcasting, who is directly answerable to the Select Committee, will also carry on with his important co-ordinating and managerial responsibilities which, under the permanent arrangements, will also encompass the other place. The most significant task for the supervisor is, of course, to ensure proper parliamentary control over the form of the signals through the operator's compliance with the rules of coverage. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members have found the services provided by the supervisor reassuring, and I am sure that the House will join me in complimenting him and his office on their work on parliamentary control.

Lastly, Parliament's interests will be fully protected by the presence on the board of the proposed new company to be established with the broadcasters of an equal number of directors representing each House, and a chairman appointed by you, Mr. Speaker. I shall have more to say about that subject later in my speech, as it is an important aspect of parliamentary control.

I shall now deal with the case for an integrated operation. Our first decision, reached unanimously, was that an integrated operation incorporating coverage of the Chambers and Committees of both Houses under a single management would offer significant economies of scale. Fortunately, the Select Committee on Broadcasting in another place took the same view, so we were able to proceed to consider the other aspects of the permanent arrangements on a jointly agreed basis; so there was absolute agreement not only in this House, but in another place.

The Committee next considered the important question of who should produce the pictures. We examined carefully the arguments in favour of establishing for this purpose a broadcasting unit as a Department of the House. Members who favour that option will no doubt wish to advance the arguments that they put in the Committee, which are covered in paragraphs 12 to 22 of the report. A majority of the Committee—a narrow one, but a majority nonetheless—took a different view, and one that I firmly share.

Let me briefly give the reasons. First, we believe that the parliamentary control that is needed can be provided through the existing machinery—which I have just described—involving the Select Committee and the Supervisor of Broadcasting, a system which everyone agrees has worked very successfully so far. The parliamentary control aspect of this issue is not in question under either arrangement—that favoured by the majority of the Committee or the alternative arrangement.

The main arguments against an "in-House" unit are those of cost and efficiency. The record of the independent operator who has been responsible for producing the pictures so far clearly shows—I quote our report— the management of a fixed price contracted out operation would be leaner and more cost-effective than could be obtained by establishing a Department of the House, especially given the lack of experience within the House of running a complex broadcasting operation of this sort. Moreover, the irregular pattern of the House's sittings and the recesses of differing lengths place a high premium on the redeployment of broadcasting staff to other tasks when the House is not meeting. The report argues: It is doubtful whether a Department of the House, operating under public service employment practice, would be in a position to exploit as flexibly these opportunities for maximising the productive utilisation of staff. Those powerful arguments, based on the lessons of more than 18 months of televising, persuaded the Committee to move away from its earlier support in principle for an in-House unit and to recommend instead that the operator should be an independent company chosen by public tender. Experience has shown that it works well, that it is the most cost-effective method and that it is more appropriate in terms of operating efficiency for a service such as we are considering.

I believe that the approach recommended by the Select Committee is infinitely preferable to one that would involve the employment by the House itself of all the broadcasting staff, with all the bureaucratic and establishment complications that would inevitably arise as a result of the House's lack of familiarity with this type of technically complex undertaking.

The third element in the permanent televising arrangements is the distribution of costs. So far, those have been shared between the broadcasters, who have paid for the equipment and running costs, the Parliamentary Works Office, which has been responsible for changes to the fabric of the building, and the House itself, which has funded the staffing of the Select Committee and the office of the Supervisor of Broadcasting.

In our report, we quoted figures which show that the burden of the expenditure during the experiment fell roughly equally on the broadcasters on the one hand and on the public purse on the other. With regard to recurrent costs, that broad pattern is expected to continue—if anything, with the broadcasters shouldering a somewhat larger load. However, the overall balance will be skewed during the current financial year and the next by the need for significant capital expenditure notably on the fitting out of Committee Rooms for coverage by remotely operated cameras, a new lighting system in the Chamber, modernisation of the sound system and a new control room, about which I will say more later.

Those costs will be met—reasonably enough, as they involve alterations to the Palace of Westminster—from public funds. Details of the projected costs of parliamentary broadcasting over the next two to three years are contained in appendix 9 published with the Select Committee's report.

I have referred to the expenditure side of the balance sheet and perhaps I can very briefly mention the income side. Receipts from sales of the signal accrue, both under the current system and the proposed permanent arrangements, to those broadcasting organisations that are members of the House of Commons Broadcasting Unit Ltd.—shortly to become the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Ltd., or PARBUL—if the House approves the Committee's report.

The most recent accounts of HOCBUL indicate that receipts from the sale of the signal between July 1989 and September 1990 came to some £288,000. Those moneys go, under the arrangements previously agreed by the House, towards defraying the cost of producing the signal. That will continue to be the case under the permanent arrangements, although the Select Committee will keep a careful watch over the size of the receipts to ensure that the interests of the House are properly protected.

Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin)

As financial probity is one of the things to which the right hon. Gentleman keeps referring, will he confirm that under his proposals no receipts from the signal will come back to the House?

Mr. MacGregor

That is the position that exists at the moment and that is what is proposed for the new arrangements. If we consider the costs in detail, it is clear that the broadcasters will be meeting more costs—indirect costs—further down the line, amounting to several millions of pounds, in the arrangements for the future televising. Indeed, they meet such costs now. The report does not purely show direct costs. As it makes clear, the broadcasters will have to meet significant further sums. In view of that, it has been agreed that those sums will come back to the broadcasting organisations.

However, I have just said that the Select Commit tee will be able to keep a careful watch over the size of the receipts. Clearly, if they grow substantially—growth would have to be very substantial it will be possible to consider the arrangements again. That would be a matter for the Select Committee. The present arrangements are right for the period ahead.

To sum up, our recommendations regarding the arrangements for permanent televising are as follows: that televising should be conducted and managed as a single integrated operation, incorporating coverage of the Chambers of both Houses and their Committees; that responsibility for producing the signals should be assigned to an outside operator, chosen by public tender; that the costs associated with producing the signals should continue to be shared between the broadcasters and the taxpayer according to broadly the same criteria as have applied to the experiment and the current transitional session.

We make no apology for the fact that, except for coverage of the other place, those are, in essence, the same arrangements as exist now. If I may quote our report: None of the evidence we have received suggests that there would be anything to be gained by abandoning them for the sake of some other untried formula. The details of the permanent arrangements are set out in the report and I will not therefore repeat them in full. Suffice to say that a new company will be formed to succeed House of Commons Broadcasting Unit Ltd., which, in recognition of its wider responsibilities in relation to both Houses, will be known as Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Ltd., or PARBUL for short. The structure of PARBUL will closely follow that of HOCBUL, with the costs of the equipment and of the operator's contract being allocated on the basis of shareholdings taken by the participating broadcasting organisations, and with revenues from the sale a the signals distributed according to the same formula. The broadcasters will appoint seven directors to the board, as will Parliament—three from this House, three from another place, plus the Supervisor of Broadcasting ex officio. The Chairman will be appointed by you, Mr. Speaker.

As for the type of coverage, no changes are proposed in the Chamber of the Commons. Committee coverage will continue to be demand-led. The cost of televising every Committee meeting in public would be prohibitive. There will, however, be an important development in the technical arrangements for Committee coverage. From the autumn, it is hoped, subject to successful technical trials, that one unit of three remotely operated cameras will be in service, with the possibility of a second at a later stage. This improvement in the physical arrangements for Committee coverage will, I am sure, be welcomed by Committee Chairmen, Members and staff.

Finally, I should mention the modifications to the sound system here in the Chamber—which have already begun and which will be completed in two stages during the summer recesses of 1991 and 1992—and the installation of a new permanent lighting system. Prototypes of that will be demonstrated under operational conditions in the Chamber between 7 and 17 May for right hon. and hon. Members to view and comment upon subsequently if they wish. I have given more details of the lighting demonstration in answer to a written question this afternoon. It would, I think, be fair to say that all the members of the Committee were very impressed by the prototype, but we shall await the reactions of more hon. Members before decisions are reached.

I now turn to a matter on which we were not able to secure a final decision before agreeing our report. As I said earlier, in the context of future capital expenditure on televising, a crucial feature of the permanent arrangements is the need for a new central control room from which the entire integrated operation will be managed. The existing control room in the Commonwealth Press Writing Room is simply not large enough for that purpose, and is in any case becoming increasingly unsuitable even for its present more limited role. The Select Committee has therefore asked the Parliamentary Works Office to carry out a series of feasibility studies and examinations of various possible sites for a new integrated control room.

After considerable analysis and discussion, the realistic options have now been reduced to three: inside the House, the cylindrical void in the tower above the Central Lobby dome; and outside the House, Nos. 4 and 7 Millbank. The former is a privately owned building, part of which the BBC has recently occupied as the base for its parliamentary operations, while the latter is under consideration by the PWO for renting as part of the scheme to rehouse staff who will be displaced from St. Stephen's house when it is demolished as a result of the Jubilee line extension. The case for and against each of the three options is set out in detail in the Committee's report, so there is no need for me to rehearse the arguments now.

On balance, the Broadcasting Committee takes the view that the Central Lobby tower represents an imaginative and structurally feasible solution, which, in the absence of any other suitable accommodation inside the House, ought to be pursued. Let me quote the reasoning set out in our report: this proposal represents our preferred way of maintaining the broadcasting unit both psychologically and physically as an integral part of the service of the House. It cannot be emphasised too strongly —this important point is sometimes misunderstood— that the control room is the House's own facility and that its occupants, although not employed directly by the House, feel a loyalty to it rather than to what is usually described as 'the broadcasters'. Thus, a location within the building, although not absolutely essential, is strongly to be preferred on grounds of operational reliability, staff morale and administrative efficiency. Naturally, cost has been an important factor in our consideration of the alternatives. Meaningful comparisons are complicated by the fact that, while the Central Lobby tower option would involve a rather larger initial capital outlay than either of the two Millbank sites, they in turn would entail substantial annual rental and other charges, in addition to the costs of refurbishment.

In the Committee's judgment, the £2 million estimated cost of the Central Lobby tower option should be viewed as a long-term investment in the permanent televising of the House's proceedings, and can be justified on that basis.

The Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee of the Services Committee, fulfilling its duty under Standing Order No. 125 to advise Mr. Speaker on the control of the accommodation and services in that part of the Palace … occupied by or on behalf of the House of Commons", has considered the possibility of siting the control room in the Central Lobby Tower and, at its meeting on 4 March 1991, rejected the idea for practical, financial and other reasons set out in a letter to me from its Chairman, the right hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme), which is published as appendix 11 with our report.

This difference between the two Committees, each rightly looking at the issue from its own point of view, has still to be resolved. I have already mentioned the question of cost. This is one of the factors which still has to be properly evaluated, since the estimates have been fluctuating as both Committees have been meeting. We hope to have a new paper before us shortly on the costings of the different options.

As this matter has yet to be considered by the full Services Committee, which I also chair, it would not be appropriate for me to say any more at this stage, except that an urgent resolution of the problem is essential if the new control room is to be operational by the summer of 1992. The House is not asked to take a view on this today.

Mr. Anthony Nelson (Chichester)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be unfortunate for the House if the Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee of the Services Committee were to take an entrenched position on this matter? Although we all respect that Committee's work, we very much hope that it will listen to the considerable work and thought that has been put into the recommendation that my right hon. Friend has advanced. The Committee would arouse great respect in the House if it felt flexible enough to change its position to accommodate those recommendations.

Mr. MacGregor

I agree with my hon. Friend that a great deal of thought and work has already gone into the proposition, as those of us on the Broadcasting Committee know well. As my hon. Friend knows, I have gone along with the view of the Broadcasting Committee on this matter, although, as I have said, the matter will also come before the Services Committee, which I also chair. So far, I have taken the view that my hon. Friend has outlined. I am sure that the members of the Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee who, perhaps understandably, are not here in force, unlike the members of the Broadcasting Committee, will take note of what my hon. Friend has said.

The House will expect me to say a few words about the parliamentary archives. The Select Committee did not examine in detail, as part of its consideration of the permanent arrangements, the future organisation, staffing, and funding of the archive, since a working party had already been established by the Clerks of the two Houses with precisely that remit. The Committee confined itself, therefore, to reaffirming the principle that the archive should continue to maintain complete tapes of all proceedings in the Chamber, as well as of any Committee proceedings covered by the broadcasters. But we also thought it right to draw attention to the anomaly which has arisen with regard to the archive, whereby its staff are employed by the other place, even though the vast majority of its work stems from the proceedings of this House.

To complicate matters further, the archive's accommodation is provided by the Commons, while its capital equipment needs have been met until recently by the Parliamentary Works Office, although this expenditure has now been switched, with effect from the current Session, to the vote for House of Commons (Administration). The Committee expressed the hope that these issues would be addressed by the working party, which I understand has now submitted its report to the Clerks of the two Houses. The question of receipts from sales of archive material was not part of the working party's remit, but is being addressed separately by the Supervisor of Broadcasting. However, I believe that the receipts of sales from archives material is very small at present.

One other aspect of the archive which I ought to mention is the question of the uses to which archive material should be put—that is, other than for broadcasting purposes, to which specific guidelines already apply. The Committee has devoted considerable time and effort to the task of drawing up a set of guidelines for the non-broadcasting uses of archive material, which will prevent obvious abuses without being unduly restrictive in their effect. We believe that the guidelines contained in paragraphs 99 and 100 of the report should prove workable, although, of course, we will keep them under review.

There is, however, one aspect of the possible usage of archive material which we were not able to tackle as part of our report, and that is the area of party political or electoral campaigning. The Committee considered this matter at its meeting yesterday and decided that no further guidelines were needed for this purpose for the time being, but that the matter should be kept under review.

An issue which in previous debates many hon. Members considered to be important was the prospects for establishing a dedicated parliamentary television channel. The obstacles to the achievement of that objective have never been technical: they are financial. In the absence of public money—we are talking about an annual cost of several million pounds—any decision to initiate a dedicated channel has been dependent on the commercial judgments of those with a potential interest in such a project.

Mr. Grocott

rose—

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

rose—

Mr. MacGregor

It might be better if I made progress on this issue. Then I shall happily give way.

I am delighted to be able to tell the House that, as the report itself describes, real progress has been made since the last debate on televising some nine months ago. The Select Committee received three different proposals—from Commons Committee Television, the company which is currently responsible for providing coverage of Committees, Thames Television, and United Artists. The Committee welcomed all three schemes, details of which are set out in the report, as representing a serious and commendable attempt to bring the goal of a dedicated channel nearer to realisation. Having carefully considered the proposals and taken evidence from their promoters, the Committee concluded that the United Artists scheme was the most thoroughly worked out and immediately practicable of the three". This proposal involves live continuous coverage of the House of Commons, supplemented by extended coverage of the other place and of Committees. Later, material from overseas legislatures might be added. The service will be distributed initially by low-power satellite to cable heads and will thus be available to any cable subscriber at no additional charge. The cost of the service will be borne entirely by the cable operators.

It is true that the potential reach of the service will be fairly small initially, at some 260,000 households by the end of this year, but on the latest available estimates from the cable industry, that figure is expected to rise to some 4.6 million households by the end of the decade. We should not lose sight in this context of the example of C-Span in the USA, which also started from small beginnings and has now developed into a full dedicated channel providing comprehensive coverage of Congress and its committees.

The Committee also hopes that it may be possible, subject to discussions involving the Independent Television Commission, for the service to be transmitted via one of the transponders on the Marco Polo satellite, which, as the House may know, is used for the moment by BSkyB. This would have the great advantage of removing any geographical limitation on the availability of the service, as anyone possessing, or willing to purchase, a so-called 'squarial' would have access to the channel.

Mr. Tony Banks

The Leader of the House does not seem to appreciate how important televising the proceedings of this place is to the democratic process. We ought to consider television as a televised Hansard. The idea of the televised proceedings being available through United Artists to 260,000 cable recipients, perhaps increasing to a certain number, is pathetic. We should fund the service here, as our major contribution to the democratic process. Cannot the Leader of the House grasp that point?

Mr. MacGregor

That point was much discussed throughout the deliberations of the Committee. I make three points to the hon. Gentleman. First, the dedicated channel is in addition to the other televising of Parliament that we have been discussing, which is available to everyone through the medium of broadcasting generally. Secondly, a substantial cost is involved in dedicated channels, and we have had proposals under which the cost will be met by the operators. Thirdly, as I have said, exactly as has happened in the United States, the number of people who will be able to see a dedicated channel through the cable system if they wish to do so will be fairly small in the initial stages. There will be considerable scope for expansion.

Mr. Roger Gale (Thanet, North)

Will my right hon. Friend comment on two points? First, he said that the Committee had come down in favour of the United Artists proposal. He should recognise that, although a majority of the Committee were in favour, it was a fairly narrow majority. It was by no means a unanimous decision. Secondly, my right hon. Friend must concede that at no time in its latter deliberations did the Committee make any effort whatever to solicit interest in the whole franchise. For that reason, if for no other, it is clear that many commercial interests which might have wished to put in a bid were denied the opportunity to do so.

Mr. MacGregor

Throughout its proceedings, the Committee took its view. Some of its conclusions were reached on the basis of majority vote. Throughout, it was able to hear views such as the one that my hon. Friend has just expressed. As my hon. Friend knows, when he made his point in the Committee it did not command majority support. However, what I am about to say should help to deal with what he has said.

The Select Committee has urged United Artists to begin immediate negotiations with HOCBUL—and, of course, its successor, PARBUL—about its participation as a full member of the company. The United Artists proposal was one of three in front of the Committee, and was generally regarded as the best. We have made it clear that, while that proposal deserves every encouragement, it should not be regarded as the last word, and that others should feel free to come forward with schemes if they wish. That offer stands.

I note from the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) that he wishes to see a dedicated satellite channel under the direct auspices of the House". I cannot see what purpose this would serve, when United Artists is perfectly willing, through the cable industry, to fund its own proposal, which, I stress, will be subject to the same parliamentary control in all essential areas as the main televising operation. Nor do I share the hon. Gentleman's faith in the ability of the House to manage an undertaking such as a dedicated channel. The arrangements that we advocate are not only a very considerable advance on the situation to date but the most effective way of going forward.

Incidentally, the Select Committee has not, contrary to the hon. Gentleman's amendment, opened the door to commercial exploitation of the signal through the United Artists scheme. All that the Committee has done—as is clear from the published minutes of proceedings, which are included in the report—is to refuse to rule out in advance the principle of sponsorship for a dedicated channel. But I emphasise that any specific proposal of this sort—we have had one already from Thames Television—would require the Committee's express authority.

I hope that the House will agree that the United Artists service, which will begin in the autumn, represents a major step forward. I believe that it is very close, in spirit at any rate, to the sort of proposal canvassed during earlier debates by a number of hon. Members.

The other place has already agreed to its own Broadcasting Committee's report, which sets out permanent arrangements for televising similar to those contained in the report of the Committee in this House, which we are discussing today. I am sure that many hon. Members will have read the report of the debate in the other place, in which, the corresponding report received a very general welcome. If this House approves the motion now before it, the next step will be for a public tender to be held, leading to the selection of an operator responsible for providing the integrated coverage. It is hoped that the name of the operator will be known by the end of June. Subsequently, new licences will need to be granted to PARBUL by both Houses, assigning copyright in the signals to PARBUL, subject to certain conditions. The new arrangements will then be in place by the time the House returns in October from the summer recess.

The Select Committee has recommended in its report what I believe are sensible, practical arrangements for the future of parliamentary broadcasting. They are sensible because they provide Parliament with full and final control over the form of the signals; they will ensure an efficient and economical management of the television operation on an integrated basis, with clearly defined lines of responsibility; and they give the broadcasters the assurance that their own legitimate interests are protected and, in particular, that their money is used cost-effectively and that the signals are of a technically acceptable standard.

Above all, the proposed arrangements carry forward the essential features of a system with which we are already familiar, and which we know works. Finally, as a bonus, there is at last a genuine prospect that a channel dedicated to live, continuous coverage of our proceedings will be in operation by the autumn.

I commend the Select Committee's report to the House.

4.29 pm

Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin)

I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof: takes note of the First Report of the Select Committee on Broadcasting, &c. (House of Commons Paper No. 11) but declines to approve a Report which fails to establish a Broadcasting Unit as a Department of the House as recommended in paragraph 106 of the First Report of the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House (House of Commons Paper No. 141, Session 1988–89), fails to provide a continuous satellite feed of House of Commons proceedings under the direct auspices of the House, and fails to prohibit the possible exploitation of the House of Commons' signal through commercial sponsorship.". This is the third report on televising the Chamber since the House decided in principle, three years ago, that we should conduct an experiment. I have been a member of the Select Committee on Broadcasting, &c. throughout, as have a fair number of the other Members who serve on it. I had no hesitation in supporting the first two reports. The first was about how we should set up the experiment and the second was to assess how well the experiment had gone. The third report contains a recommendation for permanent arrangements for televising the House, and I am afraid that I cannot put my name to it.

I take that decision with some regret, because I have certainly enjoyed serving on the Select Committee and helping in the substantial extension of democracy that televising our proceedings has brought about. However, the report is flawed in two fundamental respects, which are referred to in the amendment.

I shall deal with those flaws shortly, but before the bad news that the Committee has not been able to agree on permanent arrangements, I should like to take the opportunity of referring to the good news about the experiment. Its result has been, as we all hoped, that unprecedented numbers of our fellow citizens can regularly watch the proceedings of the House and follow its debates. They see how well, or how badly, we react to the issues of the day.

Before I came to the House today I looked at some of the viewing figures of the principal programmes that use parliamentary material. I should never have expected those figures to be as good as they are—although they are not big in television terms. For example, the Channel 4 programme, "A Week in Politics", which has an unearthly transmission hour on Thursday night and is repeated on Sunday morning, has an audience of 200,000 to 300,000 on Thursday night and 100,000 to 200,000 for the Sunday morning repeat.

"Westminster Live", which carries Prime Minister's Question Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and also goes out on Wednesdays, regularly has viewing figures of between 600,000 and 700,000. The programme planners had great confidence—they had more nerve than I should have had—and decided to have a programme over-run last week which took some time from the world snooker championship coverage. "The Parliament Programme" on Channel 4 had a steadily increasing audience, despite having another bad transmission time-12 noon daily. About a quarter of a million people now regularly watch that programme.

It is a great achievement that so many people watch our proceedings and that we have an archive of those proceedings. For example, we now have on film the speech by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe), towards the end of last year, and the final speech as Prime Minister of the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). We have those speeches on tape, and we can all play them and, certainly in my case, thoroughly enjoy them. That is an enrichment of our democracy.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North)

Does my hon. Friend agree that, although one or two individuals may still resist, the opposition to televising our proceedings has virtually collapsed in the House? The voices that warned of all that might happen as a result of theexperiment—exhibitionism and a change in the character of the House—have been proved wrong. Televising the House now seems as natural as televising our party conferences, and as the reporting of our proceedings by Hansard and the newspapers. Television has come and it is never likely to go away.

Mr. Grocott

My hon. Friend is right. Televising the House will probably continue to improve our procedures as we try to make them more relevant to the people watching and the people whom we represent.

It must be admitted, too, that television has meant that many, if not all, of us are seen more frequently by our constituents, although whether that will make us more or less likely to be re-elected remains to be seen. We all look forward to testing that theory as soon as possible.

Those viewing figures have been achieved despite the appalling slots that programme-planners have given to parliamentary coverage. I understand why the programmes have been given such slots—they will never achieve huge viewing figures—but I should have thought that it was worth trying to encourage the programme-makers to improve some of those slots and to move them from the twilight hours or the middle of the day.

I welcome much of the report. The Leader of the House spelt out several of the matters that I consider important. I welcome the improvements in Committee coverage and the use of remote cameras in Committee. I also welcome the idea of a central control room above Central Lobby. That makes use of space that would not otherwise be used and is an ideal location for a central control room.

I welcome some of the relaxation measures in the rules of coverage, although I believe that they do not go far enough. I have always believed that the job of trying to reflect what goes on in the Chamber should be left to television directors. It is their job to interpret the proceedings as they are seen from the Public Gallery. We restricted them greatly to begin with, but have become increasingly relaxed and I do not believe that anyone has suffered. We should give the directors even greater freedom. Whichever side of the House disrupts our proceedings, the disruption should be intelligible to television viewers. For example, in the poll tax debate on 13 March, Conservative Members made a determined attempt to disrupt the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould). I do not blame them for doing so, as long as it is within the rules. However, such scenes should not be cut away from what can be seen from the Public Gallery.

Our rules on "undue disorder" are also unduly restrictive. It is ridiculous to require a locked picture of you, Mr. Speaker, when disruptions take place in the House. Television viewers simply see you looking worried. If the disruption is intelligible to those in the Press or Public Galleries, the television director should be enabled to make it intelligible to television viewers.

Those are the parts of the report with which, broadly speaking, I am pleased. However, two fundamental areas in which the report sadly fails caused me to table the amendment. The first relates to the absence of a recommendation to establish a Department of the House to control and supervise television coverage. I should emphasise to those who were not members of the Select Committee that the arrangements that we established for the experimental period were designed for just that purpose—they were experimental arrangements for an experimental period. The Leader of the House had difficulty explaining exactly what PARBUL or HOCBUL mean. We made a meal of the arrangements and they were unnecessarily uncomplicated. If the report goes through unamended, it will recommend an unnecessarily complicated managerial structure for a simple operation.

The Leader of the House admitted in his speech that there is a ludicrous lack of proper financial control and management. I am surprised that a former Conservative Chief Secretary should have such weak managerial and financial control.

I would happily give way to the Leader of the House if he could tell me what the television operation is now costing. I have asked that question many times in the Select Committee, but it is extremely difficult to get an answer because the costs and responsibilities are divided among many people. There is no clear answer about the receipts from the television operation. Appendix 9 contains some complicated information, but anyone in any doubt should simply read paragraph 29 of the Select Committee report which encapsulates the financial shambles that it recommends. It is not good enough for the permanent arrangements to be run on such a basis.

Mr. MacGregor

If the hon. Gentleman cares to look at pages 38 and 39 of the report, he will see that the costs are set out clearly and simply. As a former Chief Secretary I can say that the information contained in those pages is far simpler to read than that offered in most costing operations of most companies in the public sector. The information is straightforward, clear and all there.

Mr. Grocott

I shall not betray in too much detail the look of bewilderment that crossed the right hon. Gentleman's face yesterday in the Select Committee when I asked him about receipts.

The right hon. Gentleman is aware that the responsibility for televising is divided between various sections of the House, the broadcasters and others. Those broadcasters represent a fluctuating group. New broadcasters will be employed during the recommended franchise period, which is not satisfactory.

It is also important to consider the Committee's recommendations on personnel management—the people whose job it will be to deliver the signal. Paragraph 16 of the Select Committee report talks of "bright young people" doing "short stints as operators".

Is that really the way in which we want to provide for the permanent televising of the House, particularly if we are to have a control room above Central Lobby? Imagine people coming here for three or four months, then going on to do "Emu's World" or "The Price is Right" and then coming back here for another three or four months. That is a poor way in which to operate the permanent televising arrangements.

I believe that the permanent televising arrangements should be the responsibility of a Department of the House. That was the clear preference in the first report produced by the Select Committee. The Leader of the House has admitted that. The right hon. Gentleman was not then a member of the Select Committee and it is significant that it is those people who have come on to the Committee since the publication of that report who have managed, with the right hon. Gentleman's casting vote, to vote down the recommendation for a Department of the House to be responsible for the televising arrangements.

Paragraph 106 of the Select Committee's first report states: We wish to make clear that the reasons, mainly contractual, which persuaded us not to recommend a fully-fledged House Broadcasting Unit for the experiment would not apply if permanent broadcasting were introduced and that such a Unit remains our preferred solution for the longer term. It remains my preferred solution. There are overseas precedents as almost every other country that televises its Parliament has established the equivalent of a Department of the House to do that job. The management of the House also offers such a precedent as Hansard is a Department of the House. Given that we continually refer to the televising operation as an electronic Hansard, we should establish a Department of the House to do the job.

Mr. Nelson

The hon. Gentleman knows that I greatly respect his views and contributions to the Select Committee. I, too, have spoken in favour of a House of Commons fully fledged Department, which would be responsible for the televising arrangements, but I support the main recommendations of the Select Committee report.

The report has considered the proposals for a parliamentary broadcasting unit. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the House, because of its majority membership on the board of directors, will continue, effectively, to call the shots? We will therefore have all the advantages of a fully fledged House of Commons broadcasting unit, but we shall have none of the disadvantages associated with having to bear all the costs as others will chip in. Although that arrangement may be different from that adopted in other countries, does the hon. Gentleman accept that it serves to our considerable advantage?

Mr. Grocott

We already cover a substantial proportion of the costs, but, under the present arrangements, we get none of the receipts. Surely there is nothing simpler than to have a Select Committee responsible to the House and a Department of the House responsible to that Select Committee. Why are we making such a meal out of what is a simple operation?

Mr. Tony Banks

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. Since we are getting close to a general election and are likely to have a Labour Government, what would the Labour Government do? I hope that my hon. Friend does not consider that a trick question—it is not meant as such.

Mr. Grocott

I strongly believe that we should establish a Department of the House. There is ample precedent for so doing and it should be our preferred option.

A Department of the House would mean that the televising operation would be subject to better financial control, but, above all, I believe that that Department would do the job more effectively than what has been proposed.

The directors of the unit would be employed by the House and would be here permanently. They would be as familiar with the House and its operations as are all the other staff. It is all very well to say that bright young directors would be the ideal people to call the shots in the control room, but it would be far better to anticipate those shots than to react to them quickly.

When a Minister makes a statement, which is followed by questions, we know that that routine follows acknowledged rules. We all know who is likely to be called—I am sure most of us would say that it is rarely us. I had eight years away from this place and it took me at least two years to reacquaint myself with that routine.

Mr. Andy Stewart (Sherwood)

Two years or longer?

Mr. Grocott

I am prepared to accept that I am still learning.

It is only when one has a feel for the place and knows those who have a particular interest in a particular subject that one can anticipate what might happen. If directors were full-time members of staff they would be familiar with the House. We would know them and we could talk and complain to them; just as we can to the Hansard writers. Surely that would be a far more effective way in which to operate the permanent broadcasting arrangements than to employ people on short-term contracts under a sub-contractor.

Paragraph 16 of the report claims that we would not be able to recruit people to do the job—that is a fatuous suggestion. We have managed to recruit an outstanding permanent controller of broadcasting and an outstanding permanent technical adviser. The Canadian legislature does not have the slightest problem recruiting people for such full-time jobs.

The report also asks how the employees of the broadcasting unit would cope with the problems posed by the recesses. It is as though people who work for television companies are fundamentally different from everyone else. Every other servant of the House manages to cope with the recesses. There is a balance between the excessive hours worked during a Session and the long recesses. I regret to say that Members do not enjoy such long recesses. Surely that balance could equally apply to those working in the broadcasting unit as it does to anyone else working in the House. There is an overwhelming case in favour of establishing a Department of the House to be responsible for the permanent televising arrangements. The present proposals will not stand the test of time.

The other crucial issue on which my hon. Friends and I disagree with the Select Committee report's recommendations relates to the dedicated channel. The clear wish of most hon. Members—we repeated it in the Select Committee report—is that there should be some facility for a continuous, unedited signal from the Chamber which should be available for people. They can then decide which bits they want to watch, just as people can come in and out of the Public Gallery or read the relevant sections of Hansard in which they are interested. Let me make it crystal clear that if the House wants that to happen we cannot will the end without willing the means. It is fatuous to pretend that it will ever be a wildly attractive commercial proposition, even when one is talking about audience figures of those that I mentioned for package programmes—about 250,000.

If an unedited signal went out all the time, the viewing figures would be much lower than that for most of the time. One has to compare those viewing figures, as a commercial proposition, with the viewing figures of some of the more popular television programmes. The 1990 record was taken by "Coronation Street" with 19.2 million. "Only Fools and Horses" had 17.9 million viewers and the World Cup had 16.6 million. Some of our most outstanding speakers would have difficulty attracting audiences such as that. It will never be an attractive commercial proposition to deliver an unedited signal to our constituents. I cannot say that I blame them. I should not want to sit endlessly watching such a programme. The question, however, is whether the facility should be there for people to use, if they want to do so.

That part of the report which deals with our pretty pathetic efforts to sort out a continuous dedicated channel is to be found in paragraphs 103 to 124. It is littered with hopes and expectations and is completely dependent on other people's commercial judgment. The fundamental choice that has to be made relates to whether our constituents should receive an unedited signal on the basis of the commercial judgment of individual entrepreneurs, or whether they should receive it as of right because the House wills that they should receive it as of right. I do not have the slightest doubt that the second choice should prevail. We should not say that the signal, via satellite, should be a loss leader for some company, or that it should be something nice for that company to put on its letter headings. Furthermore, it should not be possible for a conglomerate, based abroad, to decide that this would be a nice little and relatively inexpensive, from its point of view, function for it to perform.

Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby)

I do not see any disadvantage in a loss leader. Such a loss leader is provided by C-Span in the United States. It is high-calibre, public affairs coverage that is interspersed with other material. That makes it a very good package. There is no harm in that. The problem is that in this country it could not go out on cable; it would have to go out on satellite to reach the population. That would result in a commercial cost that should be met by the House.

Mr. Grocott

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The Leader of the House was pretty woolly on the question of this resulting in an exorbitant cost. If he has different figures, I hope that he will let me know. According to the report, the Independent Television Commission has said that we can obtain access to the Marco Polo satellite for a nominal rental. The only direct cost to this House would be the uplink cost of about £500,000. That is a lot of money. However, as a proportion of expenditure in other areas of our public life, it is fairly trivial. The Central Office of Information budget, for example, amounts to £180 million. Moreover, the Government's departmental advertising budget, as the National Audit Office has spelt out, amounts to about £200 million, £100 million of which is spent on media—largely television—advertising. If we are to believe the constitutional rule books, the fundamental job of this House is to supervise the Executive and to see that Government Departments do their job properly. For the House, therefore, to say that it is outrageous to spend £500,000 on ensuring that all our constituents have access to the signal is absolutely ridiculous.

Mr. Nelson

I apologise for intervening again, but the hon. Gentleman appears to be trying to give the impression—I understand that he speaks for the Labour Opposition—that he, like I, wants all his constituents to have the option of tuning into a dedicated televising of Parliament programme, but he is not offering that. Does he agree that the only way in which we could offer it to all our constituents would be by buying Channel 5 at enormous cost? We could make that decision, but that is not the hon. Gentleman's proposal. If instead he proposes simply to cover the cost, at public expense, of tuning in to a particular satellite, still only a very small minority of people will want to watch the programme. What, therefore, is he proposing on behalf of the Opposition? How will his proposals reach all the people who want to tune in to Parliament?

Mr. Grocott

I made it perfectly clear in our debate on the Select Committee's second report that for the foreseeable future the bulk of the people of this country will have to depend on getting any information about the proceedings in this House from the established main network channels and the packages that they provide. There is not the slightest doubt about that. However, I suggest that, via the Marco Polo satellite, which means via a squarial—

Mr. Nelson

It is minute.

Mr. Grocott

I agree absolutely with the hon. Gentleman—it is minute. If the hon. Gentleman is recommending that one of the main terrestrial channels should be taken over, I should find it very difficult to justify that to any of my constituents. It would be hard to convince them that BBCI, BBC2, ITVI, ITV2, or Channel 4 should be wiped out and given over to parliamentary coverage. It would not be too popular a proposal. Under my satellite proposals, initially, schools, universities and libraries would want access to it. However, every individual would have access to the signal by means of satellite coverage.

Mr. David Harris (St. Ives)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if United Artists were to say that that proposal should go ahead, the only difference would be that there would be no cost to public funds? It would do precisely what the hon. Gentleman proposes. It would use the Marco Polo satellite.

Mr. Grocott

I find this appeal amusing—"Please, is there a commercial operation out there, somewhere, to do the job for us? We don't think that it's important enough for us to ensure that our constituents get the signal, if they want it, so we just hope that some company will think that it is in its financial interests to deliver the signal." That is not good enough for me. What guarantee is there that six months from now such a company might decide that it was not in its commercial interests to continue the service? That happened with a cable operation not so long ago. We do not operate Hansard on that basis. We do not say, "We shall operate Hansard if we can, but we won't if we can't." It is a fundamental operation that should be available to all our constituents.

Mr. Richard Tracey (Surbiton)

The hon. Gentleman knows that I am also interested in a dedicated channel, but he must make his proposition clear to the House and to others who take an interest in the subject. The fact is that the Marco Polo satellite is on its way out. I understand that it is being used by United Artists very much as a temporary measure. It will need to look for an alternative for its cable service. What does the hon. Gentleman suggest, once the Marco Polo satellite disappears? Has he encouraged his constituents to believe that they could receive a satellite service in that way? What will follow it? Does he suggest that the House should then opt for Astra, or some other satellite?

Mr. Grocott

The hon. Gentleman makes all sorts of speculations about what might happen in the satellite and cable industry. I am much less clear about the future than he is. However, I know that the Marco Polo system—the MAC system—is far better technically. Therefore, it is highly desirable that such a system should be preserved. However, that is not the question that we must address. We need to ask whether the House should provide the means for continuous coverage, to which our constituents can have access. The answer to that question should he emphatically yes.

As for sponsorship, we debated that subject in Committee and considered how to finance the operation without forking out the £500,000 which I guess it would cost to do it ourselves. One possibility which I emphatically wanted ruled out but which the Committee would not rule out was of the Commons signal being sponsored. That proposal is horrendous. There is nothing quite so amusing as the Tory party finding itself in conflict on two of its professed deepest principles. One is a great respect for our traditions, of which the House is one; the other is a great respect for the pound sterling and anything that might make a few bob. Sponsorship brings those two values into a horrendous collision.

The ITC has made it clear that news programmes cannot be sponsored, for the most obvious reasons. I do not like the idea of sponsorship for any programme for reasons which it would be lengthy and irrelevant to go into now, but the possibility of seeing on the television screen the message, "This signal is brought to you live via Arthur Daley Enterprises," is horrendous.

If Conservative Members even contemplate the idea, let them be consistent. If the electronic Hansard were to be sponsored, why not Hansard itself? Why could we not have company logos on the front of Hansard? Why not have the Strangers Gallery sponsored, with company logos displayed on it? We might even have company hospitality suites, where people could watch Prime Minister's Question Time with drinks and smoked salmon. That seems to be the logic of the commercial approach. I see hon. Members nodding, but no one wants to say anything. I will gladly give way to any hon. Member who thinks that we should have company hospitality suites.

Mr. Austin Mitchell

Since my hon. Friend is talking about commercial matters, may I tell him that my speeches are now available on an 0896 number for 35p a minute at the off-peak rate. It is the only service on that number where the heavy breathing is at my end.

Mr. Grocott

I hope that the possibility of the Commons signal being sponsored is as ludicrous to everyone as is the suggestion of sponsorship of the other two means of communication, Hansard and the Strangers Gallery. The Select Committee could at least have ruled that out by voting for my amendment.

We come back to the two fundamental differences which make it impossible for me to support the Select Committee report. As a Select Committee we had the job of recommending a permanent system for televising the proceedings of the House—a tremendous advance in our democracy which has been enormously successful. The report, unlike most Select Committee reports, was never going to gather dust. It was to provide the guidelines for operators, for the basis of the financial arrangements and for the way in which we should deliver the signal to our constituents. I fear that we have produced a rambling shambles of a document which does not address the two key issues but comes up with a botched compromise which is inconsistent. I hope that my hon. Friends and many other hon. Members will support the amendment.

5.3 pm

Mr. Anthony Nelson (Chichester)

I should like to start by paying tribute to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as chairman of the House of Commons Broadcasting Unit Ltd. The role of the Chairman of Ways and Means has not been fully recognised. It may yet continue to be important in any survivor to the HOCBUL arrangement. I should like to say on behalf of the Select Committee, if I may, that the House is grateful to you for what you have done in that regard.

Tributes are due from lowly members of the Select Committee, first, to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who picked up the baton at a difficult time and who managed the proceedings of the Committee with great skill, sensitivity and leadership. It was also appropriate that one member of the Select Committee was elevated to be Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister. Through your chairmanship of the Committee, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and through that elevation, the Committee had a new influence.

Hon. Members who have followed the matter since February 1988 feel that it is of great consequence, and that what the House has achieved in implementing the televising of its proceedings is nothing less than a major constitutional step in democratic progress. Those who would cast such things aside and make light of them fail to recognise the great benefits that televising has already brought to parliamentary communication and public understanding of our proceedings.

It has rightly been pointed out that many of the alarmist fears expressed in 1988 have given way to a recognition that it is in our interests and in the public interest for the House to be televised. Far from the procedures or the cherished traditions of the House being abandoned, by and large they have carried on much as before. The only change for the better is that people can see more clearly and understand not just by listening or reading what we are about.

I give two major examples in the last year, the first more uncomfortable than the second. During the leadership change in the Government, I believe that it was important for the public to see what was happening in the House. They were entitled to judge by the contributions and emotion of the House the decisions that we were taking. Uncomfortable as the aftermath may have been for some of us, I believe that what happened has been vindicated by events and judged by television to be right. The new leader of the Government and of the Conservative party is an outstanding leader who comes over extremely well to the public.

The second example was the Gulf war. I remember vividly being in the Chamber during the emergency debate on the Falklands, as will other right hon. and hon. Members. On that great, sensitive and important occasion, there was no television. The public were unaware of the emotion of the House. It was up to us vicariously to report it to our constituents. During the Gulf war, there was great public interest day by day in the statements in the House and in the representations of hon. Members on behalf of constituents.

All the people have been able to use the new medium to see the democratic process at work through a visual report which did not exist previously. I profoundly believe that Parliament has taken an historic step forward in introducing the televising of the House and that future generations will be indebted to its courage in making that decision.

Mr. Gale

My hon. Friend has said that the public can now see great, important and sensitive decisions. He is right, provided news editors consider that those decisions are great, important and sensitive, but great, important and sensitive decisions which affect tiny communities such as the Scottish fishermen are being, and will be, denied the very coverage to which my hon. Friend thinks they are entitled.

Mr. Nelson

I agree with my hon. Friend. I should like to see more regional coverage and more television coverage of Back-Bench contributions on issues of importance to our constituents. However, I disagree with him to the extent that I feel that much of the coverage would never have taken place before. There is more net television coverage of regional and individual issues than ever before. It is a net benefit, and a great step forward. More could be done to draw attention to regional and individual issues, and that is part of the debate about a dedicated channel.

I want to turn to future arrangements and the setting up of a parliamentary broadcasting unit. As I said in an earlier intervention, although I respect the point of view of the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott), I believe that we will have the best of both worlds under the proposed arrangements. As we will have a majority of the board members of the new broadcasting unit, we will have control over a body which will be spending a sizeable sum of money—some £2 million this year—broadly half of which is the cost of the broadcasters. The other half covers the cost of the House of Commons and the Government. So it will be half private sector and half public sector, but wholly in the control of the House. There would have to be pretty compelling reasons for us to insist that the private sector made no financial contribution, although that would not result in any substantial benefit in terms of the control or direction of the broadcasting unit.

It is important to remember that nothing is immutable. We can change things. If it does not work out and a broadcasting company defaults, the matter can come back to the House and we can make other arrangements. However, after the tried and tested experience of the experimental period, why should we reject a contribution from the broadcasting companies, which in my view have been generous and responsible in the way in which they have conducted those affairs, and insist, perhaps for some ideological reason, that the entire cost should be carried by the House? I do not think that it is necessary, and if we can mitigate the cost, so much the better.

We will also have to consider carefully the arrangements for a permanent channel. I have said in previous debates that I would like as many people as possible to be able to tune in to a debate of their interest—not just to see the highlights on the news at 6 o'clock or 9 o'clock but to see an entire debate. Only by listening and watching an entire debate can those interested in a particular matter get the full flavour and meaning of the issues being debated in the House. We will find that there is an enormous latent audience interested in particular issues.

Experience in Canada suggests that, when there is a debate on agriculture, a vast community of people who arc directly affected by the issues and decisions of their legislature will listen in. Many of them will watch the debates more avidly than Members of Parliament and become extremely well tutored and informed. Admittedly, they will then put pressure on us as their elected representatives, but if we are aiming for a more informed public debate about major issues, we have everything to gain and nothing to fear from a dedicated channel.

Mr. Tony Banks

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good point. He is right to say that global viewing figures give a completely misleading impression. We should be looking at the different interest groups that will watch different debates at different times according to the subject that is being discussed. All those interest groups add up to some pretty impressive viewing figures.

Mr. Nelson

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Research carried out in Britain and abroad shows that a surprising number of special interest groups would benefit from such access. It should be our business to communicate to them by making that signal available.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that it was not technical problems that were holding us back. I believe that technical problems are holding us back. If it were now possible at a reasonable cost to have a terrestrial channel available so that our constituents could switch to Channel 12, for example, and watch the proceedings of the House in the same way as people can watch the proceedings in Canada, I would be in favour of that, and I would be prepared to vote for rendering public moneys for it.

Half our job is to do our job and the other half is to communicate what we are doing. It is an important part of our votes and our proceedings to spend money on telling our public and our representatives what we are doing. If it could be done at a reasonable cost, and the technology allowed a terrestrial channel, we would vote in favour of it. However, it is not possible.

I understand that only one terrestrial channel is available in addition to the four existing channels, and that is the proposed Channel 5. It would be difficult to argue on an opportunity cost basis that we should take that channel. Apart from the fact that the costs would be enormous, we would be denying many other franchises and companies that wished to use it. For the time being at least, and largely for technological reasons, we are limited to providing a dedicated channel by means of either a cable message from the House or via a satellite communication to those who receive it directly from a satellite or those who receive their television on a cable, which in turn receives a message via a satellite.

It matters not to me whether the satellite that communicates our signal is of a new or old variety, providing that it does the job. The key question is how many people will be able to tune in and obtain the dedicated channel from the cable system. Under any of the options currently available, a relatively small proportion of the viewing populace will be able to see our dedicated gavel-to-gavel proceedings, whether we adopt the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) or the line taken by the hon. Member for The Wrekin. We can only move with what is available.

The proposals made present the opportunity of immediacy rather than further delay before our public are allowed to see a channel dedicated to the proceedings of the House. We have the opportunity to reach many more people than we do currently and much more gavel-to-gavel continuous coverage of entire debates. As that is a practical proposition that will be available from the autumn this year, the House ought to buy it.

For all those reasons, I believe that the proposed organisation and medium of communication are reasonable, practical and viable. It would be a further great step forward if the House were to approve the Committee's recommendations tonight.

5.17 pm

Mr. Merlyn Rees (Morley and Leeds, South)

I shall be voting for the recommendations that have been made; I shall also support the amendment for which I voted in Committee.

In my view, we should have a broadcasting unit as a Department of the House. I accept what the Leader of the House said, that there is parliamentary control over the method that the Committee proposed. I also accept his view that the reason that we have got no further is purely financial and not ideological.

Some years ago, when I was chairman of the all-party group on televising the House, when televising the House was not as popular as it became after the experiment, I visited a number of different parts of the world where the legislatures had broadcasting units.

A broadcasting unit is not some left-wing ideological idea. The first time I saw it was in the United States of America. The Senate had a broadcasting unit that we visited. Those who worked for it were employees of the Senate. Just as Mr. Speaker plays an important part, although not directly, in the way in which the experiment is conducted in the House and the cameras are used, in the Senate that comes under the general guidance of the Leader of the House.

As the years develop, we must bear in mind that broadcasting unit—an electronic Hansard. As the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) said, who knows what may happen next year? The hon. Member for Chichester and I may disagree when we vote, but in the past two or three years that we have been on the Committee we have followed lines of thought as far as we thought possible and then, six months later, on the advice of the staff who work to us, we find that a chink of light appears and we move in a direction that we had not thought was possible. Over 200 years, Hansard has developed in a particular way and has a world reputation for what it does, but there must be an electronic Hansard as well.

I want to deal with the location of the broadcasting unit, whatever its name. In our report we disagreed with the conclusion reached by the Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee that the new control room should not be sited within Central Lobby. We went up the Central Lobby tower—I did not even know it existed—to see what it was like. It was like a 1930s version—I am old enough to have seen it—of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". It is extraordinary. One felt that if one put a foot wrong, one could float or perhaps fall down. In the report, we reiterate our preference for the Central Lobby tower as the location for the proposed integrated control room, and we recommend that that solution should be adopted by the House, provided that the remaining practical difficulties can be overcome.

As I have said, I am in favour of a broadcasting unit. It should be located in the House and not across the road. We would not put Hansard across the road in the Queen Elizabeth II buildings. Hansard belongs to the House of Commons. It is important that it is here for security reasons, let alone all the other reasons for its presence here over the past 200 years. I sometimes think that those with whom we argue do not have the right idea even about the Committee's proposal for something that is not a full broadcasting unit. They think that it is something to do with the BBC, the Independent Television Commission or those television people, and that the best place for it is away from the House of Commons, because it is a slight nuisance and not a real adjunct to the work of the House.

Our experiment has shown that the televising of Parliament is as important as Hansard and is having a profound effect on the way in which the British people look at the House of Commons and the way it works. The attitude of some in the House is similar to a story that I heard when I was in the Royal Air Force at the beginning of the war. The RAF had used carriers for planes before the war. The Royal Navy guided the small carriers and the RAF did the flying. A naval captain would not turn his vessel into the wind because he believed that the advice from the young RAF personnel was nonsense. Until the planes went into the sea, he was not prepared to listen to a new idea. He believed that it was nothing to do with the Royal Navy. Some people seem to think that the televising of the House is not part of the House of Commons and that it should be located with the broadcasters. They seem to believe that it can be brought in with wires or something of that sort.

I have sat through all our deliberations in Committee mainly to speak in support of the idea that the integrated control room should, if possible, be located in the House, and the central unit should be above Central Lobby.

Regional coverage is one of the good things to come out of the televising of Parliament. Northern Ireland, where I was earlier this week, picks up the contributions of the 16 Members who attend the House from the Province. When I return home to my native Wales, I see that it picks up matters concerning that area. I am sure that the same happens in Scotland. I wish that it happened in the English regions. I imagine that London Members miss out, because everything tends to be national. However, at least something is happening on regional coverage.

I am glad that more is to happen on Committee coverage. Over the past two or three years, all the members of the Select Committee have spoken in favour of Committee coverage. I hope that it will go further. In the autumn, there will be another step forward. The work in Committee, particularly when we have a dedicated channel, will be of great interest, if not to people in general, to interest groups concerned with certain aspects of legislation.

As I have said, some years ago I was the chairman of the all-party group on the televising of Parliament. I was moved by the feeling that the spread of democracy demanded that people should see what goes on. Even now, some things are not understood. If this debate were being televised, people would ask why so few Members were in the Chamber. In fact, I am cutting a Committee upstairs now. Many other things take place here than just a perpetual meeting of the "city council". However, many of the great occasions or events, such as the virtual disappearance from political life of the previous Prime Minister, will enliven a discussion for centuries to come.

I wish that we could have seen the debates on the American colonies that took place in the Chamber round the corner, between Pitt and Fox. It would have been wonderful to comprehend the real arguments. Nowadays, they are over-simplified. In the new book about Lord Halifax, "The Holy Fox", I read another interpretation of the events of 1940 when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and Lord Halifax nearly became Prime Minister. There are bits of that that would not have been shown on television. As late as 1941—I am sure that the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes) was not aware of it; I was not—members of the Government were having discussions with the Germans in Switzerland. Had I known, I would have been less keen on what I was doing. That would not have appeared on television, but one would have been able to see the mood of the House.

We are not doing this for historical reasons, although that issue arises. The televising of Parliament is an important social and political development. It has not ruined newspapers. It has made some of the superficial reporting of the House almost redundant. Newspaper commentators who look at this place in depth have not had their work made easier, but one reads them in a different context when one can watch events on television.

I commend the report. For the reasons given by my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) I shall be voting for the amendment, because that is the way that we have to go. I voted for it in Committee. In general, it is an excellent report and we should commend the Leader of the House since he has taken over the chairmanship. We should also commend the Supervisor of Broadcasting and his staff, without whom we would not have got nearly as far. We should also commend the Clerks of the Committee. Hon. Members attend every couple of weeks and express our views, but the work is done by others.

We are moving in the right direction. The televising of Parliament is of great importance. This is not the end of the story. It will develop in other ways. It is important that we have a dedicated channel. We have moved towards that, and it is important that we go further.

5.39 pm

Mr. Roger Gale (Thanet, North)

I voted against the report of the Select Committee on Broadcasting and I regret that I cannot support it tonight. Like the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott), I have been a member of the Committee since it first sat and, like him, I enjoyed its deliberations enormously. I appreciated the chairmanship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe), my right hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, South and Maldon (Mr. Wakeham) and the present Leader of the House. The work of the Committee has added greatly to the appreciation of our work by those outside the House.

Until now, the Committee has sought to deliver the best to the House and to the public. It saddens me enormously to have to say that I believe that we are asking the House to accept second best.

When we began our deliberations, we were criticised for taking a long time to get the technology right and were accused of shilly-shallying. We were told, "We know that you are opposed to it; get the cameras in." We resisted that temptation and as a result of the work of the Committee, of visits to Canada and of our examination of the work of C-Span—which has been referred to often and to which I shall refer again—we were able to deliver state-of-the-art technology and an improved lighting system.

I should like to pay tribute to all the technicians involved and to the Supervisor of Broadcasting for their hard work, and to the Director of Television, Mr. Patrick Harpur, and the people working with him since televising began. The technical quality of sound in the Chamber may leave something to be desired, but the technical quality of the pictures has been first rate. That has been recognised in the United Kingdom and worldwide. It is a pity therefore that we are falling down badly in this report. Since televising the House began, it has been claimed that we are seeking to enhance democracy. Over and again, hon. Members have reiterated the importance of public access to the work of the Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) made much play of that.

The proposals in the report will not enhance democracy and public access to the Chamber but, sadly, will restrict them. If we adopt the report, we will put into the hands of broadcasters—the BBC and ITN—the editorial control of the television coverage of the House. We will be paying lip service to the concept of a dedicated channel, which, as the hon. Member for The Wrekin said, was determined in our first report. We will hand control to an American cable company. I have no quarrel with the professional ability and technical expertise of United Artists—I am sure that it will do a good job—but I question whether the Canadian Parliament would hand control of its dedicated channel to the Americans, or whether the Americans would give the control of C-Span to the Japanese. It is curious that the mother of Parliaments is preparing to hand to an overseas company control—without offering it to anybody else, which is the crucial point—of something that does not approach a dedicated channel.

As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said, the Select Committee on Broadcasting considered offers from three companies. For what? For the provision of a dedicated channel. No one is interested in the scraps left by the BBC and ITN. It is inconceivable that any company considering a dedicated channel would consider those leftovers to be commercially viable.

Much has been made of the prospects for funding a unit at the House and a dedicated channel. I believe that they cannot be separated; they must be considered together. The Committee failed to grasp the fact that the production of a signal from the House and its transmission to the public by a dedicated channel should be inseparable. That is why the proposal is half-baked. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that the production of a signal from the Chamber and a dedicated channel would cost millions of pounds, but he did not quantify the figure.

I am sorry that I cannot agree totally with the hon. Member for The Wrekin, and I shall explain why later. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the public subsidy of public information services. My best estimate suggests that the House spends more than £450 million a year on public information services, such as the BBC World Service, S4C, the Central Office of Information and Hansard. That is a colossal sum. To pretend that the House has never set a precedent for subsidising information from the House is wrong. During the passage of the Broadcasting Bill, the House committed itself to spending £10 million a year to provide a Gaelic service to a maximum audience of 80,000 people, yet we are not prepared to spend less than that sum to carry the proceedings of the mother of Parliaments to the electorate of the United Kingdom. That is quite incredible.

I disagree with the amendment, because I do not believe that it is necessary for the House to provide that massive subsidy. A unit of the House, either by franchise or by direct control, should be able to sell its signals not only to the BBC and the independent television companies, which quite properly will want to use excerpts, but to overseas organisations such as CNN, C-Span, the Canadian Broadcasting Services, and to the Commonwealth countries and private industry. In the long term, such an operation, considered as a whole and not in part, as the report has, should be commercially viable. If the House has to underwrite that in the short term, that is entirely proper, because having voted the end, we should vote the means.

We have said time and again that the British public should have the right to see the proceedings of the House. The Select Committee on Broadcasting will consider a practice undertaken by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), who showed Scottish fishermen in his constituency an excerpt from a debate in the House that was relevant to them. No one would suggest that that debate was of riveting interest to the vast majority of people in the rest of the United Kingdom, but it affected the livelihoods of fishermen in Scotland. They had a passionate and burning interest and naturally wanted to see it. Why did he have to take a cassette to his constituents so that they could watch our deliberations? Why were they unable to watch it on a dedicated channel? Answer: because, having willed the ends, the House refuses to will the means.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester asked whether the problem was technical. The technical solution that we are being offered—again, I disagree with the hon. Member for The Wrekin—is a cable service that will reach a maximum audience of 250,000 people, and, by the end of the century, will perhaps reach 4.5 million people.

In my maiden speech, I advocated the development of cable. I am passionately committed to that development, because I believe that cable delivery will be the system for homes of the future, not only for television pictures and entertainment, but for home services, for data and for telephone. I have never made a secret of my belief, but it would be wrong to suggest that such a development will be rapid.

It would be even more wrong to suggest that it would not be many years—if ever—before large areas of the United Kingdom, and especially rural areas, received cable. Are we saying that people in rural areas—for example, the farming constituencies that I and many other hon. Members represent—shall not have access to the proceedings of the House? It is already available to them.

It is suggested that United Artists, having seized its opportunity to steal a march on the rest of the industry to provide the cable service to a quarter of a million people out of the whole electorate of the United Kingdom, should take the Marco Polo satellite dish, which was discarded by BSB, and deliver the signal to the home by that means.

There is no question but that, on the cheap, that satellite would be a good mode of delivery to cable head ends for United Artists. Nobody would deny that, but are we seriously suggesting that the people who have an interest in watching the unedited proceedings of the House will buy from a warehouse full of unused squarial technology that is already out of date? The hon. Member for The Wrekin said that it was a first-rate system. It is sad that, like other first-rate systems in other technologies, it is already out of date. To tell someone to buy a squarial is like today telling someone to buy a Philips cassette system.

Mr. Tony Banks

Or a Trabant.

Mr. Gale

The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) mentions a Trabant. I hesitate to put the Marco Polo satellite and the MAC technology in the same class as the Trabant. The Marco Polo satellite is as out of date as the Greater London council. I am not surprised that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West promotes out-of-date technology, because that is in line with much of his party's thinking on many issues. Marco Polo is about as much use as a flying dustbin, and we should recognise that. The MAC technology that has been developed is out of date. Successful digital television transmission trials are taking place in the United States, and they represent the technology of tomorrow.

Mr. Banks

I am grateful to the hon. Member, because, apart from his rather unkind comments about the GLC, he is making an interesting, useful and informative speech. He has far more technical knowledge than I, so I hope that he will tell us whether—as the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) said—it is impossible to establish a terrestrial channel with an allocated frequency.

Mr. Gale

I am grateful to the hon. Member for leading me to the end of my speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said that the difficulties were technical, not financial. I must gainsay that. I noted with great care the criteria listed by my right hon. Friend when he promoted the report. He said that the criteria applied by the Select Committee were parliamentary control—quite rightly—cost-effectiveness and the fair distribution of costs. Not one criterion relates to the public availability of the proceedings of the House. My right hon. Friend also said that the difficulties were not technical, but financial, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester says that it is not technically possible.

I wish to return to a point made by an hon. Member who is not here and whose name escapes me for the moment. He has done much work on the subject, and suggested a while ago that there should be a dedicated channel as a prerequisite to the televising of the House. I supported his amendment to the last report. We were told that we were trying to obstruct further televising of the House, but the Committee went ahead and persuaded Sky Television, with help from British Telecom and Astra, to provide a channel. For one glorious fortnight at the start of the experiment, when the cameras were first switched on, there was gavel-to-gavel coverage—as the Americans would say—or mace-to-mace coverage as we would prefer to say. There were no technical problems.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester will intervene in a moment if I do not answer his unasked question. Technically, delivery is possible, but who can receive it? The answer is, people with Astra satellite reception, Sky or whichever system one chooses which goes directly into the home. Such systems are now readily receivable. Anyone in the United Kingdom who wants to receive the broadcast can do so. It is clear that, for the foreseeable future, the majority of people in outlying areas that will not have cable will have to rely on satellite reception, not only for the televised proceedings of the House but for the many entertainment services that will be developed.

It is possible for us to set up a unit of the House. The Select Committee saw the unit of the House that was established in Canada and the excellent OASIS information system enjoyed by Canadian members. Many of us have been to the United States—the work of C-Span has been mentioned several times. American citizens have not one, but two television channels from their Houses—or legislature—which carry not only the unedited proceedings, but valuable background information. The channels also operate when the Houses are not sitting.

In America, there has been no difficulty in filling air time on C-Span. Can anyone seriously suggest that, during the long and short recesses of the House, there is not a wealth of Committee material and material from another place for which there is usually no time during ordinary transmissions? Is anyone suggesting that there would not be a demand for that?

Mr. Rees

I should have intervened when the hon. Gentleman mentioned the argument, which I support, for a Department of the House. I am concerned about the lack of facilities in areas such as that which I represent. For a long time to come, I do not envisage many people in such areas being able to tap into a terrestrial channel—

Mr. Tony Banks

Satellite.

Mr. Rees

—into satellite or cable. He is not answering the main question with which we are wrestling. What about the spare channel? I am not saying that we could have it, but the only way that people in my area could see the proceedings would be to use Channel 5.

Mr. Gale

The hon. Gentleman must concede that, technically, Channel 5 will also not reach the whole of the United Kingdom. That is a technical fact of life. The reception equipment for direct broadcast satellite is relatively inexpensive. Many people have already bought dishes in order to receive entertainment channels.

I find it hard to believe that people who want to receive the proceedings of the House—such as those in community centres or in businesses—would not buy dishes. A whole raft of organisations would undoubtedly want to receive the proceedings, but we are denying people the opportunity to do so. I am not talking about universal coverage. I am not saying that everyone who wants to watch will automatically be able to do so by a flick of the button on their existing television sets. That is patently not so. But what I am suggesting is far better than what is proposed in the report.

The Select Committee has failed the House—it is as simple as that—by not considering the whole package, by not inviting tenders or inviting willing broadcasters to come to the House, to work with us as a unit of the House but to take over the televising of the Chamber and then take the signal to the entire British public.

It is quite simple. If the Director of Television were to widen his shot to show the Chamber as it is now, the British public would see that this half-empty Chamber of the House of Commons is, if it adopts the report, going to vote to deny the public access to its proceedings.

5.49 pm

Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Cromarty and Skye)

I hope that the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) will forgive me if I do not pursue the aspects of the report or the line of argument that he pursued. As he is aware, I do not command anything like his technical expertise about the different systems and options which may or may not be available.

Like the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), I do not share the apocalyptic view of the report expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The Select Committee has done a reasonable job. Although the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South and I voted in different ways when we came formally to approve the report—I voted for the report—that does not mean that the right hon. Gentleman and I depart from the sentiment expressed in the Labour party's amendment. If there is to be a Division at the end of this debate, those of us who feel that these matters are important should register that fact in the Lobbies. However, I would hate to see the report fall at this juncture. I suspect that the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South and I share the same opinion about that, despite the fact that we voted in different ways at the end of the Select Committee's proceedings.

Of those deserving congratulations on the success of the televising experiment so far, I single out the broadcasters. I recall the original debate that was so skilfully introduced by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), and I remember some of the dire warnings that were uttered on that occasion. If the word "apocalypse" is appropriate, I remember the apocalyptic speech of the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) and the dreadful warnings about what the horrible, awful, scheming, plotting and subversive broadcasters would do if, in our naivety, the House was collectively to allow the broadcasters through the door.

All political parties have rows with specific programmes, editors and certain aspects of editorial policy. When televising any set event in the Chamber or in a studio, the programme editor or director and broadcaster want to make a good, enlightening televisual package which viewers will want to watch and which will therefore help ratings and will, in the words of the BBC's charter, "inform, educate and entertain." At times we achieve all three in our proceedings in the House.

I pay a particular tribute, as other hon. Members have, to the Supervisor of Broadcasting, John Grist, and to Anthony Hall and the other people involved. Members of the Select Committee and other hon. Members who have had dealings with those gentlemen know that they are friendly, approachable and, above all, professional in their approach to the task.

I suppose that a slight pat on the back is due to the House of Commons for its wisdom in supporting the hon. Member for Chichester when he moved the original motion and for some of the side benefits that have accrued from televising. I would sum up the latter as being slightly smarter suits and slightly snappier speeches.

Other hon. Members expressed relief about the fact that the cameras have been here for the past six months. If one were to take a six-month slice of British politics since 1945, one would be hard pressed to find many more major dramatic events, ranging from a change of Prime Minister to the Gulf war, than we have had in the past six months.

The change of Prime Minister was a tremendous political and human drama, ranging from the resignation speech of the former deputy Prime Minister through to the outcome of the first ballot and then the marvellous debate on the Floor of the House after the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), announced her intention not to contest the second ballot. After the first ballot, the former Prime Minister was reminiscent of Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard." After the result of the second ballot the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) was somewhat reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe because it transpired that Conservative Members did not, at the end of the day, prefer blondes.

Thank goodness all that drama is on tape. Future generations of school pupils and students will be able to see that living history enjoyed by hon. Members and the very few who were able to sit in the Press Gallery or in the Strangers' Gallery. Those events can be shared with future generations, and that is a tremendous tribute to the success of broadcasting.

I recall the afternoon when the former deputy Prime Minister made his resignation statement. I agree with the hon. Member for Chichester. Many people throughout the country were able to say that they realised just how politically significant that event was because they could see the expressions on the faces of the other hon. Members around him and the face of one hon. Member in particular who winced at the comments that were being made. That brought the luminosity of truth to bear on political proceedings. Following that, there was no way in which politicians of any persuasion could present a different conception of the events that took place. That is a tremendous plus.

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham)

The hon. Member is right. However, that kind of issue is not at stake. The Select Committee's hearings at Thames Television revealed that for about £5 million topics other than selected news and general current affairs coverage could be broadcast. Other issues could be covered which are not so important to most people but which might be significant to a minority who would otherwise have to refer to Hansard and therefore lose much of the immediacy of what goes on here.

Mr. Kennedy

The hon. Member for Thanet, North referred to the fishing incident. Although the 90-minute debate about that was not available throughout the north of Scotland where it was of tremendous interest, a substantial package was shown on Grampian Television's regional wrap-up programme "North Tonight". No doubt aspects of similar debates would be broadcast in the south-west or in Cornwall and in the constituency of the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris). The regional components of the BBC and ITN allow for such coverage. The BBC has given commendable attention to the work of the Select Committees and has allowed specific points to be focused upon. I do not dissent from the point made by the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley). However, within the constraints available in the original scheduling, the broadcasters have done an extremely good job, given the scale of events in any 24-hour period in this building.

I want to make a few brief points about the report and the implications for the future. I support the view that we should move towards a dedicated channel. The hon. Member for Thanet, North was absolutely right. As we move towards such a channel, I hope that we will consider the OASIS and C-Span facilities which we saw in Ottawa and which are also used in Washington DC. Facilities for hon. Members in the Palace of Westminster would thereby be greatly improved in terms of the visual technology available in offices and elsewhere.

My second point relates to the rather vexed question of what is to become of the new control room and where it is to be located. I support the view expressed in the report that it should be within the Central Lobby Tower. I appreciate that the Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee has expressed some anxiety about that and that it prefers the Millbank location to a location within the precincts of the Palace. Paragraph 61 of the report points out that there is much to be said for a secure on-site television interview facility inside the building—not just for the convenience of Members, but to prevent a recurrence of the sad events of recent times.

At the time of the change in the Tory party leadership, a media circus was in progress across the street on College green. Given the number of politicians who were trotting across the green to offer their opinions on that rolling news item over a period of about a fortnight, a blind terrorist with blanks who ran amok would have been hard pushed to fail to hit someone—probably a member of the Cabinet.

Similarly, special occasions such as the Queen's Speech and the Budget must now provide some of the best targets for terrorism in the world. Special prefabricated studios are now increasingly common on such occasions: broadcasters set them up so that they can use the Westminster backdrop, and they are illuminated in the evening.

Finally, I want to make a third-party point. In the Committee, I represent not only the Liberal Democrats but other "third parties" in the House with an interest in this matter. I shall not stray from the subject that, technically, we are discussing—the report—but I think that it would be inappropriate for me not to point out that the "third parties" in the House have traditionally complained about their lack of opportunities in comparison with the two parties that form the "usual channels" under our existing procedures. If television is a long overdue step towards opening up the House of Commons, I hope that it will also prove to be a welcome step in the direction of further full-scale parliamentary reform that will change our methods of operation completely.

The voices of the parliamentary prophets of doom have largely become siren, if not wholly silent—although I suspect that one voice on the Conservative Back Benches is not about to be silenced. Those voices that remain are, I think, discordant, for televising has now received the general acquiescence of the House. Given what has happened since the hon. Member for Chichester opened the original debate, many of the arguments against televising that were advanced then will begin to look as bizarre, absurd and unfathomable as the powerful and emotive arguments against votes for women that were voiced earlier in the century seem now. When we read the reports of those debates, we wonder how on earth the House of Commons could have been against votes for women. I think that future generations will find it equally incomprehensible that it took so long for us to introduce a measure that proved so welcome to both Members of Parliament and the public outside.

Although I share some reservations with the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South—although perhaps in a rather more optimistic fashion than other hon. Members—I hope that the report will put us on a firm footing for the future.

6.3 pm

Sir John Stokes (Halesowen and Stourbridge)

As someone who is in no way connected with the communications industry—and as somewhat of a reactionary, who can offer only limited support to the view of democracy—I rise to speak with some trepidation. However, I welcome the report, and congratulate all those involved on the work that they have done on so difficult and complicated a subject.

I do not wish to speak in detail about the various technical aspects of the report. My abiding interest lies with the effect that televising will have on our proceedings: I am referring not just to the presence of the microphones, but to the effect on the character of the Chamber and on how it works. The House is very precious to all of us, and I am sure that we shall all do our best to ensure that neither television nor any other invention of the future harms us in any way.

I have read the amendment carefully and I regret that I cannot support it. I believe that it would lead to considerable expense, and to the appointment of many more staff at a time when the number of employees in the public sector is growing so much that it is becoming a burden on the rest of the nation. The least that we can do in making this experiment work is to contain costs, and not impose yet another charge on the long-suffering public.

For many years I was a fervid opponent of the broadcasting of our proceedings. I confess that I have now changed my opinion substantially. I feared that our proceedings would be trivialised, that the tendency of some hon. Members to play to the gallery would be accentuated and that behaviour in general would worsen. I am glad to say that, in the main, that has not happened.

Of course, the Chamber is still conscious all the time that its proceedings are or may be televised. I have noticed a tendency—especially among Opposition Members—to crowd behind the Dispatch Box to be sure of being in the picture. I hope that women Members will forgive me for adding that some of them tend not only to do that, but to wear their brightest clothes to ensure that they are seen. Those, however, are minor points; what matters is that televising our proceedings provides the news media with a valuable weapon—and I fear the news media and the harm they can do to the nation.

The media love confrontation and they love entertainment. The House, however, is about serious business, and it is by no means always confrontational. Certainly it is not usually as confrontational as it appears in the weekly quarter-hour broadcast of Prime Minister's Question Time. That regular slanging match does not do much for the House's reputation, and is rather untypical of our proceedings; it also gives a completely false picture of what political life is really about. A complex political situation cannot be summed up in one or two sentences. That was well recognised in the 19th century, when, for the first time, the popular press carried long reports of speeches by Gladstone and Disraeli—which were read avidly, line by line, by the mass of the population.

The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) pointed out that television broadcasts of our proceedings were often slotted into difficult hours when not many people were "looking in". That is because we are not show business here; we are serious business. That is the constant difficulty with television. Question Time shows potted politics, not real politics: real politics can be found in debates on Second Reading, in Committee and on matters of moment, not in a quick quip across the Benches.

As I said, the power of the media is already very great—some would say terrifyingly great—and is growing all the time. Scenes on television of, for instance, the relatives of hostages at the start of the Gulf war, and of the present suffering of the Kurds, have an immediate, powerful and moving effect on the mass of the population. The danger is that they may come to think that what they see on television news night after night is all that is happening in the world, or is the most important thing that is happening; and that may not necessarily be true. News broadcasts on radio are better and, I believe, give a more balanced picture. Television is where the cameras happen to be.

Select Committees are much televised at present. There is a danger, however, that the televising of certain Committees, in which a witness is being closely examined, could turn out to be the kind of show trial that we have seen in the United States. I do not like that. The televising of our proceedings will need to be watched very carefully. It still has great potential dangers, although the worst has not yet happened.

I should prefer a single channel to broadcast all our proceedings from start to finish. What a different picture that would give. We do not just want snippets. The other day, I happened to watch the entire coverage of the enthronement of the new archbishop of Canterbury. What an immensely powerful and impressive broadcast that was—and what a nation we are. What a show it was, with all the nation represented in that wonderful old Christian building. It was not just a snippet; it was a full report—and how good it was. There is an increasing tendency to see snippets—little bits like the things that one has with one's drinks before a meal, but they should not be confused with a real meal.

I welcome the controls on reporting and on the use of cameras in the Chamber, especially when disturbances are taking place. Television can be a hydra-headed monster and unless we cut off some of its heads from time to time, we shall be in danger. I support firm parliamentary control.

I hope that my next remark will not be taken amiss. Let us not be too grand and important here. There has been much talk about enhancing democracy, but I do not know whether the public in England really want democracy to be enhanced. In my view, the public are not usually interested in politics; they prefer sport and other matters. Of course, they make a general judgment at general elections, but they usually leave the details to us. They may be concerned about certain vital matters, such as capital punishment. immigration or the tax on beer, but they are usually disappointed about those important matters. So let us not be too grandiose in talking about enhancing democracy.

What is our job here? It is to control the Executive; to approve the taxes; and to oversee, as best we can, how the money is spent, and not, I hope, to pass too many laws, which is what, unfortunately, all Governments have done in recent years. Of course, we must also support the defence of the realm, back the police and encourage religion. We must be modest and thankful to be here and not think too much of ourselves. We must all try to do our duty and not hope to become televison stars.

6.11 pm

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

That was a speech that I never expected to hear in this place and I am sure that at one stage the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes) never thought that he would make such a speech. I would have bet my pension on the hon. Gentleman remaining one of the last opponents of the televising of Parliament in his normal exotic fashion—not in terms of dress, but in terms of his views because he is one of the last remaining genuine political cave-dwellers in this country. Nevertheless, I heard him say that he had changed his mind. I had thought that it would be a truly Pauline conversion, but in the end, however, it was only half a miracle. The water was not turned into good red-blooded wine, only into cocoa. Nevertheless, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying what he did because, like several other hon. Members who opposed the televising of Parliament, he has now realised that it has been the great success story that many of us said that it would be. It has been a success for television itself, but, far more importantly, it has been a success for this place. Although the hon. Gentleman portrays it very differently from me, I know that he cares about this place just as much as I do.

As hon. Members of all parties have said, televising has had a double effect. It has greatly extended the public's knowledge and awareness of our proceedings and it has greatly extended our activities in reaching a wider public, which is something that we are here to do. There is not much point in our discussing, quietly behind our hands and in anonymity, events that we then maintain are important to the country as a whole. If we take what we say at face value and believe that what we are doing is important to the country as a whole, the whole country must be able to hear and to watch what we are doing and what we decide in the public's name.

Contrary to all the fears that were expressed initially by the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge and others about the effect of televising on the reputation of Parliament, the House of Commons has been enhanced rather than reduced in the eyes of the electorate and our reputation now stands higher than it was before televising began. There have not been the rows and the scenes of hooliganism that the Jonahs were foretelling. No one has done a runner with the Mace since televising began—although it happened twice before. No one has attempted to pull off Mr. Speaker's wig in an attempt to get a bit of cheap publicity. There have been no streakers and we have had very little crowd violence. Indeed, behaviour in this place has improved since televising began. That is not because hon. Members are conscious of the cameras, but because behaviour in this place is fairly good in comparison with legislatures around the world. As I have said, the Jonahs have been confounded and we have a great success story on our hands.

Having said all that, however, the televising leaves a great deal to be desired. It is still the broadcast journalists who decide what parts of our proceedings will be broadcast—what they consider interesting, sexy or educative. We should not allow journalists—broadcast or otherwise, although broadcast journalists tend to be better than newspaper journalists—to act as a filter between what we do in this place and what the electorate outside is allowed to receive.

The hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) referred to a debate on Scottish fishing. The people of Newham, whom I represent, are not necessarily very interested in that, but I know that many of my constituents are interested in and greatly affected by the late night orders on social security, housing and transport. But the broadcast journalists do not regard those subjects as interesting. By that, they mean that those subjects are not interesting to the broadcast journalists themselves. We should not allow that state of affairs to continue.

The report's proposals are inadequate. I cannot accept the idea that only 250,000 people will be permitted to see the parliamentary broadcasts and that that is somehow a major advance and that, perhaps, by the end of the decade 4.5 million people will be allowed to view. Those are optimistic figures. Let us face it, Sky and BSB came up with a lot of figures about the number of people that would be watching their channels by the end of each year and usually vastly under-performed against expectations. We have seen what happened to BSB—it could not maintain its audience—and we now know that Sky is experiencing problems. That is why we cannot rely on the figures that we have been quoted or expect to see them fulfilled.

I believe that all hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge—my constant references to him must impress upon him the fact that I have still not got over his speech—are now prepared to accept, as the hon. Gentleman did, that parliamentary democracy has been enhanced. The hon. Gentleman, however, did not seem very interested in extending knowledge and awareness of democracy much beyond the House. Whether he likes it or not, more and more people are now more and more interested in and aware of what we are doing. That must be good for us and for parliamentary democracy.

If we agree that the televising of Parliament has been a success for parliamentary democracy, why cannot we go further? I listened to what the Leader of the House said about the provision of a dedicated channel being a matter not of technology but of cash. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) then said that it was not a matter of cash—although he was interested in the cash aspect—but a matter of technology. I also listened to the hon. Member for Thanet, North, who knows far more about these technical matters than either myself or most hon. Members, and wanted to push him on why it is not possible to have a terrestrial channel. What would be the cost of re-engineering? The frequencies are allocated by the Home Office and, constitutionally, the Home Office and the Home Secretary are answerable to the House. As we can vote on such matters, can we not vote in the money and ensure that the technology is available?

Mr. Gale

The short answer is, practically, no. A terrestrial channel is not available—or rather, although nothing is impossible, it would be difficult to provide. If one is prepared to take entertainment away from a large number of people, it would be possible to make a channel available, but the only practical way in which we can have a dedicated channel is by direct broadcast by satellite and by cable.

Mr. Banks

I would like more information from the hon. Gentleman. We cannot deal with the matter in this debate but perhaps we could discuss it outside. He did not rule out the possibility of an extra channel. Would it be possible to re-engineer so that we need not deprive people of their entertainment on Channel 3 or a potential Channel 5? Is there no way in which one could squeeze in another terrestrial channel? If the hon. Gentleman says that it is technically impossible, I will accept that. However, if he says that it could be done at a price, we come back to the argument of what is the price and the value of democracy. It is a Wildean approach to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Often one feels that that is the attitude of the Government. If it is a matter of cost, we must be prepared to meet that cost. The value of democracy is infinite in those terms. If we desire the ends, we must will the means.

Mr. Peter Bottomley

I do not believe that the House would want to say that infinite costs could be borne. I hesitate to refer to the Richard Dunn question, which also came up in Committee. Some broadcasters would have preferred the Committee, and by extension the House, to ask for proposals for the widest possible Mace-to-Mace coverage. That point does not seem to have been fully grasped. We have tended to deal with the cost element and say that there is no extra cost other than that of the control room—I exaggerate slightly. Instead, we should have asked what proposals commercial companies, the BBC or some new person could make at a reasonable cost.

Mr. Banks

Again, this is not the way to exchange information on the subject. I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak. My feeling is that we should be prepared to bear whatever cost is necessary. We are talking about something that is perhaps beyond cost. We are talking about the value of democracy to us in Britain. If we have said that televising the House has enhanced democracy and reinforced the democratic process, we must take the logic further and take what we have done until now to some logical conclusion. Of course, we want Mace-to-Mace or gavel-to-gavel broadcasting. We want to allow the people of Britain to turn on and tune in to the subjects in which they are interested. They should not be restricted to the subjects which the broadcasting journalists say that the people should receive because the journalists have decided that those are the interesting subjects on today's menu. To me that means that we have gone so far, but there is an awful lot further to go.

I hope that the Committee will continue to keep the matter in mind and that at some point it will come to the conclusion that the money should be spent. No one can disregard other people's money. We are talking about not our money but that of the taxpayers. I hope that the Committee will say that the value of democracy is such that the House is prepared to will the means to meet the end of furthering democracy in Britain.

6.22 pm

Mr. David Harris (St. Ives)

I must confess that IF, too, am one of the Members who changed their mind on this issue. However, my conversion was much earlier and more absolute and complete than that of my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes). When I came to the House eight years ago and had my first opportunity to vote on the basic issue of televising, I voted against. I was taken to task mightily by my erstwhile colleagues in the parliamentary Press Gallery for having done so. It was not as a result of their criticism that when we came to the second vote in my parliamentary lifetime I voted for televising. I did so because I was absolutely convinced that the time was right to make the change. As many hon. Members have said, events since then have proved that we took the right decision in 1989. The attendance in the House for this debate is proof that we took the right decision.

The controversy has gone completely out of the main issue. We are now arguing about the details for the future. That has aroused considerable differences of opinion among the hon. Members attending this debate, as it did among those of us who served on the Select Committee on Broadcasting. But those differences of opinion are pretty small beer compared with the main issue and the controversy which raged at the time of the two votes about which I have spoken. We all remember that the Chamber was absolutely packed. People on both sides of the argument felt passionately that the parliamentary world would either come to an end or be transformed once the cameras arrived. As we all know, as is so often the case, the truth was somewhere between those two extremes. Life has gone on.

The tributes paid earlier, especially by the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy), to the broadcasters were right and proper. It was the way in which the broadcasters handled the televising of the House that made a success of it. The tributes paid to the Supervisor of Broadcasting were also appropriate. He has played a quiet, silent part behind the scenes which, again, has contributed mightily to the success of not only the experiment—which was the difficult part—but the permanent televising of the House.

I wish to deal with the items of controversy tonight. I am unashamedly in favour of keeping the status quo. The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) went somewhat over the top. As he did in Committee, he said that the report was a shambles and the arrangements were a shambles. He said that the present arrangements would not stand the test of time. With great respect, the arrangements have stood the test of time since they were introduced. The experiment began in November 1989. The remarkable thing is that, both as a member of the Committee and in my previous incarnation as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Leader of the House, I have heard no complaints about how the system has worked. Therefore, I am wary about overturning the system and introducing different arrangements.

I remind my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) that he opposed the first report of the Committee. He will correct me if I am wrong. He drew up a minority report. So he was not quite right when he gave the impression in his speech tonight that the Committee had performed splendidly until now but had suddenly gone wrong and off the tracks. He will be honest enough to admit that he has been a consistent critic of the way in which the Committee has gone about its work. In saying that, I am praising my hon. Friend: he has been consistent. He has held firmly to his sincerely held view, which is that the House of Commons should go into the commercial world and exploit the opportunity to televise the House. He believes that we should do deals with various people and obtain a return on the right to televise the House. He believes that that will open the way to greater television. That is one view.

As I said in Committee on several occasions, my view, which is counter to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North, is that if there is any body of people less able to run a commercial activity it is this House of Commons.

Mr. Tony Banks

What about Hansard?

Mr. Harris

That is a false analogy. People have given the impression that Hansard is freely available to everyone.

It is freely available, provided that one lives near an HMSO shop or is prepared to pay the postage and that one is prepared to pay for a copy of Hansard.

Mr. Tony Banks

The hon. Gentleman would not run anything commercially then?

Mr. Harris

I shall come to that in a moment. I have in my hand a copy of the daily edition of Hansard. The price is £6. I confess that I was not aware of the price of Hansard. Members of Parliament go to the Vote Office and get it at no charge, and probably send copies to constituents who ask for them. [HON. MEMBERS "Oh!"] If someone has a particular interest, it is only right that he should get a copy. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats do this on a greater scale than Conservatives do. However, I shall put that issue aside. The Leader of the House will correct me if I am wrong when I say that, even at a price of £6 per copy, Hansard is not run at a profit, or even at break-even level. Indeed, it is run with a thumping great subsidy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North has argued with absolute consistency that televising the House represents a great commercial asset that we should exploit by making it readily available, through satellites, to more people. That is my hon. Friend's basic approach. My point is simply that we are not equipped to do that.

Mr. Gale

I know that my hon. Friend has no desire to misrepresent my views. I have said consistently that there are two ways forward. One of them is by unit of the House and subsidy. That would be a perfectly honourable course which some people would prefer. My preferred option is that we should not seek to run the system ourselves—which is what my hon. Friend suggests I have been saying—but should offer the franchise to somebody else who does want to run it.

Mr. Harris

That is what my hon. Friend has always said, but he wants us to enter into various commercial deals. He goes further by saying that, to start, we might have to do pump-priming. The system that we have has worked very well. So far as the costs of the House are concerned, we have limited liability.

Let me address the arguments of both the hon. Member for The Wrekin and my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North. It is absolutely certain that the cost of running a service as a unit of the House would be far greater than the cost of the present system. All those manning the television cameras, directing and doing everything else would be employees and would have to be paid throughout the year.

Mr. Grocott

Will the hon. Gentleman please develop his comparison with Hansard, and will he try to be consistent? It takes about £2.5 million of public money every year to produce Hansard. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that an electronic Hansard should not be funded publicly, even though it would cost far less? What is the fundamental difference between the two? If there should be commercial exploitation of the electronic Hansard, why does the hon. Gentleman think that there should not be commercial exploitation of the written Hansard? I assume that that is what he means.

Mr. Harris

Why get involved with subsidies if subsidies are not needed? The hon. Gentleman would like us to use under subsidy a satellite system which, apparently, is available to United Artists. That would not be necessary if United Artists were to go ahead and provided exactly the same service. I am against providing subsidies if they are not needed, and I believe that in this case a subsidy is unnecessary. Similarly, the present system is much cheaper than a House unit would be. Why should a system that has worked perfectly satisfactorily be disturbed? I believe that it will continue to work perfectly satisfactorily.

On the question of a dedicated channel, there has been misrepresentation, not only of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House in his opening remarks but also of the Committee's report. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North engaged in some rubbishing. He implied that we were going down the United Artists route—as if the matter were set in concrete. Let me remind my hon. Friend of what the report says: By the same token, we believe that the United Artists scheme, whilst deserving support, should not be regarded as the last word nor as excluding or pre-empting any other proposals for a dedicated channel which may come forward in the future. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House made the same point at the beginning of this debate.

This House has taken very wise decisions about the televising of its proceedings. We are going forward in a perfectly sensible way, which need not alarm people, as it has worked very satisfactorily in the past. I thoroughly endorse the proposals of the Committee, and I hope that the proposed amendment to the motion will be rejected.

6.35 pm

Mr. Richard Tracey (Surbiton)

I want to begin by paying a particular tribute to the people who helped the Select Committee in its work. The Supervisor of Broadcasting, Mr. John Grist, brought his lifelong broadcasting and television experience to our aid, and gave us most skilful and sensitive advice throughout our deliberations, which lasted three years. I pay tribute also to the people who direct the programmes, as well as those who are in charge of the technical facilities. In addition, our thanks are due to the various Clerks of the House for their work in the preparation of this and other reports. They listened to our sometimes slightly rambling views and, in the end, distilled them into what looked like extremely wise words. Thus, we have a very readable report.

From the beginning of the discussion about the televising of the proceedings of this House, my view has been one of some scepticism. I have always felt that the proceedings of the House could be transmitted meaningfully to the outside world only by way of a dedicated channel. I am one of those who were slightly bothered and cautious—in some ways, alarmed—about the way in which, in the early days, some reports might come out. I did not take the sensational view that only the most ludicrous and frothy parts of the proceedings would be broadcast, but I did believe that the public would not often see the true depth of discussion, either in the Chamber or in Standing and Select Committees.

Over a period, the broadcasters have done an excellent job. As a London Member, I have one criticism, which may well be shared by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). There is not sufficient coverage, in London regional programmes, of work relating to the metropolis. The local coverage in other regions is rather better. Of course, in London, television is very much about national events.

We should still aim single-mindedly at an "electronic Hansard"—that is the expression that has been used, and it sums up the idea of dedicated coverage, gavel to gavel, for the benefit of the British public, whatever region they live in. People would not then have to travel to London to see what we are doing or queue to join the rather select few who get into the Strangers' Gallery. Our ultimate aim should be coverage that would enable sombody sitting at home to follow his own special interests. Whether they be crofters in the north of Scotland, workers in industrial centres, fishermen living on the coast, schoolchildren or people employed in the financial centres, everyone should be able to watch the proceedings of the House on television.

We should have a dedicated channel, and the nub of our debate is how to go about it. The obvious suggestion may seem that we should choose a terrestrial channel, because at present that is how most of the population receive television. But., technically, terrestrial broadcasting is not the method that is ultimately likely to reach the most people. In some remote areas of Scotland and Wales, and in parts of the south-west, television signals have to be re-broadcast for the benefit of people in the most inaccessible places. Ultimately, the best method of transmission will be by satellite.

The Committee has decided that a halfway stage—several of my hon. Friends have pointed out that this is only a halfway stage—would be to invite a cable transmission company to broadcast the signal. We certainly invite further investigation of how we can best broadcast to the widest spread of people, and I hope that the House, the Select Committee, and indeed the Government, will continue to be prepared to consider a public subsidy for a satellite signal.

I do not suggest that we go to enormous expense which was unacceptable to the Treasury and the taxpayer. The cost of acquiring a satellite dish is still, I gather from newspaper advertisements, about £200. Although people can rent a facility if they wish, we cannot yet justify a claim that very many people wish to receive a satellite signal. Within two or three years, however, satellite broadcasting will have reached such a stage that the House, the Government and the Treasury should consider paying for a signal to be transmitted by satellite.

I intend to support the report, but I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will take on board what I have said. I believe that I am in tune with the views of many of my hon. Friends and of many members of the public.

I do not think that we need a unit of the House to carry out the work. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) that the present arrangements are satisfactory. We have the expertise of the permanent members of staff—the Supervisor of Broadcasting and those who advise him. I am not convinced that we are equipped to recruit other people such as camera men and technicians. In all honesty, the sort of work that they have to do is not the most inspiring form of work imaginable for a television camera man, and the sort of staff that we now get through a contract with an outside company would not be attracted by it. The present quality of work is very high, and I hope that, by continuing the present method of contracting, we can ensure that that is maintained.

Finally, we have to decide on the control room. That is the "parish pump" item in the report, on which several hon. Members have already commented. I wish to put on record my view that the area above Central Lobby is the most obvious place for the control room. We must remember that we are shortly to enter a joint arrangement with the other place. It is logical that the control room for transmitting the signal from both Houses of Parliament should be in the building, and where could be more logical than at the central point between the two Chambers? Technicians there would easily be able to keep in touch with us, and there would be secure interview rooms available for Members of both Houses. There is no doubt where the control room should be.

6.47 pm

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham)

I shall make an abbreviated speech as I often appear to nowadays, and shall cut out some of the tributes that I planned to pay. However, I still pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, to the members of the Select Committee on Broadcasting &c. and to those who serve that Committee. Its report is one of the better reports in terms of canvassing the issues, but I am sorry to have to say that I disagree with it in one respect. For financial reasons, we seem to have gone for a short-term decision. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) serves with distinction as chairman of the Conservative media committee. The fourth appendix to the report of that committee spells out the options more clearly. It says, rightly, that the present experiment should be continued, and that people should be asked to come forward with proposals, which could include public subsidy, on how the continuous televising of Parliament can be made available to many more people much earlier.

It is not satisfactory to say that, for the sake of £3 million, Parliament should be broadcast on cable rather than by satellite. The report is right to point out the problems involved in using the squarial system—everyone knows that that is not likely to be available for very long.

I shall ask a technical question which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House may not wish to answer immediately. The Select Committee's recommendations refer to United Artists "or any other" group willing to send out the continuous signal. Does that "or" also mean "and"? Might there be exclusivity for United Artists if it pursues its proposal? So long as it is an "and" issue, that will remove one of those problems. There remains only the issue of whether the House could say to an outside broadcaster, "If we were willing to put more money in, how much faster could you make the system available, at least during the next few years?".

My final point will not be the most serious one that I have ever made in Parliament: why do not we set up a Dr. David Reid society? He was the mechanical-electrical engineer who produced the ventilator system that did not work and was sacked in 1852. I presume that he reported to a Select Committee, which shows that Select Committees can make mistakes. Whatever decision the House makes this evening, we should be prepared to see whether we are holding back from getting the full benefit from the work of the Committee that produced the report.

Now that it has been discovered that there are 25 rooms above Mr. Speaker's house, perhaps we can use those instead of destroying that wide, open space that I look forward to seeing soon.

6.50 pm

Mr. MacGregor

In the short time available, I shall touch on some of the points that have been raised in the debate. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes), I was at first opposed to televising Parliament, for three reasons. I believed—

Mr. Tony Banks

Another miracle.

Mr. MacGregor

As a former conjurer, I know about miracles, but this was not one. I believed that the House of Commons was a place of work and that there was a danger of distorting its image and making it seem as though it was a place of entertainment. I thought that it would encourage Members to play to the galleries. Above all, I was concerned, as were many other hon. Members and as has been expressed in the debate, that much of the real work of the House, which takes place in Standing and Select Committees, would be neglected if only the Chamber were televised, thus distorting the view of the House's proceedings. However, I came round to voting for the televising of our proceedings in the debate when it was decided to do so. That was partly because I thought that it would improve democratic communication—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) that it has done so—and partly because I thought that it might go some way towards stopping some of the rowdy behaviour in the House.

Having observed the public's reaction to the televising of Parliament, I believe that it has been a healthy and worth while change. I am always impressed, when I go around my constituency and others, by how often people say that they have listened to debates and taken on board matters that they would not otherwise have thought about.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge, however, that there is still a danger in choosing to televise the sensational moments in the House, which are untypical of this place, and to highlight them in news bulletins. We still face that problem. I have discovered that I also face a personal problem with the televising of Parliament because, sitting where I do, sometimes for a long time, without contributing to the debate and sometimes having been up for most of the night, I am tempted to yawn and, as sod's law applies, that is often the very moment when I appear on the screen. I have also realised that some viewers are good lip-readers. In the past, members of the Government talked about confidential matters that we had been unable to discuss outside the Chamber. So if I appear to be yawning, I am simply covering my mouth so that lip-readers cannot see what I am saying.

I agree that the televising of Parliament is worth while. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said that he was satisfied with the parliamentary control over broadcasting. The fact that nobody has criticised that aspect in the debate shows that the House is now satisfied with the mechanisms of control.

The right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees)—I am sorry that I missed his speech, but I was taking part in a television broadcast—talked about the importance of regional coverage, particularly in Northern Ireland and Wales. The hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy)—

Mr. Kennedy

Skye with an "e".

Mr. MacGregor

Yes, as a Scot, I understand that.

It is an important part of broadcasting our proceedings and partly answers the argument about a dedicated channel and the concern of some hon. Members to have our proceedings broadcast throughout the country, including in rural areas. I find that the attention given to regional matters on regional television is quite extensive and very important. Those of us who come from rural and regional areas believe that that aspect is important.

Mr. Kennedy

And Scotland.

Mr. MacGregor

Scotland is not the only place that the House should consider; the argument applies also to the regions of England.

It is noticeable that everyone who has spoken about the control room has argued that it should be in the House above Central Lobby. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley), I believe that, although there is more technical work to be done, his worry about the impact on that area is exaggerated. We would not wish to go ahead unless we were satisfied that the space could be used without a detrimental effect. Everyone who has spoken on the subject feels that the control room is an important part of the arrangement because it does not concern the other broadcasters—the normal broadcasters and channels—but the House's own broadcasting operation.

The hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye also mentioned security. I very much agree with him about such matters as I am often in the vulnerable position of being interviewed on the green outside. For the first time today, I have been to 4 Millbank to participate in a broadcast and was impressed by the space and lavishness there. The hon. Gentleman suggested that, for security reasons, we could use the space above Central Lobby for interviews with other broadcasters. Perhaps in due course we can implement some of those suggestions as it will be advantageous in terms of access and security. However, we cannot discuss that today as the debate concerns only the operation for broadcasting Parliament.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) has a much greater technical knowledge than I could possibly have about dedicated channels and I listened with interest to his remarks. The House accepted his technical expertise when he said that if we were to do anything other than broadcast by satellite or cable, we would have to remove a broader channel, which would include entertainment. I doubt whether the House would be happy with that. However much we want greater democratic communication and more people able to watch a dedicated channel, we must recognise that parliamentary proceedings will always be a minority interest.

My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), who made an excellent speech, said that if we are to have a dedicated channel we are not excluding other arrangements but talking about progress. We are moving towards a dedicated channel and, if that can be achieved with United Artists, I hope that it will move well beyond an audience of 260,000. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives quoted paragraph 122 of the Select Committee's report. Paragraph 124 is important to the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham. It says: We therefore propose to monitor closely the progress and performance of the United Artists scheme. In particular, we intend to keep under review the position regarding the potential number of viewers with access to a dedicated channel, especially in the context of the availability of additional channels on the Astra 1C satellite in two or three years' time. When that is added to the recommendation that we made in paragraph 122, it shows that we are embarking on the dedicated channel approach but are not excluding other proposals in due course, as technical possibilities arise or for other reasons.

Finally, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) referred to the arrangements as a totally unnecessary and complicated managerial structure—a botched compromise. Frankly, it is not. Several of my hon. Friends have already said that it has worked extremely well during its operation. It is not a complicated structure to understand—it involves all those connected with parliamentary broadcasting.

The hon. Member for The Wrekin referred to financial control and I believe that our arrangement is an important aid to that. When it comes to sharing costs, the broadcasters want to know that the way in which we have structured our part of the operation ensures good control over costs. It is important to have a cost-effective scheme. The arrangement to go out to tender ensures that we have such a competitive scheme, which is the best way to exercise control over costs. There is no problem about the overall audit and financial control.

The hon. Gentleman has displayed his instincts on other matters as well as broadcasting with his desire to set up a public sector organisation, totally funded by the taxpayer. Our approach of going out to tender ensures a competitive element in the service, a more flexible system and the most cost-effective way in which to achieve that service. It also limits the cost to the taxpayer by obtaining contributions from the broadcasters. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives and others that that is the sensible way in which to proceed.

I was struck—

It being Seven o'clock, Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded pursuant to Order [29 April] to put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the motion.

Question put, That the amendment be made:

The House divided: Ayes 70, Noes 155.

Division No. 134]	[7 pm
AYES
Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy	Eadie, Alexander
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)	Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)
Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)	Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)
Barron, Kevin	Fatchett, Derek
Beggs, Roy	Fearn, Ronald
Bellotti, David	Fisher, Mark
Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)	Flannery, Martin
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)	Forsythe, Clifford (Antrim S)
Canavan, Dennis	Foster, Derek
Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)	Foulkes, George
Cohen, Harry	Garrett, John (Norwich South)
Corbyn, Jeremy	Golding, Mrs Llin
Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)	Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Dobson, Frank	Grocott, Bruce
Doran, Frank	Hain, Peter
Duffy, A. E. P.	Hardy, Peter
Dunnachie, Jimmy	Harman, Ms Harriet

Hinchliffe, David	Quin, Ms Joyce
Hood, Jimmy	Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn
Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)	Richardson, Jo
Hughes, John (Coventry NE)	Ross, William (Londonderry E)
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)	Salmond, Alex
Janner, Greville	Skinner, Dennis
Kennedy, Charles	Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)
Lambie, David	Snape, Peter
Leighton, Ron	Steel, Rt Hon Sir David
McAllion, John	Strang, Gavin
McAvoy, Thomas	Taylor, Matthew (Truro)
Maclennan, Robert	Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis
McNamara, Kevin	Trimble, David
Meacher, Michael	Wallace, James
Molyneaux, Rt Hon James	Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)
Moonie, Dr Lewis	Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)
Morgan, Rhodri
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)	Tellers for the Ayes:
Nellist, Dave	Mr. Frank Haynes and Mr. Allen McKay.
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

NOES
Amess, David	Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Arbuthnot, James	Hannam, John
Arnold, Sir Thomas	Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)
Batiste, Spencer	Harris, David
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony	Haselhurst, Alan
Bellingham, Henry	Hill, James
Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)	Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Benyon, W.	Howard, Rt Hon Michael
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas	Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)
Boswell, Tim	Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Bottomley, Peter	Irvine, Michael
Bowis, John	Jack, Michael
Brandon-Bravo, Martin	Jackson, Robert
Bright, Graham	Jessel, Toby
Brooke, Rt Hon Peter	Jopling, Rt Hon Michael
Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)	Key, Robert
Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)	Kilfedder, James
Buck, Sir Antony	King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)
Burns, Simon	Kirkhope, Timothy
Butterfill, John	Lang, Rt Hon Ian
Carlisle, John, (Luton N)	Latham, Michael
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)	Lawrence, Ivan
Carrington, Matthew	Lee, John (Pendle)
Cash, William	Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Chapman, Sydney	Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Chope, Christopher	Lightbown, David
Clark, Rt Hon Sir William	Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)	Lord, Michael
Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)	MacGregor, Rt Hon John
Coombs, Simon (Swindon)	Maclean, David
Couchman, James	Mans, Keith
Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)	Maples, John
Davis, David (Boothferry)	Marshall, John (Hendon S)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Durant, Sir Anthony	Mates, Michael
Dykes, Hugh	Maude, Hon Francis
Eggar, Tim	Mellor, Rt Hon David
Emery, Sir Peter	Miller, Sir Hal
Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)	Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)
Fallon, Michael	Monro, Sir Hector
Fishburn, John Dudley	Moss, Malcolm
Fookes, Dame Janet	Moynihan, Hon Colin
Forman, Nigel	Needham, Richard
Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)	Nelson, Anthony
Forth, Eric	Neubert, Sir Michael
Freeman, Roger	Newton, Rt Hon Tony
Gale, Roger	Nicholls, Patrick
Garel-Jones, Tristan	Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Glyn, Dr Sir Alan	Norris, Steve
Goodhart, Sir Philip	Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley
Goodlad, Alastair	Page, Richard
Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles	Paice, James
Gorman, Mrs Teresa	Patnick, Irvine
Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)	Patten, Rt Hon John
Green way, John (Ryedale)	Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)	Portillo, Michael
Ground, Patrick	Powell, William (Corby)
Hague, William	Redwood, John

Rhodes James, Robert	Thurnham, Peter
Riddick, Graham	Tracey, Richard
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm	Trippier, David
Roberts, Sir Wyn (Conwy)	Trotter, Neville
Rossi, Sir Hugh	Twinn, Dr Ian
Rowe, Andrew	Wakeham, Rt Hon John
Ryder, Rt Hon Richard	Walker, Bill (T'side North)
Sackville, Hon Tom	Waller, Gary
Sayeed, Jonathan	Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)
Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)	Warren, Kenneth
Skeet, Sir Trevor	Wheeler, Sir John
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)	Widdecombe, Ann
Speed, Keith	Wiggin, Jerry
Squire, Robin	Winterton, Mrs Ann
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John	Wood, Timothy
Stevens, Lewis	Yeo, Tim
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)	Young, Sir George (Acton)
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)
Taylor, Ian (Esher)	Tellers for the Noes:
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)	Mr. John M. Taylor and Mr. Nicholas Baker.
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)
Thorne, Neil

Question accordingly negatived.

Main Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House agrees with the Select Committee on Broadcasting, &c., in its First Report (House of Commons Paper No. 11).